It also sparked interest in Japanese culture in a generation of children. The franchise now contains dozens of games with 721 monsters to collect, hundreds of animated television episodes and movies, and a whopping 21.5 billion cards produced for the competitive Pokemon Trading Card Game. While the game could be completed without obtaining each monster, most players felt this element was even more important than finishing the plotline.ĭespite initial concerns that cute monsters would not appeal to non-Japanese audiences, Pokemon quickly took the world by storm and sold more than 23 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling RPG video game of all time. Players collected 151 individual monsters, either by trapping them in-game or trading them with friends. In 1996, Nintendo published the first installment in the Pokemon series, a pair of games known as Pocket Monsters Aka (Red) and Midori (Green), which starred creatures with special powers that players could collect, train, and direct in battle.
This vision gave birth to the Pokemon franchise. Game developer Satoshi Tajiri spent hours of his childhood bug collecting, and when Nintendo released the Game Boy handheld in 1989, he had a vision of an insect crawling between two systems via the Game Link Cable. 1999 Pokemon Burger King Charizard 23k Gold Plated Card w/ Pokeball and COA Pre-Owned C 80.00 or Best Offer Free shipping Sponsored 1999 Burger King BK Pokemon 23K Gold Plated Trading Card JigglyPuff Pre-Owned C 36.96 or Best Offer +C 26.
