User:ImaginesTigers/Pokemon

Pokémon (ポケモン) (an abbreviation for Pocket Monsters (ポケットモンスター) in Japan) is a Japanese media franchise. The franchise is set in a world populated by powerful creatures called "Pokémon". Originally created by Satoshi Tajiri, Pokémon began with two video games for the Game Boy, Pocket Monsters: Red and Green (1996), released internationally as Pokémon Red and Blue. Within the universe, some humans—known as Pokémon Trainers—catch wild Pokémon, train them and pit them against each other in battles. The player characters in the main video game series are young Pokémon Trainers who aim to become the Pokémon Champion by participating in the region's Pokémon League, a sporting competition based around making Pokémon battle.

Pokémon video games consist of a core series and several spin-off titles. Traditionally, core entries are released as one set of two paired games, identical in story but differing in the availability of Pokémon to encourage players to trade with friends. Beginning with Pokémon Yellow (1998)—and until the release of Pokemon Black and White 2 (2012)—the core games had a later third entry which brought a new story and a wider array of Pokémon to battle and capture. In the main series, battles are turn-based. Spin-off games showcase different aspects of the Pokémon universe, such as a first-person photography game in which players take photographs of Pokémon in order to research them. Pokémon Go, a spin-off game for mobile devices that uses augmented reality, achieved widespread success, becoming an international cultural phenomenon.

Since 1998, the franchise has been owned by The Pokémon Company, a joint venture by the three copyright holders—Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures—to manage the Pokémon brand. Although initially a video game franchise, The Pokémon Company has extended the series to include in virtually all media. An anime television series debuted in 1997 and has become the most successful video game adaptation of all time, running continuously for over 20 seasons. Its success led to a film series consisting of over 20 animated and one live-action feature film. The collectible card game based on the series, the Pokémon Trading Card Game, is the highest-selling trading card game of all time, with over 34.1 billion cards sold. The franchise now has a presence within books, manga comics and music. Several items within the franchise have become iconic representations of it and are regular fixtures of Pokémon merchandise, such as Poké Balls, spherical devices used within the franchise to catch Pokémon, and the Pokédex, a digital repository of information about the Pokémon players have seen and captured. Many characters and Pokémon themselves have become widely recognised, such as television and film protagonist Ash Ketchum and the franchise's mascot, Pikachu.

First generation
Satoshi Tajiri conceived of the premise for Pokémon based on several aspects of his childhood, primarily insect collecting. Many children in Japan would catch beetles by placing honey upon on tree bark, and Tajiri formed other strategies for collecting them based on the insects' habits and habitats. A result of urbanisation, insect populations declined as Tajiri grew up, with children spending more time playing indoors, and Tajiri forgot about insect collecting until later when he was developing the games.

Tajiri was the sole creator of an arcade game strategy guide called Game Freak, sold for ¥200 and only available in a few select specialty bookstores. Ken Sugimori was an early reader of the booklet and became friends with Tajiri based on their shared interests. The two observed that most arcade games were overly similar and discussed how they would design if they made their own games. Tajiri found other contributors as his magazine grew in size and, frustrated by the lack of quality in arcade gaming, decided to make his own. Some contributors had the programming skills and access to hardware necessary to create a video game, and Tajiri formed a studio named after his magazine, Game Freak, to develop their first, an action-puzzle game called Quinty (1989).

The basic concept for Pokémon already existed in Tajiri's mind following the release of Quinty, but upon seeing the Game Boy by Nintendo and one of its accessories, the Game Link Cable, the idea "clicked": Tajiri pictured "actual living organisms" moving back and forth across the cable. The initial target for the game was to include 50 creatures; the number rose as the developers learned new techniques and better hardware emerged for development. It took 6 years to complete Red and Green. To pay their staff and meet core business requirements, Game Freak undertook projects for other companies and a small group of developers worked consistently on Pokémon between projects. Series composer Junichi Masuda, and one of two developers on Red and Green, attributes Game Freak's culture of teamwork to this early period. Midway through development, a crash on a development computer almost ended the project prematurely. Towards the end, Game Freak feared that the decline of the Game Boy might affect the final product, with industry colleagues confused about why the studio would develop a game for that platform.

Pocket Monsters: Red and Green were completed by October 1995 and released in Japan on February 27, 1996. The development team scouted nearby game stores to determine if the games were selling. Shortly thereafter, Nintendo began to deposit money into Game Freak's account. Both indicated that Red and Green were a commercial success. Partially as a result of the Game Boy's decline, Nintendo had not anticipated the games to succeed; Tajiri had also been told that Nintendo did not understand the game. Likewise, role-playing games were regarded as having limited international appeal. In an interview with Polygon, Masuda notes that the games' popularity was largely a result of word of mouth in Japan. By the time the games had been internationally released, as Pokémon Red Version and Blue Version, an animated series had already been released worldwide. Masuda describes this as a strategy by the publisher, releasing the television series first to excite Western fans about the series. Elsewhere, in an interview with GamesRadar+, he describes the immensely difficult process of localisation for the games, with a gap of two-and-a-half years between the Japanese and American launch, and an additional year for the European release. English required more characters than Japanese, introducing issues related to the limited memory available on the game cartridge. Significant changes were required, including a redesign of the Pokédex. The code written by the developers was so unusual that Satoru Iwata, who was CEO of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015, had to overhaul it to make localisation possible.