‘Christian pastors declared Pikachu a demon’: How Pokémon went from moral panic to unifying global hit | Pokemon

WWhen I was 11 years old, my dream was to compete in the Pokémon World Championships, held in Sydney in 2000. I stumbled upon that dream in a magazine, and then set about in earnest training teams of creatures, transporting them between my Pokémon Red Game Boy cartridge and the 3D arenas of Pokémon Stadium on the Nintendo 64. I never achieved that as a player, but I finally achieved that dream on my 26th birthday, when I went to Washington, D.C., to cover the World Championships as a player. journalist. I was very impressed. Presided over by a giant inflatable Pikachu suspended from the ceiling, competitors and spectators were united in an unconscious love of these games, with their colorful animals and heartfelt messages about trust, friendship and hard work.

It is emotional to see the winners raise their trophies after a tense final round of battles, overwhelmed by their success like any athlete. But it’s the pride that parents of young competitors show in their little champions that really impresses me. During the first wave of Pokemon in the late 1990s, most adults viewed Pokemon with suspicion. Now that the first generation of Pokémaniacs have grown up, and we’re even parents, we’re seeing it for what it is: a series of imaginative, challenging, and genuinely rewarding games that reward every hour kids devote to them.

Over the three decades since the original Red and Blue (or Green in Asia) video game versions were released in Japan in 1996, Pokémon has earned a place among the greats of children’s fantasy literature. Like Harry Potter and the Famous Five and Narnia, it offers a powerful fantasy of self-determination, set in a world almost completely devoid of adult supervision. Every game, your mother sends you out into the world with a backpack and a kiss goodbye; After that, it’s all on you.

Like The Simpsons, Pokémon is a kind of cultural shorthand for millennials. More than Mario, Zelda, or any other Nintendo creation, Pokémon brings people together. It was designed from the beginning to be a social game, encouraging (indeed, requiring) players trading and fighting with each other to complete their collection of virtual creatures and train their teams until they become super teams. Today, the Internet has normalized the idea of ​​video games as social activities, but in the late 1990s this was a new idea. You can’t play Pokemon without other people: in 1999, that meant gathering on the field, using a cable to link Game Boys together; Later, in 2016, at the height of the Pokémon Go phenomenon, it meant hundreds of people improbably congregating in the same park with their phones to catch Gengar.

Pokemon is often viewed as a turn-of-the-century fad, so it may be surprising to learn that it brings in more money now than it did at the height of its first wave of popularity. It has become the highest-grossing entertainment franchise of all time: between TV series, merchandise, trading cards, toys, and everything else emblazoned with the adorable faces of Pikachu and his pals, the franchise has grossed as much as $100 billion, more than Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This global phenomenon has its roots in Machida, a city on the outskirts of Tokyo, where Pokemon creator Satoshi Tajiri was born in 1965. Like many Japanese kids in the 1960s and 1970s, the young Satoshi collected insects, becoming such an expert that his elementary school classmates referred to him as Dr. Bug. When I was a teenager, a new craze arrived: video games, and then made its way into Japanese arcades. His enthusiasm was such that he started a monthly magazine with his friend Ken Sugimori, called Game Freak – the name of the video game development company they founded together, which still graces the title screens of modern Pokémon games.

The idea for Pokemon began to take shape for Tajiri around 1990. When he watched people connect their Game Boys to cables to play Tetris, the hit puzzle game, he visualized the bugs he collected crawling between the consoles. But it took six long years for that idea to turn into a monochromatic world filled with 151 collectible creatures, in chunky black Game Boy pixels. During this time, the developer nearly went bankrupt several times, taking on projects for Nintendo and other game developers to stay afloat; Tajiri regularly went without pay.

