1. A kid who loved catching bugs, and a link cable
Who came up with Pokémon, and from what kind of experience? The creator was Tajiri Satoshi of Game Freak. As a boy growing up in Machida, a city in Tokyo, he was passionate about insect collecting — showing off the bugs he'd caught to friends and trading them with each other. Shogakukan's parenting information site credits this experience as the origin point of Pocket Monsters[1].
The Game Boy, a handheld game console released on April 21, 1989, could be connected to a second unit using a dedicated cable[2]. Tajiri focused on this link function, and from the idea of "trading" data between two units, pitched the concept to Nintendo under the working title "Capsule Monsters"[3].
The game finally launched in 1996 — more than six years after the original planned timeline[3]. Game Freak was itself originally the name of a small self-published magazine (a "mini-komi," a homemade or small-group publication) that Tajiri had founded[3].
For the character designs, Sugimori Ken — who had also been involved with that same magazine — served as the artist who pulled multiple staff members' designs together into the official illustrations. Pikachu, for example, was designed from scratch by Nishida Atsuko, a colleague at the same company, while the official illustration was drawn by Sugimori[4].
2. A quiet launch, not an instant hit
Was Pokémon a smash hit from day one? Pocket Monsters Red and Green launched as Game Boy titles on February 27, 1996. Nintendo's product page states a price of 3,900 yen before tax, link-cable trading and battling, and 151 different Pokémon[5].
Day-one shipments were roughly 130,000 units combined for Red and Green, and roughly 230,000 units in the first week[6]. Word of mouth — one person telling another — gradually spread the game's reputation, and the Game Boy itself saw a resurgence in popularity thanks to Pokémon[7].
On July 21 of that same year, a smaller Game Boy Pocket console launched, priced at 6,800 yen[6].
By June 1997, Red and Green together had reportedly reached 3 million units sold[8] — roughly one year and four months after launch. Shipment figures and sales figures may not use the same counting method, so these numbers can't be compared directly.
3. The link cable: trading and battling were the heart of the game
What made Pokémon different from earlier games? The answer was the ability to trade with friends and battle them. The Game Boy's link cable had been available as a dedicated accessory since the console's 1989 launch, letting two units connect to each other[2]. 4Gamer explains that releasing multiple versions and creating a new kind of play — "link up with friends, trade, and collect Pokémon" — was a key driver behind the game's massive success[10].
One independent feature article notes that Red and Green each had some Pokémon exclusive to that version, and that some Pokémon could only evolve through a link-cable trade[11].
There's also a record from the player's side. The writer of a Dengeki Online retrospective recalls learning how link trading worked, discovering that the Super Game Boy accessory couldn't do it, and realizing a second Game Boy was needed to try it themselves. Trading and battling required a partner, a second console, and a cable, all at once[12].
4. Blue: sold first through a kids' comics magazine, then convenience stores
Pokémon, a game meant to be played and traded with friends, also reached beyond any one friend group through mail order in magazines. Where could you buy Blue? It wasn't sold in stores at first. Starting around October 1996, it was distributed through a mail-order system run through magazines like CoroCoro Comic (a monthly comics magazine for kids)[7]. The November and December issues of monthly CoroCoro Comic took orders; the price was 3,000 yen (tax included), and reportedly more than 550,000 order postcards were received[6].
Starting June 13, 1997, customers could also bring an order form printed in a Shogakukan magazine to any Lawson convenience store nationwide to order it. The price was 3,000 yen, and pickup began July 16[8]. Orders were accepted through August 31, and people without a nearby Lawson could still order directly through the magazine[13]. Sources disagree on exactly how many Shogakukan magazines carried the order form — The Japan Food Journal reports 13, while Dengeki Online reports 12 — so this article doesn't try to settle on a single number.
Blue finally went on general sale in ordinary stores on October 10, 1999[7].
5. A rumored Pokémon gets distributed, and glitch tricks spread
Pokémon's fame spread beyond any one friend circle, and with it came rumors. Was there really a "151st Pokémon" hidden in the game, as some kids claimed? That Pokémon was Mew, and the rumor turned out to be true — it later became clear Mew genuinely existed, after initially spreading as an urban-legend-style story[7]. Mew was distributed through magazine promotions and events.
The May 1996 issue of monthly CoroCoro Comic (on sale in April) ran a reader-giveaway promotion for the "phantom Pokémon" Mew: 20 winners, entries due by May 14, with roughly 78,000 entries reported[12]. The August issue offered 100 winner slots and received roughly 80,000 entries. At the Next-Generation World Hobby Fair on August 23 and 24, 1996, a raffle distributed Mew to 350 people each day — 700 in total[6].
The original games also had glitches — behavior the developers hadn't intended — and glitch-based tricks that exploited them. The site Magmix describes a "Select trick," where pressing the Select button to cancel out of the items menu could rewrite the values determining the trainer or opposing Pokémon, allowing players to summon unused data known as "Professor Oak"[14]. Kids at the time reportedly learned about it through rumor and tried out various methods themselves.
The same article also covers a glitch Pokémon called "MissingNo.," whose appearance looks like garbled, corrupted graphics. It notes that after MissingNo. appeared, using another glitch trick was required when saving, or the save data could become corrupted[14]. This isn't something to try today.
6. The anime made Pikachu a star, and a Pikachu version followed
Pokémon's popularity spread from the games onto television too. What happened once a Pokémon became popular in-game? The anime series Pocket Monsters began airing on the TV Tokyo network on April 1, 1997, as a 30-minute program every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.[13]. According to Dengeki Online, the anime dramatically shifted how Pikachu was portrayed, and Pokémon's popularity spread beyond children to the parent generation as well[13].
Pokémon Yellow (called "Pikachu" version in Japan) launched on September 12, 1998. The starting Pokémon is always Pikachu, which doesn't stay inside its Poké Ball and instead follows the player around, and even uses the same cry as in the anime[15].
7. Battling spread to TV, a dedicated console game, and a card game
Link-cable battling spread beyond any one friend group. Could you watch Pokémon battles even without a Game Boy of your own? A TV program called "64 Mario Stadium" aired on the TV Tokyo network from July 4, 1996 to September 28, 2000, and reportedly had a segment called the "Pokémon League" featuring battles fought in Red and Green, hosted throughout its run by the actor Watanabe Tōru[16].
On August 1, 1998, a game called Pokémon Stadium was released for the Nintendo 64 console, priced at 6,800 yen before tax. Using an accessory called the 64GB Pak, it let players call up their own Pokémon from a Game Boy cartridge and battle in teams of three, with 40 Pokémon usable in battle[17]. It reportedly sold 1.37 million units in Japan[15].
There was also a Pokémon trading card game: it launched on October 20, 1996[10], and a Game Boy Color-compatible version called "Pokémon Card GB," which let players battle and trade cards via link cable, followed on December 18, 1998[15].
This article, though, wasn't able to confirm the exact details of what those TV battle segments actually showed.
If you want to look for yourself
Ask an adult in your family whether they ever played a Game Boy — and if they remember trading Pokémon over a link cable. Just don't try any of the glitch tricks mentioned here yourself; the sources note that some of them can corrupt save data. If you want to go further, Dengeki Online's retrospective series "30 Years Walking With Pokémon" covers the story year by year starting from 1996, and Nintendo's own product page and the official Pokémon website are good starting points for confirming release dates and features for yourself.