>>55133185Actually, Pokemon became nugen as soon as the anime first aired, because it was focusing on marketing and hyping Pokemon 2 (later GS) from episode 1 instead of adapting the currently existing world of Pokemon.
So unless you were in Japan during early 1996, before Pokemon exploded into a multimedia franchise, you've LITERALLY only known Pokemon in its nugen state. (Spoiler alert, this means all of Pokemania was a nugen phenomenon because the anime was the poster child of the localization + marketing campaign.)