I was probably 10 when Pokémon Red/Blue first came out. I remember the first thing I saw was this commercial of a bus driver steam pressing all of the Pokémon on a bus into a game boy pocket.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tTc8__lXkMI actually had a radically incorrect impression of the game. It was my first real RPG ever, so I never had a concept of what RPGs were. I thought the game was going to be a really weird hide-and-seek/adventure game in which there were exactly 150 Pokémon period and you had to go around and find them and catch them, like you were a dog catcher from the pound trying to nab the loose monsters.
When I actually got it, it blew my mind, and the minds of everyone in that 4th and 5th grade class. It was full on Pokémania. I was "that gamer guy", so pretty much everyone assumed or knew that I knew the most about the game, and people would come up to me asking me to do the harder parts of the game for them
the girls had to give me a smooch for it though.. I remember the school actually had a lot of problems with the bigger kids beating up the littler ones for their trading cards, so the school actually issued a ban on the whole thing.
Because I didn't understand RPGs very well, I cleared the game the first time with a level 80 Venusaur and level 2-5 Pokémon I caught at random on Route 1 & 2. I remember that Venusaur had Vine Whip, Razor Leaf, Solar Beam, and Body Slam. Did NOT understand a single thing about RPGs, or the game in general. I wound up creaming everything no matter what though. I think the biggest challenge was always my rival's Charizard. The last fight in the game, I had used Solar Beam on it twice and had barely done any damage at all, and Venusaur had less than a quarter left. I gave up and used Body Slam, and when I saw that a non critical hit practically one shot it, I finally said "Oooooooh, TYPEs".
Ironically, playing the "correct" way is way harder in my opinion.
