Pokémon is a media franchise published and owned by the video gamecompany Nintendo and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996.
History of Pokemon
Originally released as a pair of interlinkable Game Boy role-playing video games developed by Game Freak, Pokémon has since become the second most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's own Mario series. Pokémon properties have since been merchandised into anime, manga, trading cards, toys, books, and other media. The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006, and as of 28 May 2010 cumulative sales of the video games (including home console versions, such as the "Pikachu" Nintendo 64) have reached more than 200 million copies.The name Pokémon is the romanized contraction of the Japanese brand Pocket Monsters .