>>51244889One does not simply stop playing Pokémon. Only pause.
I’m 35 now. I started playing when I was in middle school/6th grade, with red and blue on my Gameboy Pocket, a black and white system with a light attachment, because there was no backlight.
I went to events with my best friend, including getting a Mew after standing in line for an hour. We battled via link cable, spamming Mewtwo’s with recover. When the Missingno glitch came out, the game became insane. Everyone had level 100’s, but some level 100’s were stronger. At the time, all we knew was that growing via grinding seemed to make a difference. This was before most of us had access or even knew about forums or other catalogs of information. We had magazine style game guides. That was it.
I remember buying a Gameboy Color and Pokémon Yellow on layaway at Toys “R” Us. Gold and Silver were like another world. Fighting your prior self in the post game blew our minds.
My final game in my childhood was Sapphire on Game Boy Advance SP. Life was getting busy. I played though to getting Rayquaza and closed the clamshell for 8 years.
