Handheld video game:Nintendo DS Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia

"Gotta catch em all!" First issued by Nintendo in 1996, this challenge sparked a Pokemon craze that led to a successful television series, trading card game, and full-length movie. Since its initial release, Pokemon has become the second best selling video game franchise worldwide, and the best selling role-playing video game (RPG) of all time.

Nintendo released the first Pokemon games for the Game Boy in Japan as "Pocket Monsters: Red & Green." After proving successful, the games came to North America in 1998 as "Pokemon Red" and "Pokemon Blue." The games provide a simple premise: A single player travels and catches Pokemon while fighting other trainers and their teams of monsters. The player's ultimate goal involves winning Pokemon battles against eight Gym Leaders and entering the Pokemon League to battle the Elite Four, while simultaneously completing one's Pok퀌�dex, which contains a record of all known Pokemon. Although it is a single-player game, players have the opportunity to trade or battle Pokemon with other Game Boys via a Game Link Cable.

Even though Peter Bartholow, a Gamespot critic, described the graphics and audio of the original Pokemon games as "somewhat primitive," other critics praised the games for their innovativeness, as well their promotion of imagination and creativity among the children playing them. Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon, modeled the monsters after the insects that he collected as a child. He did this to provide a new generation of children with the opportunity to collect insects and creatures while stimulating their sense of exploration and ingenuity.

After "Pokemon Red" and "Blue" proved successful in the United States, Nintendo continued to release new and updated versions of the game. Most of these were RPGs similar to the original games, but Nintendo also released several spin-offs. The company produced one such spin-off, entitled "Pokemon Ranger," for the Nintendo DS in 2006. Players control a Pokemon Ranger whose main task is to catch Pokemon in this single-player game. Although it received mixed reviews, "Pokemon Ranger" became popular enough to receive a prequel, as well as a sequel.

Nintendo released the game's prequel, entitled "Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia," for the DS in 2008. The plot remained similar to the original game, but developers added several new Pokemon. Even though it received mixed reviews from critics, "Shadows of Almia" became the sixth best-selling game of 2008.

In 1999, Pokemon appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in a story titled "Beware of the Pok퀌�mania." The so-called "Pok퀌�mania" was sweeping the nation via trading cards, a television series, toys, websites, and the original Game Boy games. By 1998, "Pokemon Red" and "Pokemon Blue" sold a combined 9.85 million copies in the United States and spawned many sequels. It is evident that even decades later, the "Pokemon flu" that struck America's children with the release of the first games has still not subsided.