The biggest video game franchise in the world has now turned 30 years old.
Pokémon debuted Feb. 27, 1996, in Japan with the “Pocket Monster Green” and “Pocket Monster Red” series, which were rebranded as “Pokémon Red” and “Pokémon Blue” for North America.
The games are identical except for having a small pool of different Pokémon within each game, together selling a total of 31 million units worldwide.
The game was inspired by the childhood of the main creator of the series, Satoshi Tajiri, who enjoyed catching bugs and exploring the fields near his home, according to an interview published by Nintendo in July 2000.
The premise is to catch, catalogue, and battle the different beasts found in the region of Kanto, named after a Japanese prefecture.
This was the beginning of what is now the most profitable media franchise in the world. Since then, it would evolve into a phenomenon with animation, card game spin-offs, and a competitive scene.
From there, they had shipped almost 500 million Pokémon-related software, available in 10 languages. The trading card game has printed over 75 billion cards in 16 languages and sold in over 90 countries. And their TV shows would go on air in 190 countries.
The Pokemania of the 1990s may have ended in the early 2000s, but some fans remained loyal to the franchise beyond that. Among the loyal fans is Lysane Guindon, of a Montreal-based collectible retailer, Retro MTL.
Guindon said Pokémon has always been important to her.
“Pokémon was there from the start for me,” she said. When she received her first console, a Game Boy, she loved to go to the park and connect with other players, exchanging Pokémon and battling. “It was kind of the first popular game that made me love turn by turn based game.”
Its popularity made it a popular gift option for the holidays, as was the case for fellow Retro MTL employee Francis Méthot.
“Pokémon has been a very big part of my life since the beginning,” he said. He said how the year the games came out, on Christmas, he got one of the games and some money, which he used to buy the other one.
“I thought back then, ‘Oh, it’s two different games.’ They are not.” Méthot said. “But that’s okay because I still have my games, I still play with them. And as a French speaker, RPGs helped me a lot to learn English.”
Among Humber students like Makaylah Nava, a Bachelor of Creative and Professional Writing student who’s also a Pokémon fan.
“Pokémon for me, it’s a game that brings back the memories of childhood and the love of pets,” she said. “As a child, I’ve always loved the idea of having a little pet follow me around, and wouldn’t it be cool to have one that has powers?”
As more kids played the games, communities popped up inside the franchise.
People who would race each other to see who could finish the game first, while some players created new rules to make the game more challenging, as well as people finding the rare colour variants, also known as shinies.
Content Creator Matt Brandl, better known as AbsolBlogsPokemon, does videos about shiny hunting, along with another series of challenges for his YouTube videos.
“Pokémon is kind of my life at this point,” he said. “It has been since I was really, really little. And I just really enjoy going on whatever adventure they take us on every time.
“I always find something exciting in every new Pokémon game that comes out, no matter what it really is,” Brandl said. He highlights the importance of the journey, of having that story with the friends made along the way. Pokémon has been crucial to making new connections.
“By making videos, one of the most absurd things that ever happened to me was that I was just walking around, and I went to this one store,” Brandl said. “The clerk recognized me and was like, ‘Oh, hey, you're Absol. I watch your videos. I'm doing a shiny badge quest in white too.’
“And that was Kotatsu, who turned out to become one of my best friends,” he said. “So sometimes just putting yourself out there. That's the Pokémon experience right there. It's magical.”
