Where is pokemon from? Pokémon, originally called Pocket Monsters, was first released in 1996, in Japan. The first game, Red & Green, was released on February 27 that year. It took another two years before the games were released worldwide, as Red and Blue, but they were huge hits. Sales estimates are as high as 300 million copies.

Of course, Pokémon would be nothing without the cards, which came out in October 1996. As of March 2021, the game has sold over 34 billion cards worldwide.

A history of Pokémon

Pokémon was started by Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori in the late 1980s. Inspired by his childhood playing in forests, Tajiri created the world of Pocket Monsters and showed it to Nintendo, who were making strides in the video game industry with the new Gameboy handheld system.

Nintendo took them on, and now there are seven generations of games released. More than 900 Pokemon monsters inhabit the world. Alongside the games, the first set of cards included 102 monsters, and a still running TV series was released in 1997.

A fun fact; in the Japanese version of the series the main character is named Satoshi, after the original creator of the game. In the English dub he is known as Ash. Trying to catch ’em all, in terms of TV episodes, is difficult, considering there are more than 1,000 episodes.

One of the biggest crazes in recent memory was the release of Pokémon go in 2016. The game offered players the chance to catch Pokemon using their phones, by simply walking around outside until they encountered monsters, using augmented reality. It has been downloaded more than one billion times.

Invention of Pokemon

Pokemon was invented by Satoshi Tajiri, a socially maladjusted nerd from a Tokyo suburb who never went to college but studied electronics at a two-year technical school. As a boy he liked collecting beetles, caterpillars, crayfish and moths. When he go older he played video games and was so devoted to gaming that an arcade gave him a video game machine to take home, which he took apart and figured out.

In 1991, Tajira discovered Game Boy and was intrigued by the possibilities presented by it. He signed a contract with Nintendo, which had been intrigued by his earlier attempts at game programming and his fanzine “Game Freak”.

Tajiri merged this interest with insects and video games to create Pokemon. He and his friend Tsunekaz Ushihara, who drew the creatures, spent six years developing the game and designing creatures. During that time Tajira often worked 24 hours at a time and then slept 12 hours and lived with his parents because he had so little money.

Pokemon Concept

In the video game and television show the Pokemon spend most of their time battling other Pokemon until one of them passes out (they don’t die). Each Pokemon has special strengths and weakness that may apply in some situations towards some Pokemon rival but not in others.

The game is essentially a role-playing version of rock, scissors, paper with a multitude of characters. Players are trainers who raise the Pokemon, sort of like Tamagotchi pets. After a Pokemon is raised it can be used to catch other Pokemon.

Each Pokemon’s strength is measured in hit points which indicate how much punishment a given character can take before it passes out. The object of the video game — and for card collectors — is “catch them all” — all 151 Pokemon. This requires a lot of work because the monsters “evolve” and players have to connect to a virtual “Pokemon Center” and with other Pokemon trainers to get some of the monsters.

The card game was similar to the video game and equally complicated, requiring detailed knowledge all 151 monsters. Some kids play the game. Most just like collecting the cards.

Pokemon and Convulsions in Japan

In December 1997, 685 children suffered seizures, convulsions, nausea and loss of vision, and 200 were hospitalized with epilepsy-like seizures, muscle-spasms and other problems, after watching an episode of the Pokemon television show in which bright colors, flashing like a strobe-light, burst from Pikachu’s eyes after a computer-virus-destroying “vaccine bomb” exploded in the show. One professor said, “this may be the first case of mass suffering from photo stimulation.”

Most of the victims were children. One young girl told AP: “Lights kept flickering in my eyes, then I felt sick. It was like getting carsick.” One five-year-old child reportedly suffered from severe breathing problems and a housewife fell unconscious. Doctors described their illness as photosensitive epilepsy, or group hysteria.

The next day Nintendo’s stock plunged and the show was yanked off the air but reappeared a few months later. Once it returned the show was popular as ever.

Marketing of Pokemon in the United States

Nintendo was originally skeptical about bringing Pokemon to the United States. The game was viewed a role playing game, which had traditionally not gone down in the United States. The company hired the consulting firm 4 Kids Entertainment that was led by Alfred Khan, who help mastermind the Cabbage Patch doll craze in the 1980s and was convinced that Pokemon could succeed in the states.

Some Pokemon characters have different names in the United States. The boy named Satoshi in Japan had his name changed to Ash in the United States. The character knows as Pipi (pronounced “peepee”) in Japan was changed to Clefable in the U.S. because the original name brought to mind of urinating.

In the United States, the television show was introduced first. The idea was to expose and introduce the Pokemon characters through the show. The strategy and the timing of it worked like a charm. Children, who were normally difficult to raise in the morning, leapt out of bed early so the could catch the newest episode of the show, which encouraged them to go out and purchase Pokemon cards, sold in sets of 11 for $3, and $30 Pokemon Game Boy cartridges.

The Pokemon television show was given free to American TV stations in return for advertising time. Within a few months after it appeared Pokemon became the top-rated syndicated kids programs. Nintendo then released the video game followed by trading cards, comic books, home videos and books.

Decline of Pokemon

By the summer of 2000, American kids began losing interest in Pokemon. Shops that sold the cards had to offer discounts to move their inventory. By 2003, Pokemon continued to be followed loyally by its core audience of boys, the sale of licensed merchandise — which included Pokemon diapers and gerbil cages’stalled and few products were even on the shelves any more.

Among the reasons the craze suddenly cooled was the fact that 10-year-old were turned off that the Pokemon cards had become popular among 4- and 5-year-olds, that Pokemon was over exposed and the cards were too widely available, that not enough expansion sets were marketed, and that children had become interested in Harry Potter.

In Japan, Pokemon sales also slowed but not as rapidly as in the United States. One reason for this was that more expansion sets were marketed that were designed to keep the interest of children and give them new products to buy. Nintendo had plans to build a “Pokemon World” theme park in Kyoto.

Above is information where is pokemon from. Hopefully, through the above content, you have a more detailed understanding of where is pokemon from .Thank you for reading our posst.