Pokemon’s 10th Anniversary

Cary Woodham’s 1up blog taks about the 10th anniversary of the Pokemon games, and literally every Pokemon game to grace a Nintendo platform.

This year, or so I’ve been told, is the 10th anniversary of Pokemon. Has Pokemon really been around ten years? Man, it doesn’t seem like that long! Now, I don’t know which day is the official anniversary, or even the month, but it’s sometime this year. I imagine the 10th anniversary includes when it came out in Japan, not just in the US. I certainly don’t remember it coming here in 1996, that’s when I just first started writing game reviews semi-professionally. Anyway, I figured now would be as good a time as any to pay a little tribute to Pokemon with a blog on my history with the franchise. Now, remember, I said MY history with the Pokemon phenomenon. So no, this won’t be a comprehensive history of Pokemon, just my experiences with it. So much for gaming journalism…

Pocket Monsters Invade Japan
The first time I heard of Pokemon was while reading an issue of Nintendo Power back in college. They had a very small blurb in the back of the magazine about a Japan only Game Boy game coming out called Pocket Monsters. And that’s pretty much it. I imagine that kind of reflects how Nintendo released Pocket Monsters in Japan, with little to no fanfare. From what I heard, Pocket Monsters became popular in Japan, not through massive amounts of marketing like it did here, but by word of mouth. Kids trading Pokemon and talking about the game with others. Heck, even Pikachu, the mascot, was decided by the masses in Japan to be the most popular Pokemon. Pikachu really wasn’t a big feature in the game at all, just another Pokemon. It wasn’t some marketing team that decided who would be the most popular mascot, it was kids buying Pikachu plushes the most!

Pokemon Invades E3
I didn’t really think too much about that article in Nintendo Power after I read it, but for some reason, I put it on the back burner in my mind. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, at my second or third E3 that I went to, that I heard any more about Pokemon. By now, Pocket Monsters was so popular in Japan that they shortened it to Pokemon. Kind of like how Namco Japan’s Family Stadium baseball games got shortened to Famista. Anyhow, at that year’s E3 was when Nintendo was showcasing Pokemon coming to the US that holiday for the first time. It was interesting seeing some of the preliminary planning for it. For instance, on the press kit that I got (and still have), the Pokemon logo was the same, but the slogan under it was “Catch ‘Em If You Can,” not the now familiar “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.” Inside the press kit were stickers of all the Pokemon with their picture and name, but some of the initial names of the monsters would end up changing in the final version. For instance, the sticker with “Dugtrio” said “Digda,” and “Koffing” and “Wheezing” were named “NY” and “LA” respectively. At one section in the booth, they were talking about the upcoming Pokemon cartoon, but they called the main hero “Casey” instead of “Ash!” Nintendo has always given out cool Pokemon swag at E3, and that first year I got two small Pokemon plush toys. I didn’t know which two they were at first since the game hadn’t come out yet, but I later learned I got Bulbasaur and Polywhirl. In later years at E3, Nintendo gave me a bigger Bulbasaur and Pikachu plush, a Minum plush, and this year I got a cool Pokemon 10th Anniversary DS game case holder, which was actually a pretty useful freebie!
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