“It can be tempting to overlook that Pokémon Red and Blue were indie underdogs once,” Edge wrote in 2010, “made by a tiny, almost-bankrupt team for a technologically limited handheld seemingly at the end of its lifecycle.” Satoshi Tajiri’s company, Game Freak, spent about six years on a Game Boy role-playing game about catching monsters, and Nintendo, Tajiri later said, “couldn’t really understand the concept of the game”. It came out in Japan in February 1996 with little fuss. Thirty years later the series it started is one of the largest in games: by the end of March 2026, The Pokémon Company counted more than 515 million units of Pokémon software shipped, more than 85 billion trading cards printed and an animated series shown in over 190 countries and regions.
This entry covers the series. The first games have their own entry, Pokémon Red & Blue, and the craze that followed them is told in the Pokémon phenomenon.
Fast facts
- Creator: Satoshi Tajiri.
- Developer: Game Freak, which has made every main-series game.
- Publisher: Nintendo. The rights are shared by Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak, which together set up the company renamed The Pokémon Company in 2000.
- First release: Pocket Monsters Red and Green, Game Boy, Japan, 27 February 1996; Red and Blue in America in September 1998 and in Britain in October 1999.
- Sales: over 143 million games by 2006 (Retro Gamer); more than 515 million units of Pokémon software by March 2026 (The Pokémon Company).
- Spin-offs: the trading card game (1996), the anime (1997), films (from 1998) and Pokémon GO (2016).
How the games work
The idea came from two places. Tajiri had collected insects as a boy, and he saw a use for the Game Boy’s link cable that nobody else had: “I thought of actual living organisms moving back and forth across the cable,” he told TIME in 1999. “But everyone was using it to compete. The idea I had was for information to go back and forth.”
The main games have kept the shape of the first. The player sets out from a small town with one monster, catches wild Pokémon by weakening them in turn-based battles and throwing a ball, and works through a region’s Gym Leaders towards a final group of champions. Battles turn on types: water beats fire, electric beats water, and so on. A Pokémon that loses faints rather than dies. The player carries a team of six. And each generation comes as a pair of cartridges, each holding Pokémon the other lacks, so that completing the collection means trading with a friend.
Edge, reviewing Ruby and Sapphire in 2003, thought the slogan oversold it. “Pokémon is built on a lie. You haven’t ’gotta catch ‘em all’. Very few people do, relying instead on a SWAT team of their favourite six.” What kept players going was depth beneath a plain surface: in 2010 the same magazine argued that rivals “have always failed to understand that, ultimately, it’s the complexity that makes Pokémon so consuming”, and that the basic presentation “leaves room for the imagination”.
The generations
Each new pair of main games brought a new region and new species, and usually a new Nintendo handheld. The Japanese release dates are The Pokémon Company’s.
| Games | First released | System |
|---|---|---|
| Red and Green (Red and Blue abroad) | February 1996 | Game Boy |
| Gold and Silver | November 1999 | Game Boy |
| Ruby and Sapphire | November 2002 | Game Boy Advance |
| Diamond and Pearl | September 2006 | Nintendo DS |
| Black and White | September 2010 | Nintendo DS |
| X and Y | October 2013, worldwide | Nintendo 3DS |
| Sun and Moon | November 2016 | Nintendo 3DS |
| Sword and Shield | November 2019 | Nintendo Switch |
| Scarlet and Violet | November 2022 | Nintendo Switch |
Edge described Game Freak’s approach to change bluntly in 2003: each generation “inherits all the elements of its predecessor, and develops its own elaborations”. Ruby and Sapphire added beauty contests for Pokémon, two-on-two battles and secret bases to decorate, and Edge called the result “probably the most intricate and detailed console RPG available”, giving it eight out of ten. X and Y in 2013 were released around the world on the same day. Alongside the pairs came other kinds of Pokémon game, such as Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022) and Pokémon Legends: Z-A (2025).
Beyond the games
The games were only part of it from early on. The trading card game appeared in Japan in October 1996, and the animated series began on TV Tokyo in April 1997; the first film followed in July 1998. American players met all of it at once in 1998 and 1999. Competitive play grew up around the battles: in 2000 Britain’s Nintendo Official Magazine reported a Pokémon World Championships in Sydney, held during the Olympics, and The Pokémon Company records holding the World Championships in 2009.
In July 2016 Pokémon reached mobile phones with Pokémon GO, developed by Niantic. In 2019 a live-action film, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, reached cinemas.
Sources
- Edge issue 214, May 2010, “Time Extend: Pokémon Red/Blue”: the “indie underdogs” quotation; complexity and simple presentation.
- Retro Gamer issue 33, 2006, pp. 44–49, Pokémon Red and Blue feature: the release date; Gym Leaders and the Elite Four; the team of six, the types and fainting; 143 million sales by 2006.
- Computer and Video Games issue 216, November 1999, pp. 104–105: review of Red and Blue (water types “are good at soaking the fire-type” but struggle against electric types).
- “The Ultimate Game Freak”, TIME Asia, 22 November 1999 (web, secondary): Tajiri on the link cable and on Nintendo’s doubts. https://time.com/archive/6951818/the-ultimate-game-freak/
- Edge issue 127, September 2003, p. 99: Ruby/Sapphire review (each generation inherits its predecessor; contests, double battles and secret bases; “built on a lie”; “the most intricate and detailed console RPG”; eight out of ten).
- Nintendo Official Magazine issue 98, November 2000, p. 96: the Pokémon World Championships in Sydney.
- Wireframe issue 15, May 2019, p. 50: Pokémon GO, developed by Niantic.
- The Pokémon Company, corporate history (web): the release dates of the main games, the trading card game, the anime, the first film, Pokémon GO, Detective Pikachu, the World Championships, and the company’s founding and renaming. https://corporate.pokemon.co.jp/en/aboutus/history/
- The Pokémon Company, “Pokémon in Figures”, as of the end of March 2026 (web): over 515 million units of Pokémon software; over 85 billion cards; anime aired in over 190 countries and regions. https://corporate.pokemon.co.jp/en/aboutus/figures/
- For the first games’ American and British releases, see Pokémon Red & Blue and its sources.