POKEMON HISTORY
Pokemon was created in 1996 by Nintendo for their best selling portable video game system, “Game Boy”. Originally released in Japan, Pokemon are a class of unique little Pocket Monsters that battle each other when instructed to do so by their trainer. The original term for Pokemon was “Poketto Monstaa”, the coined Japanese term for Pocket Monster. Soon the Japanese shortened the name to “Pokemon”. A Japanese game designer named Satoshi Tajiri invented Pokemon based on childhood memories of collecting bugs in jars and wishing he could make them fight like the monsters in his favorite science fiction movies. The game was so intricate that it took Tajiri six years to develop the Pokemon game. Once released, the rest is history. The overwhelming popularity of the game prompted the creation of a Japanese Pokemon television series and a Japanese Pokemon CollectibleTrading Card Game, both of which also became tremendous successes.
The Pokemon phenomenon began in the U.S. in 1998 with the release of the original Red and Blue Game Boy games, the debut of the animated Pokemon television series on Warner Brothers, and the release of the English version of the Pokemon Trading Cards. The Pokemon television series immediately catapulted Kids Warner Brothers to the top of the cable ratings for kids shows. According to a February 2001 Nintendo press release, the Pokemon television show continued to be ranked No. 1 among kids 2 to 11, and among boys 6 to 11. Warner Brothers also released the first three big screen animated Pokemon feature films in North America: “Pokemon: The First Movie”, also known as “Pokemon The Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back” (released in 1999), “Pokemon The Movie: 2000”, and “Pokemon 3 the Movie (2001)”.