>>54293759I had been following Gen 1 Pokemon news through magazines and the internet before it was even released and when they were teasing Gen 2 in Japan. I was a huge, rabid fan and when Gen 2 finally released it was my favorite game I'd ever played. It felt so huge and magical, and I'd sit up playing it for hours even after I'd beaten it.
But when the Orange Islands came out in the anime I stopped watching it, and when I saw the reveals of the new Pokemon I was just confused. None of them looked like Pokemon to me (and before you start whining, remember that they've said in interviews that the new Pokemon were deliberately designed to be different to show off the GBA.) The games looked ugly and uninteresting. I had a GBA and played tons of games on it, but the magic of Pokemon had been destroyed for me.
I eventually started following Pokemon again and started emulating games, or playing Plat on my DS flash card. I didn't actually buy a new Pokemon game until Rumble Blast, and Violet was the first mainline game I'd bought since Gold.
For people who actually lived through Pokemania, Gen 3 was the point where it stopped dead.
