ROUTE 1 · The origin: Dr. Bug, Game Freak and the birth of Pokémon
MACHIDA, TOKYO · 1983Before the games, there was a boy with a net. Machida, 1983. The fields where Satoshi Tajiri had collected beetles so obsessively that his friends called him Dr. Bug were being bulldozed into shopping malls.
So he began designing a world where nothing gets paved over, and nothing you catch ever has to be given back.
He hand-printed a fanzine called Game Freak. Its illustrator, Ken Sugimori, joined him. In 1989 the fanzine became a studio, and in 1990 Tajiri pitched Nintendo a game about trading creatures, the way he’d traded beetles with his friends as a kid.
Two Game Boys, one link cable, two versions of the same world. You had to talk to another player to complete your own game.
Development took six years, with staff sometimes working without pay. On February 27, 1996, two Game Boy cartridges went on sale in Japan: Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green.
They sold out almost immediately. Nobody, least of all Nintendo, saw what was coming.
ROUTE 2 · The phenomenon: Pikachu, the anime and Gotta catch ’em all
THE WORLD · 1996–1999A wild PHENOMENON appeared!
Red and Green sold out fast. In April 1997 came the anime, starring Ash Ketchum and a stubborn yellow mouse designed by Atsuko Nishida. Pikachu became the franchise’s face: a yellow silhouette a child can draw from memory.
The trading card game hit Japan in October 1996 and America in January 1999. Schoolyards turned into trading floors. And for the English dub, a producer named Norman J. Grossfeld wrote four words that outlived the cartoon and became a global catchphrase: “Gotta catch ’em all!”
On September 28, 1998, Red and Blue finally launched in North America, two and a half years after Japan. Red, Green and Blue would go on to sell more than 31 million copies worldwide. Schoolyards from Shibuya to San Jose were running on the same rules.
ROUTE 3 · The Pokédex grows: from 151 to 1,025 Pokémon across nine regions
NINE REGIONS · 1996–2022Every new generation opened a new region: Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, Galar, Paldea. Each stocked with new creatures to find, trade and battle.
The Pokédex, the in-game encyclopedia, became the franchise’s heartbeat. The number only ever goes up.
151 species in 1996. 251 by 1999. Then 386. 493. 649. 721. 809. 898.
Keep scrolling. Watch the ball fill.
Today the Pokédex holds 1,025 Pokémon, from Bulbasaur (#0001) to Pecharunt (#1025). The count has held steady since 2023.
Somewhere in there is your favorite. (It’s Gengar. It’s always Gengar.)
"On the desk there is my invention, POKéDEX! It automatically records data on Pokémon you've seen or caught!"
ROUTE 4 · The 18 types: how super-effective decides every battle
18 TYPES · SUPER EFFECTIVEEvery Pokémon has a type, and types decide everything. Fire burns Grass. Water douses Fire. Grass drinks Water. What began as rock-paper-scissors is now an eighteen-way matrix, balanced and patched for thirty years.
Trainers don’t memorize stats. They memorize relationships. One super-effective hit doubles your damage. One careless switch-in ends a run.
The wheel turns as you scroll. Watch the triangle in the middle: every edge is a lesson every ten-year-old learned the hard way.
The matrix still evolves. Steel arrived in 1999 to check the Psychic types that ruled the first games. Fairy followed in 2013 to finally tame the dragons. Balance patches — trading-card edition.
ROUTE 5 · Evolution: Eevee and its eight destinies
EEVEE · 8 DESTINIES— the original Red and Blue Pokédex, on Eevee. Eevee is the franchise’s idea of pure potential: one Pokémon, eight possible destinies.
Three destinies come from stones: Water, Thunder, Fire. Two from friendship: Espeon walks beside you by day, Umbreon by night. Leafeon and Glaceon evolved beside mossy and frozen rocks, though Stones took over that job later.
And Sylveon needed nothing but affection and a Fairy-type move.
The franchise evolved the same way. Games, cards, anime, movies, apps: branches off the same trunk, each one a different answer to the same question. What could this creature become next?
ROUTE 6 · Pokémon GO: the game that left the screen
THE REAL WORLD · JULY 6, 2016On July 6, 2016, the game left the screen. Pokémon GO put the Pokédex in your pocket and the wild in your neighborhood. 75 million people downloaded it in the first week alone.
Parks filled at midnight. At the July 2016 peak, 45 million people played every day. Strangers compared catches outside PokéStops, and a Snorlax nap could block a city street. For one summer, the biggest crowd in gaming wasn’t in a stadium. It was outside. The link cable was gone. The whole street was the cable now.
Nearly a billion downloads and nine billion dollars later, people are still out there walking, catching whatever they find. The game crossed $9B in revenue by its tenth anniversary in July 2026.
INDIGO PLATEAU · Hall of Fame: thirty years of records
HALL OF FAME · THE RECORDIn the games, the Hall of Fame is where your journey is recorded forever.
Here is the record, thirty years in. Keep scrolling. The numbers are still counting.
More than 515 million games shipped. More than 85 billion trading cards printed. That’s about ten for every person alive.
And in February 2026, a single Pikachu Illustrator card sold at auction for $16.5 million. The most expensive trading card ever sold.
Add it up and you get roughly $130 billion: the highest-grossing media franchise of all time, ahead of Mickey Mouse and Star Wars.
All of it started with a boy who ran out of fields to search. He never stopped collecting.
OAK’S LAB · Choose your starter Pokémon
PALLET TOWN · YOUR TURN“Your very own POKéMON legend is about to unfold! A world of dreams and adventures with POKéMON awaits! Let’s go!”
Three Poké Balls are waiting on the table. You may choose only one. Choose well.