Video game:Nintendo 64 Pok??��mon Stadium

"Gotta catch em all!" First issued by Nintendo in 1996, this challenge sparked a Pok??��mon craze that led to a successful television series, trading card game, and full-length movie. Since its initial release, Pok??��mon 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 Pok??��mon games for the Game Boy in Japan as "Pocket Monsters: Red & Green." After proving successful, the games came to North America in 1998 as "Pok??��mon Red" and "Pok??��mon Blue." The games provide a simple premise: A single player travels and catches Pok??��mon while fighting other trainers and their teams of monsters. The player?s ultimate goal involves winning Pok??��mon battles against eight Gym Leaders and entering the Pok??��mon League to battle the Elite Four, while simultaneously completing one?s Pok??��dex, which contains a record of all known Pok??��mon. Although it is a single-player game, players have the opportunity to trade or battle Pok??��mon with other Game Boys via a Game Link Cable.

Even though Peter Bartholow, a Gamespot critic, described the graphics and audio of the original Pok??��mon 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 Pok??��mon, 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 "Pok??��mon 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. Nintendo published one such game, "Pok??��mon Stadium," for the Nintendo 64 in 2000. In this game, players compete in various tournaments using the original 151 Pok??��mon. Players could also transfer their Pok??��mon from "Red" or "Blue" into "Pok??��mon Stadium" for use in battling. Critics and players enjoyed this game, claiming that it was a nice change of pace from the original games. In 2001, Nintendo released a sequel to the game, entitled "Pok??��mon Stadium 2."

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