Franchise / Pokémon

These Role Playing Games, developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo, spawned a multi-billion dollar franchise rivaling the Mario series (which of course is also published by Nintendo), and indirectly caused the proliferation of Western broadcasts of anime, along with Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon. Pokemon went on to become the highest-grossing entertainment media franchise of all time, surpassing not only Mario and Dragon Ball, but even Star Wars.

Released in Japan in February of 1996 for the Game Boy, Pokémon (or in Japan, Pocket Monsters) came in two versions: Red and Green. The idea of the game is to run around and battle wild Mons with your own, catch them with hand-held balls, and teach them to battle (non-lethally) with each other under the guidance of human Trainers for fun and profit. The original idea was for an artificial form of insect collecting for kids that lived in cities and thus couldn't participate in such a hobby (as the original creator was a bug collector when he was a kid), with the paired versions providing incentive for players to get together and trade Mons with their friends (but more on that later).

The strategy in the gameplay comes from two factors. First of all, there's an ambitiously large Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors setup. 15 (later 17, and now 18^note excluding the ???-type, which was removed in Black and White) different elements are in play, and some species of Pokémon belong to two elements instead of just one, which can neutralize or compound the elements' respective resistances or weak points. Pokémon aren't strictly limited to moves of their elemental type either^note though they do receive an attack bonus for it, but can learn almost any move the particular creature might reasonably be capable of executing (like Water Pokémon using Ice-type moves, or Dragon Pokémon using Fire-type moves), and sometimes ones they aren't (a plesiosaur-like creature learning to eat dreams and shoot lightning? Okay!).

The second factor is the strict move limit: each of your Pokémon can only know 4 moves at once, out of a large movepool that they can learn from. This was hampered in the first generation by balance issues leading to some elements and species becoming obvious Game Breakers, but later generations have made many strides in balancing them out, most notably with the addition of new types: Dark, Steel and Fairy.

The plot of each main-series game is typically a quest To Be a Master; the player is given one Pokémon to start their team with, then proceeds to take on the region's "Pokémon League" by catching new Pokémon, defeating other Pokémon trainers in battles (most importantly your childhood friend and rival), challenging type-specialist Gym Leaders and collecting Gym Badges, and ultimately battling the Elite Four to become the regional League Champion. During your journey, you also manage to single-handedly take down some kind of crime syndicate (and/or save the world) at some point along the way, and capture really powerful Pokémon that the local legends are based on.

While these aren't necessarily the greatest stories ever told, the games are certainly enjoyable, especially if you have friends that also play the games. You see, the completion of the in-game storyline and Bonus Dungeons only comprised part of the gameplay. The real meat of the game (or as some insist, the only point of the game) was the one-on-one Competitive Multiplayer. Not only were the player's Pokémon usable against the in-game enemies, these same Pokémon can be pitted against Pokémon trained by other live players of the game. As such, players continued to train and catch Pokémon just so they have the best team among their peers. To further facilitate interaction between players was the fact that Pokémon can also be traded between games, and that certain Pokémon can only be obtained by trading. That was the rationale behind releasing different versions of the game, as each version had certain Pokémon that were exclusive to it, and trading was the only way to get those exclusives in the other version.

To say that the brand took off like a (Team) rocket would be an understatement. Part of its success is down to the fact that with each generation, you must have access to (through purchase or a friend) at least two games to complete your Pokédex, trading with another player, and you both need Game Boys and alternate copies of the game. Despite being a relatively young series, the franchise is the second-best-selling video game franchise of all time, by a wide margin,^note Pokémon is a whopping seventy million copies ahead of number three, the Wii series, also published by Nintendo! and is only beaten by its older brother, the Mario franchise. Though it consistently has come close to topping it, Pokémon still has a way to go before it's the very best it tops the plumbers.

The concept of Pokémon would not be confined to the Video Game medium. Merchandising sprung up all over the place, including, of course, an anime.

The franchise will soon have a live action movie on the way from Legendary Pictures and Universal Studios, based off the Detective Pikachu spin-off. It will be the first official live-action entry of the franchise, despite not being part of the main universe.

You can visit the official website(s) (Japanese; English/Worldwide), as well as the official YouTube account (Japanese; English), Tumblr account (English), Twitter account (Japanese; English), and Facebook account (Japanese; English). See also Game Freak's official website (here, in Japanese), and Junichi Masuda's blog (which contains content regarding the Pokémon series — Japanese; English).

In the grand tradition of The Internet, more extensive information lies free for use in Bulbapedia, a subdivision of the enormous Bulbagarden fansite. You can vote for your favourite Pokémon game here.

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Examples found in Pokémon:

• Tropes A to I
• Tropes J to R
• Tropes S to Z

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