One of the greatest marketing schemes in the history of humanity. By launching a no-holds-barred Pokemon attack on America with the video games, trading cards, and anime show, they seized millions of young Americans (including myself) in their grasp. Even today, Pokemon has not entirely fallen away (partially due to the valiant efforts of Cartoon Network to play Pokemon movies over and over again on Fridays).

A disease that started in Tokyo. It first infected Gameboys in Japan in 1995. Then in 1998 the disease infected Gameboys in America. Soon channel WB11 was infected too, and now Cartoon Network. The ever-so-popular "Gameboy Advance" systems got infected in 2002, and still is. In 1999 the disease started spreading via cardboard aka "Pokemon Trading Card Game". "Nintendo 64" and "Nintendo Gamecube" are infected too. The disease is also spreading via plastic and metal in the toy isles at Wal-Mart, K-mart, toys-r-us, and every other toy store. It is now July 2004, almost 10 years after the start of this addicting, argument instigating disease and it is still out there, but not as bad as its most powerful years(1999-2001).

Say what you will folks, but Pokemon is one of the greatest games ever released for the Gameboy. Period.

The problem is that Nintendo, through their misguided policy of inundating the market with a whole wack of crappy, kitschy merchandise, not to mention a t.v show and movies galore, alienated their older players. My theory is that most people who complain about how Pokemon is stupid, are actually disenfranchised former Pokemon players. Cause let's face it, back in the day, everybody, and I mean everybody, played it.

And all that is a real shame, because from a strictly gameplay point of view, Pokemon kicks ass. It should have gone down in history as one of the better video game franchises. But thanks to Nintendo's decision to sell the game to eight year olds, that won't happen.

An anime, manga, and nintendo game created in Japan. Pokemon are creatures that children and teenagers (as well as adults) can capture and train. The trading card game was one of the first major trading card games that alowed players to not onle trade, but battle as well. In the anime we follow the story of a young trainer, Ash, and his two friends, Misty and Brock, as they travel togeather on their pokemon journey. The mange series revolves around rivils Red and Blue as they collect badges and compete in various compititions.

no kids, not the garbage pokemon that they made. i mean, THE ORIGINAL. this goes back about 10 years. you guys remember when pokemon blue first came out? i know you all got it for christmas that year! cos i know i did. and i played it all night haha. and pokemon cards were the coolest thing ever. and EVERYONE had them in school, even the real popular kids. if you had a charizard, you were pretty much awesome. you sat for hours arranging your cards in a binder, just staring/reading each and every card. you pretty much had every fact about every pokemon memorized. YOU HAD LIKE 500 SLOWPOKES AND YOU HATED SLOWPOKE BECAUSE OF IT. you woke up at 5 am on school days to watch pokemon. you had a bunch of pokemon toys/stuffed animals. on christmas, if there werent 5 packs of pokemon cards in your stocking, you basically hated everything. when you found a "shiny" card you went completely insane. the number of holographic cards a person had defined how cool they were. you brought your gameboy color everywhere so you could level up your pikachu. you always wanted to evolve pikachu with a thunder stone, but dam game wouldnt let you! you snuck your gameboy into school to play, and the teacher never caught you. YOU SECRETLY STILL PLAY GAMEBOY COLOR SOMETIMES (i know i do). you could bust out your gameboy right now and play for 5 hours with no problem. im 17 now, and i can look back on this and it was such a fun time of my life. hah. so all you older people, do you remember these good old...

Overview: Pokémon (or Pocket Monsters) helped anime, games, Trading Cards, and Nintendo. Even if a lot of people won't admit it.

History (before the release): Satoshi Tajiri was the creator of the original Pokemon games. Living just outside of Japan (as a child) in the mid-60's he loved to collect insects; in the rice fields he became very skilled at collecting the little bugs ('Mr. Bug' as called by childhood friends). In the late 70's the rice fields became shopping centres and arcades (etc). In those days Tajiri was an otaku, he was a game addict. He played in Arcades which used to be the old Rice Fields; he felt it was a sin.
"Tajiri preserved the world of his childhood in Pokemon" (Time Mag. Nov22, 1999). Then in 1982, Satoshi, Ken Sugimori and a few other mates created the magazine GameFreak (to offer tips and game cheats).
After two years of working on it, Satoshi came across Nintendo's Link Cable. "I imagined an insect moving back and forth across the cable. That's what inspired me." Tajiri. It was just an idea, but as soon as he could he signed up with Nintendo.
GameFreak almost died because of such money problems, Satoshi didn't even pay himself. After six years, Pokemon hit Japan....

Something that you've pretended not to like since you turned 11, yet can't deny how sick it would be if they really existed.

There are three destinct parts to Pokemon

anime:Responsible for giving Pokemon its "kiddie" reputation.

TCG:I must agree with people about this one, it was pretty horible.

GameBoy game:Aguably a great game. It is much more complex then it seems. Unfurtunatly, most people who bash pokemon because it is "kiddie" would most likely not have the intellegence to fully understand the game at all.

Why people that bashes pokemon always say something about gay sex or masturbating, I'll never know. That South Park episode don't help much either. I just pray that these people asociating the SP episode with the game are being sarcastic. After reading some of these definitions, I wouldn't suprised.