The Pokémon are colorful, sentient, sometimes sapient creatures possessing the abilities to perform amazing talents of seemingly every conceivable sort, examples of which are breathing fire, expulsing poisonous smog, summoning rainfall, performing martial arts, using illusion to split up into multiple copies of itself, employing psychokinesis, unleashing paralysis-inducing electricity, etc. In the various incarnations of the Pokémon universe, the world of Pokémon is an Earth-like world inhabited by many species of the eponymous Pokémon creatures which coexist with humans. As a direct result, Pokémon has been a mainstay in the Nintendo-centric crossover fighting games Super Smash Bros. Pokémon has become the second biggest-selling game-based media franchise of all time, only behind Nintendo's Mario franchise as of March 2013, cumulative sold units (including home console versions) have reached 245 million copies.
The main JRPG series paved the way for a merchandising empire, including an extensive anime continuity, several series of manga, a bestselling trading card game, spinoff video games touching upon many other genres, and a live-action feature film that received mixed-to-positive reception greater than any other video game-based movie at that point. Nintendo did not expect these games to be a large success, even less so in the West than domestically, but the games - branded Pokémon outside of Japan - took both sides of the Pacific and Atlantic by storm and quickly established the series as a blockbuster, multi-billion dollar franchise. Pokémon was introduced in Japan as " Pocket Monsters", a Game Boy JRPG that came in slightly modified Red and Green editions that both made then-original use of the Game Boy's link cable between separate systems in that, rather than being strictly used for competition, it was additionally used for trading between players. It would not be until February 1996 that Nintendo and Game Freak saw unprecedented success in Japan and overseas with the release of two games. Game Freak was officially founded as a game developer in April 1989 and would work on a number of unrelated titles for the Famicom and Super Famicom from 1989 to 1994, effectively making them a second-party developer for Nintendo. He would be joined by artist Ken Sugimori and together they eventually took up the task of making video games themselves.
In the early 1980s, video game enthusiast Satoshi Tajiri began writing and selling his own magazine series known as "Game Freak". Many Pokémon making cameo appearances in the opening movie of Melee.
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl (2021)