Yeah, back when it first came out, I bought the games and watched the show like everyone else. I never bought the cards, though, because I never understood how to play the fuckin' game. Still, I would always carry around a few of my sister's cards just so I wouldn't look like a totale loser. I played against some other guys in the game a few times, but I always lost, mostly becuase I didn't cheat and didn't raise my pokemon's levels up to their fuckin' 80's.
In fact, when I was first playing through it, what I would do is choose Charizard, then use him for the whole game. No kidding. I beat Misty and her pokemon be using Slash. That move was so fuckin' overpowerd that I could easily kill just about any pokemon by using it once or twice. But to build a decent team, I would use Atricuno and Zapdoes too. They kicked ass.It wasn't untill a few years ago that I started playing it "normally".