Let's see...
- Red/Blue. I was 8 when the games came out, and they were immediately pretty popular at my elementary school. Except I had no desire to play them at first, but I think all the buzz wore me down and I eventually used some saved up Christmas and birthday money to buy a GameBoy Pocket and both Red and Blue in the summer of 1999. I was immediately hooked, moreso to Red. I'm certain I was pretty terrible at the games, looking back, as I distinctly remember having my Lv 100 Charizard learn Swords Dance because it sounded cool. But, I quickly filled the Pokedex with all 150 available Pokemon. I convinced my dad to take me to
Toys R Us on black friday 1999 for their Mew giveaway. My scratch card didn't win, but on my way out of the store, I was interviewed by a reporter for the local paper who must have been doing a story on black friday shopping. I said something about being upset about not winning, and for some reason my comment actually made it into the reporter's article. Fast forward a short time, and my parents tell me that I received a letter in the mail from a return address they didn't recognize. They opened it, and it turns out someone that had a winning Mew ticket had seen my comment in the paper, and sent me their ticket in the mail! So, I was able to get a legitimate Mew and was the only one at school that had the Pokedex filled to 151.
- Yellow. I got Yellow for Christmas 1999, but didn't play it all too much, as I was too attached to my Pokemon Red save file.
- Silver. I read every Nintendo Power article that I could, multiple times, prior to the release of Gold/Silver. 10 year old me could not have been more hyped for a game release. It came out fall of 2000, but I didn't have any money as a kid, so I had to wait until Christmas of 2000. I specifically asked for Silver and my best friend asked for Gold - and we played them non-stop. I remember getting my game clock to 999:59, but one day, close to the release of Ruby/Sapphire, I booted up the game and my save was gone. I was crushed, and tried to start a new game, but the game simply wouldn't save. The save battery on the cart had malfunctioned.
- Ruby/Sapphire. I was 12 when these came out, and the Pokemon craze had definitely fizzled out at my school. With the loss of my Silver file, I kind of gave up on Pokemon and wasn't all that excited for the release. But, at some point I got Ruby as a gift and ended up playing it quite a bit. I kind of hid the fact that I was still playing Pokemon because it was well past the "in" phase and I didn't want to be made fun of. I actually ended up selling my copy of Ruby prior to the launch of FireRed/LeafGreen because of this.
- FireRed. I realized selling Ruby was a mistake and was excited to play an upgraded version of Red which I enjoyed so much. I played it a ton, but again, pretty much kept it a secret since I had just entered high school and was overly self-conscious of the fact that I was still enjoying the games.
- Emerald. I made sure to get Emerald since I had gotten rid of my copy of Ruby way too early, but I don't have much else to comment on it.
- Diamond. The idea of online trading and battling was too awesome for 17 year old me to pass up.I played Diamond a bunch, but I really was turned off by the fact that you could only migrate 6 Pokemon a day from the GBA games. Also, this is the gen where I decided to start caring about EVs, IVs, etc. I definitely regret getting into the advanced stuff, as I started to care less about having fun and more about getting near-perfect Pokemon. I played up until I left for college in fall of 2008 - again, being overly self-conscious, I decided that I was done with Pokemon, sold my copy of Diamond, and left the DS at home when I left for school.
- SoulSilver. I got sucked back into the pre-release hype
again, getting nostalgic about losing my original Silver file and having a chance to revisit the game. At this point, I had made it through college basically covering up my love of the series. SoulSilver just happened to launch at the beginning of my spring break, so I bought it, raced through the entire game on my week off, and really never returned to it. I left it at my parents' house at the end of spring break and ended up selling it after graduating college.
- I convinced myself to buy Pokemon Black to play while away at school, despite previously not wanting to admit I liked the series. I went to a local game shop on launch day, but they had sold out. For some reason, upon not being able to buy the game right at that moment, I decided to skip the games entirely. I also skipped Black and White 2
- X. By 2013, I had graduated school, had a decent paying job, and had moved out on my own. I had quickly discovered how easy it is to build a gaming backlog and figured I'd pick up Pokemon X at launch since I had the cash. I ended up playing for only a few hours before starting to read up on EV/IVs again and realizing that I didn't want to dive back in to all that again and put the game down. I skipped OR/AS due to not playing X very much.
So that's my history with the series. Pretty sad how much I let what was "cool" at school dictate the way I enjoy the games, as well as not being able to look past the "advanced" aspects of the game to just enjoy them at a more basic level. I suppose I can't complain too much, as I've still put well north of 2000 hours into the mainline entries.