About Pokemon

The characters that swept the world, became a global phenomenon and started out as a role-playing video game created by Nintendo 1996 was none other than Pokemon. Since the start of its popularity, the Pokemon video game characters made for Nintendo's Game Boy have been merchandised into anime, manga, trading cards, Pokemon toys, Pokemon books and many other types of media.

Pokemon originated as a Game Boy game in Japan, eventually finding its way to the United States in what to become one of the toy crazes in the 1990s. Eventually, the game was featured as a Nintendo game, an anime series, films and finally a trading card game.

The name Pokemon came from the contraction of the Japanese words Poketto Monsuta which means Pocket Monsters. There are 649 fictional species that have appeared in the Pokemon role-playing game for the Nintendo DS. With its popularity, Pokemon is now a part of pop cultural history and its characters, such as Pikachu, have been seen on anything from parade balloons to airplane jets. Pokemon has certainly left its mark and is now almost as well-known as Mickey Mouse.