Handheld video game:Nintendo Game Boy Pokemon Trading Card Game

"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. In 2000, the company published one such spin-off, the "Pokemon Trading Card Game," for the GameBoy Color. This game follows rules similar to the tabletop game played with actual Pokemon cards. The format of the game resembles "Pokemon Red" and "Pokemon Blue," as the player must challenge other trainers to card battles, beat eight "Club Masters," and then challenge the four "Grand Masters."

During its first year in North America, the "Pokemon Trading Card Game" sold 1.51 million copies. It received positive reviews from critics, who believed that the game was "addictive," and "an excellent addition to Pokemon's GameBoy catalog." Nintendo released a sequel to the game, entitled "Pokemon Card GB2: Here Comes Team Rocket!" in 2001.

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.