How much can you remember about your first playthrough?

[terashards]

what was your first pokemon playthrough like? what game was it in? was it so long ago that you can’t remember all your team members or is it still recent history? do you still own any of the pokemon from your first ever team? feel free to share anything relevant to the topic

for myself, my first game was leafgreen, which i got on my 5th birthday… all the way back in 2004. suffice to say i do not remember a ton about it. i also don’t have access to any of my first pokemon anymore because i used to reset the save to replay the game a lot, and diamond and pearl wasn’t even out yet to save my pokemon by transferring them up.

i was introduced to pokemon by my babysitter at the time (i even asked my mom for the same exact GBA SP and game that she had, which was of course leafgreen and the silver SP) so i know that i picked squirtle to match her since i looked up to her so much. amusingly, i actually have very little personal attachment to the squirtle line and consider bulbasaur to be my “first starter” because once i started deciding for myself instead of trying to mirror my babysitter, i always picked bulbasaur. i also know i had butterfree and raichu, though i don’t remember much about them either. the only pokemon on my very first team that i remember with any clarity is Sara the Pidgeot, the first pokemon i ever caught on route 1. i still name all my pidgey-line mons Sara out of tradition in honor of that original team member who is lost to time.

i don’t think i struggled too much because i was extremely precocious with reading comprehension as a child, but i definitely spent a lot of time goofing off. kind of surprised i never found a shiny as a kid (to my memory) because i… enjoyed grinding for some reason. spent a lot of time on wild battles. well, i guess some things about me haven’t changed…

discuss your own first playthrough stories!

 

[Battista]

My first ever player character was named Teddy, and my first ever Pokemon was a Squirtle. I named it Angela. It later turned out to be female when I transferred it to Gold.

Angela knew Mega Punch, Bubblebeam and Ice Beam. There was a fourth move that may have been Surf but I don’t recall because the first two were all I used. In addition, I don’t remember any of the other Pokemon I used because I only used my overleveled starter.

Lastly, I recall being stuck in the Cerulean-Vermilion section for quite some time because I didn’t know how to get through Rock Tunnel. I eventually got out but never beat the elite four on that save.

 

[terashards]

My first ever player character was named Teddy, and my first ever Pokemon was a Squirtle. I named it Angela. It later turned out to be female when I transferred it to Gold.

woah naming your starter a feminine name and then them actually landing the 1/8 chance of being a girl when transferred to gen 2 is super lucky :0 you said you got lost and never beat the elite four - did you ever evolve Angela past being a squirtle? was she a wartortle or a blastoise before you ended up stopping?

 

[WholesomeCryptid]

My memories of childhood are foggy at the best of times, but playing pokemon heartgold as a kid is one of the few things i can remember fairly well.

I got the game for christmas 2010 when i was 7 years old after i had begged my parents for a pokemon game for ages at that point, i had been watching the anime movies constantly and watching my older cousin play emerald and soul silver over his shoulder, so i was overjoyed to finally have my own pokemon game. Booting up the game felt practically magical to me at the time.

My starter was a Cyndiquil i nicknamed Blaze, a pokemon i still consider my "pokemon partner" this very day. Being a kid who didnt understand strategy very well my gameplay basically consisted of me overleveling the hell out of my starter and using him to beat every single gym, eventually i got to the later game and added Ho-Oh as a secound pokemon to burn down everything in sight with as well. How i beat red with this stragey? Your guess is as good as mine, but i did! ...Somehow.

I have so many postive childhood memories associated with HGSS and the Johto reigon, my older cousin showing me the arceus cutscene and it absolutely blowing my child mind, thinking Lance was the coolest character in the entire world and wanting him to adopt me, deeply resonating with Silver as a troubled child myself, thinking i was the coolest person in the world for pulling off the levtating pokemon glitch, i could go on for hours. I put several hundred hours of gameplay into that copy of heartgold and because of it Johto is a place that feels like home to me and its games and characters are something i hold very near and dear to my heart despite its flaws.

 

[da man/man]

My first TRULY original playthrough was actually Pokemon Sword (all my playing up until that point was on my brother's complete files) and I picked Cinderace. To be completely honest I wasn't too attached to many Pokemon in that run. It was incredibly fun, but besides my starter, my shiny Pelipper, and a Litwick I babied all the way up to Chandelure (all of which I still have actually!) it was kinda your typical Pokemon Run.

