Rattata in Blue. Good, old, innocent times... I remember my confusion when I couldn't figure out how to catch Pokemon. It was somewhere mid-2000, and I was only just starting to understand the games (and English itself too), so you can imagine what was happening inside my poor, then-8-year-old brain... and then I remembered, the building in which I got the item for Oak kinda resembled a shop. I got inside. And guess what? It WAS a shop! I freaked out when I saw the prices, but then noticed I had 3000 of the Poke-currency, so I figured it wasn't THAT bad. I bought some Pokeballs. I got into the tall grass between Pallet and Viridian. I commanded my Squirtle, appropriately named Bubble, to attack the Pidgey who volunteered to be my guinea pig. It fainted and the battle ended. "Ended? What d'ya mean, ENDED?! Ash always catches Pokemon when they faint!". Bemused, I went into another one. I started considering the battle options. "FIGHT" was for attacking, I knew as much. I tried Pkmn. Pokeball, Pokemon - there just HAD to be some analogy. It only showed Bubble. Frustrated as I was, I fainted another one. And one after that. And then another. And then I calmed down and noticed there were 2 other options - ITEM and RUN. From the poorly translated manual (Polish players will know what I mean) I knew that "RUN" lost you the battle - or so I thought until I realized this only applied to link battles. So I hit "ITEM". And that worked like a charm. There they were, my Pokeballs I spent about half my allowance on about 30 minutes before. Intuitively, I hit A. And then I hit A again. And then, a spherical object erupted from behind Bubble and swallowed the Pokemon. Surprisingly enough, it stayed put despite not being weakened at all.
"Congratulations! It's a Rattata!"
...or something along these lines, anyway. Then I got myself a Pidgey, then a Rattata of a higher level. And then I got into Viridian Forest, where I ultimately realized Rattata sucked altogether. Thus, I continued onwards, searching for and exit and making my Bubble a proud Wartortle in the process. But that's another story...