ever since i was a kid, i've always loved pokemon. there's something about the idea of building a team of wacky monsters to decimate evil teams and conquer gym challenges to eventually be crowned the champion that seemed appealing to 7 year old me. it still is appealing to this day. the first pokemon game i ever played was Pokemon Fire Red. my dad had this old gameboy advanced sp that still worked, and had an old copy of Fire Red still with him. since he wasn't into that whole scene anymore, he passed it down to me. at that time, i had no idea how to build a balanced team... or any team for that matter, so i brute forced my way to the elite four with a level 93 venusaur, a level 57 pidgeot and a level 53 kingler. regardless of my shortcomings, i was still able to defeat the elite four relatively easily and submit my name into the hall of fame. i had pretty much fallen in love with the franchise from there. i vividly remember watching episodes of XYZ on the official pokemon website, back when they used to have all seasons up there. good times. pretty soon after, i got my hands on a 3DS, which still use to this day. with it, and my switch, i've played through every mainline game from diamond to scarlet. nowadays, i find myself more immersed in the ROM hack scene of pokemon, because there are so many passionate devs making ROM hacks of pre-existing pokemon games with so much content and story that it feels like a totally new game. i guess pokemon became my starting point of video games.