But if you don't mind I'd prefer to talk about my Scarlet playthrough, what I consider to be my first TRUE Pokemon Journey. Me and two friends agreed to play through the game together all with different starters, in the union circle as much as possible (which funnily enough led to one of them getting a Palafin), I wanted Quaxly, we rock-paper-scissor'd for them, and I lost so I got Sprigatito, which I was not happy about (and OMG did this change!). I saw the Flamigos in the opening cinematic and said, direct quote "are those Pokemon or just Flamingos, cuz I swear those are just Flamingos", day 2 I caught one and loved it and cherished it the whole game XD. It started out basic, caught some Route 1 mon, saw the greatest Rival in history(Nemona), and then the Game REALLY Starts, We all union circle battle (I beat Quaxly Friend, Fuecoco Friend beats us both), and then we go out into the wild. Me and Fuecoco Friend see a Seviper on the minimap, and to find it, but Fuecoco Friend finds, and I kid you not, a LVL 20 OINKOLOGNE (like literally the strongest Pokemon you can own without badges by that point in the game) so safe to say they stomped us out for the next few fights after that lol. After beating the Klawf Titan (which I later went back and caught by complete accident) and Gym 1 & 2, I fought The Fire Type Team Star Squad, foolishly thinking that was the first Star Base you're meant to fight, it took me an hour to beat Mela... Skipping through a load of stuff we battle each other after every few major events, and my final team ended up being: Meowscarada, Flamigo, Klawf, Toxapex, Armarouge, and Tinkaton.

This is an OMEGA summary and I could literally talk about every major event/battle and everything in between (I MEAN that) but then I'd have an hour long spoiler post story, that I don't feel like writing out rn (and idk if anyone would even read that XD) so maybe one day I'll type out my whole adventure (cause I remember it VIVIDLY) but for now, how detailed I shared the early game probably tells you how much this game/playthrough meant to me lol.

 

[terashards]

my older cousin showing me the arceus cutscene and it absolutely blowing my child mind

this brought back childhood memories of me doing this event in HGSS and being absolutely terrified of this cutscene for some reason no idea why but i literally turned my DS around until it was over. sure made it memorable though! now i think it's one of the coolest things in HGSS lol.
funny that you named your cyndaquil blaze considering that is its ability. i assume you didn't know that when you named it. really good coincidence, i think.
reading about your history with HGSS/johto was super sweet, loved it

(which funnily enough led to one of them getting a Palafin)

your friend might be one of the only people on earth who naturally got a palafin without looking up how to evolve it first (joking)
i would love if you typed out your whole adventure sometime because playing a new pokemon game with friends and battling along the way and all that sounds like peak pokemon and i'm super envious but would also love to hear more

 

[Electrocast]

my first game was blue, and i was less than 10 years old, never played a game like this before, so the first thing i remember is asking my brother how i leave the house

a little bit later after discovering you can jump from the ledges, i was having fun doing that on route 1 until i jumped one of the ledges and ended up here

for some reason i didnt realise that i can jump from both of these ledges so when i jumped at the first one, i thought i softlocked myself and reset the entire playthrough LMFAO

 

[terashards]

for some reason i didnt realise that i can jump from both of these ledges so when i jumped at the first one, i thought i softlocked myself and reset the entire playthrough LMFAO

unlocking new childhood chokepoints that no one has ever seen before (said with love)

 

[RichestAirPirate]

I remember my first playthrough very well.
My first playthrough of Pokémon Moon was the first Pokémon game I ever played. And although I did have a liiiiittle bit of knowledge because of some handbooks, I was a noob and just used mons I thought looked cool.

My final team was Primarina, Electabuzz, Pangoro, Umbreon, Lucario, and the pièce de résistance: Marshadow. Got it from a lil code that came with my copy and despite not obeying me for like half the game, I still had it on my team because it looked super cool. I didn't complete the dex, but I had a lot of Pokémon because I did a ton of wonder trades. It was always exciting to see what I would get!

Sadly, one after school incident later, someone had deleted my save file... I lost everything... You bet your ass I got that backstabber in trouble but... dude. I was suuuuuper upset over it.

I feel like this playthrough is the reason why Marshadow is my favorite ghost type and my favorite mythical, because it was one of the first Pokémon I ever used! It's been like 7 or 8 years since that incident. I've used the other team members several times on other teams, and while that Marshadow is long gone, I'm glad to have used it at all. May that lil guy fly high.

