During the first wave of Pokémania in the late 90s, Pokémon was viewed with suspicion by most adults. Now that the first generation of Pokémaniacs have grown up, even becoming parents ourselves, we see it for what it is: an imaginative, challenging and really rather wholesome series of games that rewards every hour that children devote to it.
And even those who didn't grow up with it (as I was never a console kid, but rather a PC gamer), now feel the call and like me, take a day off work and travel to the Excel Centre in London to take part in mega-events like The 2026 EUIC.
Over the three decades since the original Red and Blue (or Green, in Asia) versions of the video game were released in Japan in 1996, Pokémon has earned a place among the greats of children’s fiction. Like Harry Potter, the Famous Five and Narnia, it offers a powerful fantasy of self-determination, set in a world almost totally free of adult supervision. In every game, your mother sends you out into the world with a rucksack and a kiss goodbye; after that, it’s all on you.
No kidding!
It was designed from the beginning to be a social game, encouraging (and indeed necessitating) that players traded and battled with each other to complete their collection of virtual creatures and train their teams up into super-squads. Today, the internet has entirely normalised the idea of video games as social activities, but in the late 90s this was a novel idea.
Not for us PC gamers, of course, we had MMORPGs like Ultima Online and Everquest...but for the console kids, hooking up to a fellow player's machine - via physical cable! - to play co-op or evolve a 'mon was revolutionary!
But it hasn't all been smooth sailing...
Today, Tajiri is a reclusive figure. Almost everything we know about him comes from a single 1999 interview with Time magazine. The tone of Time’s piece is shockingly dismissive. Declaring the series “a pestilential Ponzi scheme” it describes the “delinquent” and “criminal” behaviour of young Pokémon fans, and the moral bankruptcy of the whole craze – which, it comforts, is likely to peter out soon, like it did for the Power Rangers.
Now that Pokémon has become one of the most enduring and successful entertainment properties of all time, this alarmist attitude seems ridiculous. But the scaremongering was very real.
Thankfully I missed all that, as it was 2016's smartphone accessible 'Pokemon Go' that hooked me in, followed by my first ever console (barring a Playstation 2 I bought to play Cabelas's Hunting games and soon ended up using as a DVD player), the Switch, and recently the much more powerful Switch 2.
Perhaps understandably, given the disrespectful and, presumably, hurtful tone of that Time interview, and the moral panic that Pokémania unwittingly ignited, Satoshi Tajiri has shunned the limelight ever since. Now 60, he remains at Game Freak and is still involved in the creation of each new Pokémon game (as of 2025, there are 38 in total), though he reportedly stepped back from day-to-day development in 2012.
They haven't all been winners, the most recent, 'Pokemon ZA' changing the combat to real time rather than turn based didn't sit too well with older less nimble-fingered players like me, but the upcoming 'Pokopia' (which I got a chance to play a demo of yesterday at EUIC) looks far more my idea of a cosy and relaxing game to pick up after work.
Pokémon’s story speaks to an important truth about video games: they are a powerful vector for connection between people. Millions are united by these imaginary creatures, born from one boy’s love of the natural world.
Indeed so. If any of those 'Time' writers are still around I hope they now realise just how wrong they were.
