No hating on the Pokemon now. I played Pokemon Stadium and decided it was a good idea to get Pokemon Yellow. When I was at Toys R Us to get it, I played Crazy Taxi 2 on the demo Dreamcast unit and saw the price for it ($59.99), I knew I had to get that by the end of the year. This was September 10, 2001. The rest is history (I did get the DC in November)
About a month later, I had beaten Yellow and got a GBC combo package that included Pokemon Crystal (at $89.99) just so I could play that. What other game at the time had events happen on certain days of the week?
I also collected Pokemon stuffed toys, stickers, the cards for the Magic-style game, watched the series and the first movie -- yeah I was well into it for a few years

Not at any time did I feel weird (at 23/24) to play or be a fan of it.