Remember mail-order catalogues? Yep, those were still a thing back then and CoroCoro Comics, a monthly magazine, plays an important part in Pokémon history. One of them was Pokémon Blue, only available as a mail-order title in Japan. Pokémon Red and Green were so successful that there were several special re-releases and limited editions. There have been multiple remakes and re-releases as well. The important mainline releases are Pokémon Red and Green (and Blue, a special edition released later) on the Game Boy, Gold and Silver on the Game Boy Color, Ruby and Sapphire on the Game Boy Advance, Diamond and Pearl on the Nintendo DS, Black and White on the DS, and finally X and Y on the 3DS systems. The philosophy of two games per release in the main series continues even today-Pokémon Sun and Moon release in November.Įach generation introduced more and more Pokémon, with the number up to 721 today (Sun and Moon will give us yet some more in November).

The trading and collecting mentality to get to “100% completion' is what made the games more social, as is seen in the current craze over Pokémon Go on iOS and Android. Red and Green went on to sell millions of copies. In the end, you get to face-off against the best Pokémon trainers in the land, and also defeat an evil mega-corporation (Most Japanese role-playing games in the genre end up having the same basic plot, really). And so, in Red and Green, you also travel to different Pokémon gyms and battle the gym leaders to win badges, a process that gets more challenging as you go along. Playing The Final Fantasy Legend on the Game Boy had showed Tajiri that the system could take more than just action games-there was a place for role-playing games too. The turn-based Pokémon battles were the other major aspect of the game. Players could use Nintendo’s Game Boy link cable to, well, link up and trade Pokémon, as well as engage in battles with each other. Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green were different versions, as it were, and each had a few Pokémon exclusive to it.

To get all 151 Pokémon, however, you had to trade with other players. You start out with a single Pokémon (you get to pick one of three) and one aim is to “Catch ‘em all'.

Pokemon monster