I may have not started watching anime and reading manga as part of why I became interested was because of fellow Pokemon players. However, there is still a chance that I would have started, because pretty big contributing factors to me starting watching were my discovery of Vocaloid (which is due to the demo of Project Mirai getting me interested) and my discovery of Inazuma Eleven (which I discovered through Official Nintendo Magazine's review, and I discovered the anime through the Nintendo Anime Channel 3DS app).
I'd probably still be physically incapable of talking to people at school, because Smogon became my social testing ground to see what types of reactions different behaviors encouraged and because I started playing Pokémon at the age of 13, which means that I had already showed a lack of interest in social media that I could have also used as a testing ground (albeit with actual repercussions as opposed to the anonymous nature of Smogon). I'd have also never met Matt, who was the catalyst for me starting to socialise with people from other countries and, as such, I would have never developed my interest for learning about foriegn cultures (I have particular interests in learning about American, Japanese, Polish and Scandinavian cultures right now, although I am interested in picking up bits and pieces of info about the cultures of around ten countries that I'm too lazy to list now).
We probably wouldn't have Digimon if it weren't for Pokemon, and Smash would have probably had some other series in the place of Pokémon for
Pikachu and Jigglypuff's character slots. TBH Pokémon has had a big influence on the RPG and collection genres, so other RPGs would probably be more like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy as opposed to the varied platform we have now wheras the collection genre may not even exist without Pokemon to act as a boosting pad.