30 Years Later, Pokemon Craze Still Feels Surreal

On this day 30 years ago, Nintendo released a couple of GameBoy games to an unsuspecting Japanese public, and the legend of Pokémon was born.

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The sprites were crude representations of the monsters they would become, and the game code was littered with bugs and held together with duct tape and toothpicks, but Pocket Monsters Red and Green (later known as Pokémon Red and Blue in the West) were the humble beginnings of what would become a global empire just a few short years later.

While they didn't know it at the time, creator Satoshi Tajiri and his company, Game Freak, spawned the highest-grossing media franchise of all time, out-earning companies like Disney with well over $100 billion in lifetime revenue.

While Pokémon's influence is nearly ubiquitous in the cultural zeitgeist of today, I want to remember what the franchise was like in its infancy of the 1990s.

By the time Pokémon arrived on the shores of the U.S. in 1998, it had already become a phenomenon in its native Japan, but that was nothing compared to the stranglehold it would have on American pop culture in the late 90s and early 2000s.

I remember the TV show, trading cards, and GameBoy games all being available around the same time, and it was the first time in my life that I had ever gotten caught up in a craze like that, and I likely haven't been a part of anything similar since.

I can recall standing in line at my local Toys R Us (another relic of the past) with my dad the day Pokémon released their newest set of trading cards, and the anticipation I felt that Saturday morning standing in the hot South Florida sun was a sensation no drug could ever replicate.

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While the TV show and trading cards were immensely popular for every kid in America in the late 90s (except for Geoff Clark, who was too busy watching David Cone's perfect game with the Yankees to be bothered with Pokémon), the games are where a majority of my fond memories of the franchise – and the last decade of the 20th century in general – stem from.

While Game Freak and Pokémon are still releasing games to this day, nothing will ever touch the impact the early games of Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, and Silver had on all the children of the 90s, myself included.

It got to the point where my school had to ban the games outright, and the mere mention of a Pokémon by name was enough to get you in trouble, but that didn't stop or even slow down the craze.

I think what made Pokémon so perfect for the time was the sense of discovery and mystery the games presented.

This was in the early days of the internet, so all the rumors and myths that stemmed from playgrounds across America spawned entirely from word of mouth.

"If you press up and B while trying to catch a Pokémon, you'll increase your chances of successfully capturing it."

"There is a Mew hidden under the truck by the S.S. Anne."

"My Raichu evolved into a new Pokémon called Pikablu just by trading it."

These are all verifiably false rumors and urban legends, and a quick internet search could tell you this, but these were all birthed in a day and age where that kind of information wasn't readily available, so kids were just relying on second and third-hand information.

I miss when you couldn't find out everything about a game just by logging onto your computer or opening your phone, and Pokémon was a game that kept the intrigue up thanks to how social a player needed to be to complete their Pokédex.

The only way to capture all 151 Pokémon was by trading with friends, so sharing industry secrets was almost encouraged by default.

That sense of adventure stems from the game's creator, the aforementioned Satoshi Tajiri, collecting bugs and exploring caves as a kid and wanting to create an experience like that for all kids to enjoy.

This is why Pokémon still feels magical to look back on even three decades later.

The experience of trading with your friends or standing in line with your dad to get a new pack of Pokémon cards are things that can never be replicated.

Pokémon came along at the perfect time, when the internet was young and the adventures were filled with mystery. Like the video game equivalent to discovering a new world before the whole planet had been mapped out.

We will never see another craze quite like Pokémon in the 90s, and that's okay.

Those experiences will stick with all of us for the rest of our lives (except for Geoff).

Happy 30th birthday, Pokémon. Thanks for making our childhoods a time we will never forget.