Combining his childhood hobby of bug catching and interest in anime, game designer Satoshi Tajiri created the small game series titled “Pokémon.” With its exclusive release in Japan in 1996, the independent role-playing video game (RPG) ran on Game Boy consoles all over the country.

The international release in 1998 of the games Pokémon Red and Blue on the Game Boy instantly became hits among Nintendo fans during the increase in gaming’s popularity in Japan. The games were planned to be very different from their final versions. 

Video game YouTube channel “DidYouKnowGaming” discovered a forgotten game feature from an interview with Satoshi Tajiri; Pokémon was originally planned to generate a random number for a “secret ID” every time the game was booted up, correlating with a unique map for the player to explore. However these original plans were scrapped in favor of three separate versions for every main series game except for the fifth generation and beyond.

Each generation (what console a game is released on) of the games introduced different mechanics to use in battle. The first generation introduced Pokémon battles, the second had items the Pokémon held to give certain effects, the third continued to give the Pokémon more abilities and the fourth developed a physical/special split ability to the game. The physical/special split altered gameplay so that types that were strictly physical or strictly special had move-change attributes.

The fifth generation popularized double, multi, triple and rotation battles. Double and multi battles are very similar, with double battles using two of your own Pokémon, whereas multi battles have you use one of your Pokémon and your ally uses one of theirs. Triple battles allow you to send out three Pokémon, and rotation battles are similar but you have one Pokémon at the front which you can rotate out to have another Pokémon attack.

With the jump to 3D in the sixth generation, the franchise took a little bit of a nosedive when they started introducing “gimmicks” (new moves and forms for Pokémon) with mega evolution, Z-Moves, Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing and terastallization. These new features added unique gameplay abilities for their respective generations, but none of them were permanent. 

In 2016, Pokémon partnered with Niantic Games to make “Pokémon Go,” which was a huge success and revived the franchise. Pokémon Go grew in popularity for a few years because it successfully got people outside.

However, the trend went downhill when people were walking into busy roads, cliffs and sports games, causing Pokémon Go to lose attention by 2018, with news and media sources cautioning people from engaging in the app.

In 2020, the pandemic brought a lot more people to the game in search of an activity during lockdown. For a while in 2020, they kept Pokémon Go the same. One feature called “remote raiding” where you could battle exclusive Pokémon was really popular because you didn’t have to leave your home or current location to fight in person.

But in 2023 Niantic made harder to participate by making it twice the price (in Pokécoins, the in-game currency), and while remote raiding your Pokémon only did a fraction of  the damage it usually did.

This was to encourage people to go outside, but Niantic started receiving immense backlash from this decision. This eventually led to Pokémon Go losing players, but with Sinnoh tour (an exclusive event where you can catch new and old Pokémon) coming out in February 2024 we might get a lot more coming back.