When did you first heard of Pokémon Trainer Red?

[Shadao]

This question is for fans who grew up with Pokémon during the late 90s and early 2000s. Recently, I've been looking through old, surviving websites to see what the fandom reception towards Ash like back in the day, and I realized that the character that Ash was based on, Red, was rarely mentioned if at all. Nintendo Power's strategy guide back in 1998 called Red "Ash" and Ash was pretty much synonymous with main human protagonist as far as mainstream media is concerned. Yet I know that the character Red rose to prominence as a separate character from Ash in the late 2000s, but I don't know when and how exactly that started.

I only came into online Pokémon fandom as a lurker in the late 2007, so I don't know what exactly happened before that time period. And since the late 90s/early 2000s was the era of early Internet that saw many website defunct in present, it's going to be a hard one to find on my own. So I ask fans from the 90s and 2000s, when and how did you first heard of Red?

 

[WishIhadaManafi5]

First heard of it via Red and Blue.

 

[Shadao]

First heard of it via Red and Blue.

Ah, the games. I wonder though... Did you think it's just Ash with a different name, or did you already differentiate him as completely separate character?

 

[WishIhadaManafi5]

Ah, the games. I wonder though... Did you think it's just Ash with a different name, or did you already differentiate him as completely separate character?

The former tbh. Silver/Gold pretty much said as such with Red having Ash's team, Pikachu included, when you go to face him on Mt. Silver.

 

[giradialkia]

GSC were basically the only games I played as a kid. Whatever it was, I couldn’t get enough of them and would play and replay them.
I was blown away when I first found Red atop Mt. Silver. I’d played Yellow before Gold, but repeatedly got stuck in places like Seafoam Islands or Silph Co. I was one of those players who used all the starters given to us. So Red very much was a representation of my character from Yellow, and that stuck with me for at least a decade.

I’ve been forever disappointed that they haven’t let us battle past protagonists since. I had hopes for B2W2, but it just fell short on that front.

I’d always differentiated Red from Ash; it was clear that Ash was loosely based on Red, but the fact that Red never spoke (quite the opposite of Ash) made it easy to distinguish.