Same. I was four years old when my older brother and I each got a Gameboy Colour and Pokemon Blue & Red, respectively, for Christmas 1999. It helped teach me how to read.
I know some folks don't like Pokémon, but it really is one of the greatest RPGs of the last few decades. I get that the story is simplistic - it's definitely "training wheels" for little kids on that front. But the character customization options are just so vast...you can breed, train, and customize your party in so many different ways. The rock / paper / scissors aspect of typology in the game has oceans of complexity sitting underneath of it. I stopped playing after HeartGold / SoulSilver...just got to be too much and too many, especially with all the promos you had to keep up with. But it's a great RPG series. I feel like it really needs a reboot - they need to cull the list of ~900 down to like 500 and cut out the duplicates (e.g., keep one of either Caterpie / Weedle, but not both) and get rid of the dumb promo business.
It must have been somewhere in my 20s when I got these original games and started playing them, just to see what all the hype was about. I didn't regret it - was hooked on these games for like 10 years.