When I was in my childhood years I read an article in, I believe it was nintendo power, but possibly some other gaming magazine about a game called pocket monsters that was becoming a huge hit in Japan. I went to every game store in town, looking for a copy of it, not realizing that they didn't localize every game that came out. Every time I went into a store for years I would look in the game boy section for the game to no avail. Then, around the time I was in middle school, maybe 12 years old or so, I heard that a game called Pokemon was coming out. This instantly got my attention and I read everything I could about it and within the first week I had a copy. Red. I played it day and night, staying up too late very often. Never really traded much, but found a few people willing to. I finally got to the final four. Never finished it. Yellow came out. Bought that, played for a long time. Didn't get quite as far. Then silver came out. I loved silver, but by that time I'd gotten a bit burnt out on it. It wasn't until Ruby on the GBA that I got into it again, mostly at the behest of friends, finally finding a good group of gamers in high school. But by this time most of the magic was lost. The game was the same every time. I haven't touched another game of it since. I feel they've just driven the concept into the ground.
Pokemon formed a good portion of my childhood memories, but with the exception of cameo roles in things like Super Smash Bros. I don't really care to see them anymore.