 

[digitaldreams]

ironically, i remember a lot about my second pokemon playthrough but not so much about my first. i still have the file though, so i'm going to charge my 3DS and then look through it to give info about my team.

while my 3DS is charging, i can give a few details about the circumstances behind it though. for a long time, i was an anime only pokemon fan. i watched the episodes of the original series on youtube back when anime episodes were still on youtube, but i didn't play any of the games until i was 13. i got a lot of my gaming tastes from my dad, so i played the games that he did and very little else until i turned 13. that was when i had something of an... opportunity to branch out. when i was 12, my house was struck by lightning and burned down, and it was an absolute mess. but the upside is that my family had a bunch of insurance money to spend from all the stuff that was lost. there were some DS games i didn't want back since they were shovelware garbage, so i decided to swap out some of those for the newest generation of pokemon games: sun and moon. so when that sweet sweet home insurance payout came back, i got the alola games and started to play sun as my first ever pokemon game. it was one of the first games i ever chose for myself instead of just inheriting it from my father, so it was a pretty special experience in that way. i remember looking at all of the replaced DS and 3DS games from insurance and then picking out sun as the first one i would play now that my collection had been paid for and restored after about half my games were lost in the fire.

i chose popplio as my starter pokemon, and popplio went on to become my favorite pokemon in the entire series. i love my silly little seal. but i love the other starters too, so for the other members of my team, i picked up litten and rowlet through trading on the GTS. i had a midday form lycanroc on my team too. i'm not sure of what the other two slots were filled by, but by the time i hit the league, i was using a solgaleo and a lunala. i do not know where the lunala came from since it is spanish (presumably a GTS trade, but i don't know what i could have offered to get a lunala back haha), but the solgaleo is the one from the file. for the most part though, my three starters steamrolled the game. decidueye and incineroar had their matching Z crystals, but primarina did not since i got rid of the move for having 80 accuracy instead of 100 haha. that was a very awkward trip to the move tutor.

i had one friend at school who was playing the game with me on a copy of moon. her name is lilly, and we're still good friends to this day. i have very fond memories of us in honor choir (an audition only choir that met before school) sitting in the corner and playing pokemon when the director was working on the other three sections. i have a bunch of pokemon on my file that are from lilly because of this, and we traded a lot in my second file (which was an ultra sun) too. my favorite of her pokemon that i own is a swinub named nubby that she gave to me at some point when i was trading her a rarer mon she wanted. i smile fondly whenever i see nubby in my boxes. she only has two games on her 3DS, pokemon moon and fire emblem awakening, and we played both of them together during middle school and high school.

the last thing i have to say about this file is that i was obsessed with having all the starters from past generations on this file. i got a snivy through wonder trade and started breeding it like crazy so that i could have GTS leverage to get the starters from all other past games. so there's a box full of other starters that i got through the GTS and then evolved up. eventually, i stopped trading snivy and started trading fennekin since fennekin is my favorite starter from before gen 7. so i have a LOT of fennekin. in my ultra sun file, this habit continued, and it led to me getting my first ever shiny. i hatched 8 eggs on ultra sun for trading, and the eighth one was the only girl and turned out shiny. she's a braixen now and sitting very happily in my boxes in ultra sun. but the habit of breeding a bunch of fennekin started in sun, so i think it's still relevant.

my first two runs are very connected in my mind since... well, it was sun and ultra sun, but i hope i talked enough about my first run for this post to count. i know i got on the pokemon train really late since i didn't get a game until gen 7, but it was genuinely one of the first times i chose a video game on my own. before that, i played exclusively the wii games my dad already liked and the DS games he gave me. i played professor layton and ace attorney without him, but he was the one who gave me professor layton in the first place, so i don't know if that really counts. pokemon sun was one of my first choices, and i'll gladly put up with being called a new gen on twitter or something because of the special place alola holds in my heart. sappy but true. thank you to pokemon sun for getting me through the aftermath of my house burning down. you were a real one for that.

 

[terashards]

Sadly, one after school incident later, someone had deleted my save file... I lost everything... You bet your ass I got that backstabber in trouble but... dude. I was suuuuuper upset over it.

man i don’t know if i’d ever recover i’m so sorry for your loss! your first playthrough sounds awesome. if you ever want help trying to source another marshadow please let me know and i should be able to pull some strings perhaps…

my favorite of her pokemon that i own is a swinub named nubby that she gave to me at some point when i was trading her a rarer mon she wanted. i smile fondly whenever i see nubby in my boxes.

i know i’m biased. however. this is soooo ribbon master material. wink wink nudge nudge
i’ve heard the story about how you started playing pokemon before but it doesn’t get less crazy any time i hear it and i’m so glad pokemon sun helped you in the aftermath of the fire
getting a shiny female fennekin in 8 eggs is CRAZY by the way, were you doing masuda method on accident or was that 1/4096 full odds and everything?? god damn

