>>36247294Third world fag here, so no one had the games or a gameboy, but EVERYONE watched the anime and collected merchandise, half the time they were knockoffs too. Knockoff merchandise was everywhere, and you had official anime-related promotions too. Half the stuff on toy stores shelves, official or not, had a Pikachu in it.
I managed to get into the games with a SNES gameboy player, played Yellow on it, and then later on got Stadium 2 for the N64 and played Silver using the GB tower.
So yeah, it wasn't as awesome if you lived in a shithole. It was still there, but literally everyone was a secondary ashnime watching pleb who didn't even know the RPGs existed.
I didn't have a gameboy until I got a GBA with Sapphire in like 2004. By then the craze had died down, sadly. But I kept at it, and even saw a mild resurgeance back in DPP where I actually had friends who played the games. People who grew up with the anime/toys got old enough to have some disposable income by that time, and DSs were way more accessible than Gameboys.
I remember in my elementary school you had actual fights happening because of knockoff TCG cards, one kid got hurt and they had to ban Pokemon stuff in the school one time. It was nuts.
