Pokémon History
The History of Pokémon starts way before the creation of the first Pokémon game or Animé episode. Its genesis remounts to the childhood of its creator, Satoshi Tajiri, that collected bugs for a hobby and had fun imagining how it would be if they fought between themselves. At the early age of sixteen, he won his first award and, a year after that, he was involved in the industry of videogames. It was only in 1987, at his early twenties, that Satoshi Tajiri started working on the development of games and, in 1990, he began to work on his dream project: Pocket Monsters. It took him six years to create the whole concept and storyline and to finish the project, and it was during that time that Nintendo got involved on its development, turning out to be the co-owner of the company, Game Freak Inc.The Red and Green versions where released under the Game Boy format in Japan in 27 February, 1996, having gained an incredibly high success, with the Blue version being edited a few months later. Yet, that success could be seen as mediocre compared to the huge blast the games suffered when the Animé series were first released in April 1997. At 16 December, after the broadcast of the 38th episode of the series, Pokémon was the center of attentions when the word spread that over 700 children had received hospital treatment due to seizures induced by red and blue lights blinking at a speed of more or less 12 flashes per second. The series were canceled after that unfortunate incident and only returned on April of the next year, but that didn't stop the phenomenal growth of Pokémon.
Meanwhile, American Nintendo was preparing to get the game available in the North American market. Starting by buying the rights of everything related to the name Pokémon in every continent except for Asia, which gave them control over the video games, series, movies and all the merchandising.
The Red and Blue games were released on September 27th, 1998 and it was a huge success. In that Christmas, the Trading Card Games were released and a brand new toy line involving pokémon figures.
Other games such as Pokémon Pinball were released and Pokémon Snap for Nintendo 64, the first non-Game Boy Pokémon game but only in October 1999 the Pokémon phenomena reached the European continent, with the release of Pokémon Red and Blue at the same time the North American stores were already selling Pokémon Yellow. And, a month later, the Japanese players could enjoy the recently launched and so waited Pokémon Gold and Silver sequel. In the USA, Nintendo started promoting the new Nintendo 64 game title "Pokémon Stadium" that was released in the year 2000. The first movie reached Europe in May as the second reached North America and the third, Japan. Pokémon Gold and Silver reached America on October 15th and the USA saw the releases of other games like Pokémon Puzzle Challenge and Pokémon Trading Card.
The phenomena continued in 2001 with the release of Pokémon Crystal, the third movie and Pokémon Stadium 2 for Nintendo 64, keeping the interest of the American public. 2002 only saw any updates in November, when Japan received the new games Sapphire and Ruby or the newly released Game Boy Advance. The USA had to wait until March 2003 for the games an the European gamers were left behind once again the release of the games in late July. Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green, the remakes of the original Red and Green games, were set free in Japan on January 29th 2004, America on September 7th 2004 and Europe was once again left behind, only having the games in their shops on October 2004. Pokémon Emerald was released in the USA on April 2005 and then it was Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness that took the highlight spot, reaching North America on 09/28/05.
Pokémon is still a huge phenomena and the fact that this site and so many others are entirely dedicated to it is evidence enough of the impact Pokémon cast upon its fans. The sales are still very high and E-bay shoppings for Pokémon games are very frequent nowadays. The series having sold over 110 million games and winning numbers that reach the 15 billion dollar mark are facts that prove that the name of Pokémon is here to last!