 

[digitaldreams]

getting a shiny female fennekin in 8 eggs is CRAZY by the way, were you doing masuda method on accident or was that 1/4096 full odds and everything?? god damn

i think i had an international ditto from the GTS but no shiny charm since this was still about halfway through my run of ultra sun. i don't know what that does to the shiny odds but i was NOT trying to hatch a shiny or anything. i just wanted fennekin to trade. i still remember the moment it hatched. i was at my cousins' house, they were playing on the wii u, and i was hatching eggs. the fennekin came out shiny and i interrupted the entire conversation to scream "NO WAY" because i could NOT believe i got that lucky. and the 1 in 8 gender odds too. world's wildest fennekin.

 

[terashards]

i don't know what that does to the shiny odds

charm-less masuda method in gens 6 and up has 1/683 odds! but that’s still insanely lucky. if you factor in the 1/8 girl chance that’s a 1/5464 chance of getting a shiny girl and you got it in 8 eggs while not trying

 

[RichestAirPirate]

if you ever want help trying to source another marshadow please let me know and i should be able to pull some strings perhaps…

Hm...
I'll have to think about that...
Thanks for the offer.

 

[Battista]

woah naming your starter a feminine name and then them actually landing the 1/8 chance of being a girl when transferred to gen 2 is super lucky :0 you said you got lost and never beat the elite four - did you ever evolve Angela past being a squirtle? was she a wartortle or a blastoise before you ended up stopping?

Angela made it all the way to a Blastoise, and eventually ended up in Gold along with my Meganium from that game and my Typhlosion from Crystal. By the time I gave my copy of Gold away (it’s a weird story), that team consisted of the perfectly balanced and not influenced by 12 year old coolness factor at all:

Meganium
Typhlosion
Blastoise
Ho-oh
Lugia
Mewtwo

 

[RichestAirPirate]

Angela made it all the way to a Blastoise, and eventually ended up in Gold along with my Meganium from that game and my Typhlosion from Crystal. By the time I gave my copy of Gold away (it’s a weird story), that team consisted of the perfectly balanced and not influenced by 12 year old coolness factor at all:

Meganium
Typhlosion
Blastoise
Ho-oh
Lugia
Mewtwo

Type overlap be damned, having the 3 OG 680 BST Legendaries goes kinda hard.

 

[terashards]

Meganium
Typhlosion
Blastoise
Ho-oh
Lugia
Mewtwo

beating stadium 2 silver at his own game with a full team of 6 that’s awesome lol

 

[da man/man]

my first game was blue, and i was less than 10 years old, never played a game like this before, so the first thing i remember is asking my brother how i leave the house

a little bit later after discovering you can jump from the ledges, i was having fun doing that on route 1 until i jumped one of the ledges and ended up here

for some reason i didnt realise that i can jump from both of these ledges so when i jumped at the first one, i thought i softlocked myself and reset the entire playthrough LMFAO

I'm genuinely trying to figure out how not once did you, like, accidentally jump down the second ledge at any point XD. This is why stories like these are great.

your friend might be one of the only people on earth who naturally got a palafin without looking up how to evolve it first (joking)
i would love if you typed out your whole adventure sometime because playing a new pokemon game with friends and battling along the way and all that sounds like peak pokemon and i'm super envious but would also love to hear more

Ok but honestly though, maybe
Yeah I've already started, it's just a loooong process (Notepad++ my beloved), yes it was absolutely peak, and yes I will cherish it forever

 

[beasttrash]

I got FireRed for Christmas when I was 8. Basically: Overleveled my starter, brute forced my way through Brock because I didn't understand how to catch Pokemon and got lost in Mt. Moon for 3 weeks. It was a total diaster lol. I think I was under the impression that the games would be like the anime, and I was very wrong about that. I finally found some footing around the second badge and was able to at least get to Sevii before my game file corrupted out of nowhere lmaoo.

My first Hall of Fame team was in Emerald. That run was a lot less of a disaster, however I took my good old time beating the E4 because endgame makes me nervous (still does lol).The Pokemon I used for that run where Blaziken, Aggron, Azumarill (traded from a friend) Walrein and Flygon. c:

 

[Queen Of Space]

Sun and moon was my true first game, the main thing i remember out right, is that i had one of those genned wonder trade shinies. I also cried when lillie left cause my 7yo brain managed to convince me that she was my girlfriend