My friends and I got very into Ingress [0] back when they only had 8 levels. Now that was literally a predecessor of Pokemon Go; I hear they used the portal data from the former to choose pokemon locations in the latter. Ingress seemed a lot more fun because you could be truly competitive, destroy other players' constructions and gain territory in your home area. There was even a running global count of how much territory each of the two factions had. That said my Pokemon career began and ended with Yellow on the game boy.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game)

Ingress was a hot thing while I was in university. We were roaming the streets at night, equipped with smartphones and powerbanks and were looking out for members of the other party, so we had enough time to build up solid links all across the town. Great time!