>>32610259Are you talking specifically to be a jap and play it before everyone else?
Because I WAS around when it was released in my own country (and before it was popular), and I remember it being an instant hit with basically everyone who was into nintendo at the time not really because it was an amazing game but because it was a decent, unique game on the gameboy(color). Maybe it was just me, but the gameboy's library felt pretty lackluster when it came to games that weren't straight up better off on consoles, and pokemon just felt really right for the time.
As a footnote, even though pokemon only reached me by late 1998, hype didn't spread like wildfire like it did for LoZ and Mario games. Even though I got it a few years after popularity ground zero in japan, it felt brand new because of the lack of modern internet and also I was still a kid and would have been oblivious to the social hype even if there was any.
