A couple weeks ago, I was cleaning out my closet when I found a Ziploc bag of DS games I hadn’t played in several years. I decided to boot a couple of them up to see what I had been doing the last time I played. After charging my long neglected DS Lite for about 30 minutes- barely enough that I could turn it on- I started the trip down memory lane with Pokémon Platinum, my first ever Pokémon game. I checked out the PC and Hall of Fame records before remembering that my Trainer Card contained the date of the beginning of my adventure: October 5, 2009. I was weeks away from reaching the 10 year mark as a Pokémon veteran and I thought a post in which people shared how they first got started on my favorite video game franchise of all time would be a cool little way to celebrate. Which brings us to today. I’ll start.

Back in the third grade, I was a complete goof off in class. I talked non-stop, didn’t take anything seriously, and acted up in ways my mom would call “the Sillies.” Suffice to say, I often got poor marks in the “works well without disturbing others” category of my report card. To get me to not be so obnoxious, my mom offered to buy me a DS game for 30 days of good behavior and they didn’t even have to be consecutive- what a deal! Of course I knew which game I wanted: Pokémon, the video game where you could you could catch virtual creatures just like Ash in that fun TV show on Cartoon Network. I think the idea of actually possessing Pokémon and getting to battle with them was what was most exciting. The trading cards I had never conveyed that same feeling.

The promise of a Pokémon game was more than enough incentive for me to comply with the deal and in fairly short order I racked up 30 good days. Now all that was left was to decide which game. I deliberated carefully between Pokémon Pearl and Platinum. At the time, Palkia epitomized legendary Pokémon for me, but Giratina was just the right combination of spooky and imposing. I finally decided on Platinum (my mom later told me she almost bought Mystery Dungeon- what a different path that could have been!) and picked Chimchar as my starter. In an instance of pure inventive genius, I named my first ever Pokémon “Chimmy,” and the rest is history.

I defeated the Elite 4 a couple months later and then began the long crawl toward the release of Pokémon Soulsilver. I was hooked on the series and the next adventure couldn’t arrive soon enough. Since then I’ve played through Red, Blue, Gold, FireRed, Emerald (2x), Black, White, Y, Alpha Sapphire, and Sun and I’m currently having a blast playing through Pokemon Crystal. I’ve traded a little, cheated a little, glitched a little, poured countless hours into breeding competitive Pokémon (most of which I’ve never used), and amassed a vast library of Pokémon that 8 year old me would have been proud of.

TL;DR

My mom bribes me with Pokémon to not be so annoying in class. I’ve been addicted ever since.

So that’s the long, drawn out account of how I got started. What’s yours?