I was in 7th grade at that time, so I know how you feel (old as f**k). My sister introduced me to the anime one morning while we waited for the school bus (it was the episode with the giant Tentcruel; Tentacool vs. Tentacruel I believe was its title). I didn't even know there was a video game at the time. Anywho, shortly after that I was in class talking about Charmander and another kid overheard me and claimed that he was the worst to start with. I had no idea what he meant so he explained to me that there was a gameboy Pokemon game. That Christmas I got Red Version, and my little brother got Blue Version. Incidentally the same person who told me about the games used the pictured magazine (not sure if it was that specific issue) to help me get through Team Rocket's headquarters in Celadon City (damn warp tiles). Up to that point I had only really played platformer games (Mario, Donkey Kong Country, etc.) so the whole RPG thing was confusing to me.
Pokemon definitely gave me a renewed interest in videogames, although I stopped playing after Gold/Silver. I bought Ruby when it came out, as well as Fire Red when it was released, but both sat in a drawer, shrink-wrapped, for years before I played them. Then one night I was bored so I opened Fire Red because I remembered really liking the Pallet Town theme and wanted to hear the remix. I kept playing for a few days and became curious as to whether Mew was catchable so I searched Google and came across Serebii.net. While on that site I stumbled onto the "game mechanics" section and learned about EV's and IV's for the first time. This blew my mind as I never expected that there was so much going on behind the scenes, so to speak. The game I was playing previous to starting Fire Red was Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and I loved how in that game you could manipulate the stats of your characters by having them level-up in certain job classes. Needless to say, that I could manipulate the stats of Pokemon had me very excited. That began my resurgent interest in Pokemon. I had never really battled them outside the game before and was purely interested in the collecting aspect up to that point. But researching the game mechanics eventually led me to Smogon and the competitive battling scene. Now Pokemon is really the only game I play.