Pokémon

Game Freak · Since 1996

The highest-grossing media franchise in history. Satoshi Tajiri's insect-collecting childhood became a game about capturing, training, and trading pocket monsters — and a cultural phenomenon that has never fully diminished.

Pokémon Red and Green (1996 in Japan, 1998 globally as Red and Blue) were the product of six years of development by Game Freak and a marketing deployment that treated the Game Boy as a social device rather than a gaming machine. The trading mechanic — requiring players to connect two Game Boys with a link cable to complete the Pokédex — made the game inherently social in ways that no previous handheld game had been. The simultaneous launch of the anime series, trading card game, and merchandise in Western markets in 1998 created multimedia saturation that turned Pokémon into a cultural event rather than a game release. The franchise has sold over 480 million game units, 43 billion trading cards, and generated over $150 billion in total revenue — making it the highest-grossing media franchise in history, surpassing Hello Kitty and Star Wars.