Pokémon’s astronomical success wasn’t immediate, but rather a result of slow sales over the years. When it was finally released in 1996, Pocket Monsters Red and Green – as it was known in Japan – was an indie underdog, made by a small team with limited technology for the old portable Game Boy console. No one expected it to be such a hit, but the world of Pokémon Blue has an unexpected sense of place that transcends technical limitations. The symbiotic relationship between humans, nature, and Pokémon permeates every aspect of life, and is often quite poignant — especially in in-game locations like Lavender Town, where dead Pokémon’s owners come to be honored in a giant memorial tower.

But the real marketable genius of Pokemon was the fact that the game came in different versions. The reason Pokémon games always come in pairs is because there are different monsters in each cartridge. If you want to collect them all, to complete your Pokédex Field Guide, you need to trade them. Creatures can be sent between cartridges, so friends with different versions of the game can help each other collect desired creatures. With Tetris, a Game Boy link cable was used for competition. Here it was used for communication.

The popularity of Pokemon spread through word of mouth in the stadium. By the time it arrived in the United States in 1998, and Europe in 1999, it was already a franchise: Pikachu-themed toys, TV shows, games, movies, and lunch boxes carefully rolled out by marketers using proven game rules.

Today, Tajiri is considered a reclusive figure. Almost everything we know about him comes from a single 1999 interview with Time magazine. The tone of the article in Time magazine is shockingly dismissive. Declaring the series a “malicious Ponzi scheme”, it describes the “deviant” and “criminal” behavior of young Pokemon fans, and the moral bankruptcy of the whole craze – which will likely fade away soon, as it did with the Power Rangers.

Now that Pokémon has become one of the most enduring and successful entertainment properties of all time, this alarmist stance seems ridiculous. But the intimidation was very real. Some of this was simply the failure of the elders to understand the new thing the children were interested in. But there was also a disturbing xenophobic flavor to the moral panic, that creepy Japanese thing with its evil monsters that come across the seas to capture children. Christian priests in the United States were declaring Pikachu to be a devil. There were moves to prevent the television program from being broadcast.

Perhaps understandably, given the disrespectful and hurtful tone of that interview with Time magazine, and the moral panic that Pokimania inadvertently sparked, Satoshi Tajiri has avoided the spotlight ever since. Now 60 years old, he’s still at Game Freak and is still involved in the creation of every new Pokémon game (as of 2025, there are 38 in total), although he reportedly stepped back from day-to-day development in 2012.

July 2016 saw the launch of Pokémon Go, a mobile game that quickly became the most popular game in US history, with 232 million players worldwide. Pokémon Go works like magic. With the app open, you can walk around your neighborhood; On your phone screen, you see a map of your real surroundings, with icons showing where Pokemon can be found. When you encounter a creature, it is superimposed on your real surroundings, a Gengar casually posing in your local park. From there, you can simply tap the Poké Ball on the creatures to capture them.

There’s also a unique aspect to Pokémon Go that makes it different from all the other video game phenomena you’ve seen. Most often when we talk about how games can help people through difficult times, we’re talking about escapism: how virtual worlds can serve as an escape from real-world problems. But Pokémon Go was less about escapism and more about connection, a continuation of the lineage of those first games decades earlier.

At its peak, it connected its players to their local area and the people around them. For a few months, we’ve all been looking at our surroundings through a different lens, thinking that there might be a little magic in the world, like a bug hiding under a rock.

Dr. Bug may not be as involved as he once was, but the pastoral nature he’s instilled in Pokémon has endured over the past 30 years: the interrelationships between people and Pokémon form a poignant core to the games, films, and TV shows, and there’s even an ecological almostness that tends to their stories. This is, after all, a game about evolution and living in harmony with the natural world. There’s a resonance with nature that keeps this $100 billion franchise from feeling overtly cynical or exploitative. The story of Pokémon speaks to an important truth about video games: they are a powerful way to connect people. Millions are united by these imaginative creatures, born from one boy’s love for the natural world.

Super Nintendo: How one Japanese company helped the world have fun By Keza MacDonald and published by Guardian Faber. To support The Guardian, order your copy for £16 at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.