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Huge nostalgiafag here. Saw all of the first four movies in theatres and played all the games (even the spinoffs like stadium, TCG, snap, etc.). Pokemon RBY weren't my first video games (SMB 3 on NES was), but I was never "into games" until Pokemon. It hooked me in a way nothing ever had before or since. 1998-2001 was truly the golden age of the franchise. It's wrong to think of it as two generations, because there was so much overlap and it was really just one extended "OG" generation for the franchise. I had grown out of it by the time gen 3 came out, and just wasn't a fan of the Hoenn designs and loss of trade capability with gen 2 (seen as a cynical cash grab by nintendo at the time so people would buy the Genius Sonority games to get Johto mon).
Crystal version got me through my parents' divorce and I'll always have extreme nostalgia for gens I&II. Part of it is because 2001 was such a seminal year in the life of everyone who lived through it. It was the cultural division between the carefree naiveté of the 90s and the paranoia of the post 9/11 world. The dot com bust happened at the same time, plus the end of the Clinton administration and the advent of the Bush years in what many felt was a stolen election. The end of Pokemania was just a side-product of all that and easily looked over at the time, but for those who loved this franchise from the beginning there was a clear shift in Pokemon's appeal and impact on the cultural milieu after 2001.
