It’s been more than 15 years since Pokémon took Japan’s islands by storm, and since then the numerous species of portable critters have become beloved across the globe. The RPG is a monster of its own, laden with copious product tie-ins and spin-offs. Pokémon Black/White 2 marks the franchise’s first direct sequel, making this a perfect time to look at its history great and small. We’ll take a look at each generation, the various spinoffs, and some forgotten relics of Pokémon’s gaming history, seeing what’s significant, what may actually be worth another look, and what’s probably best left to rot in a box on Someone’s PC.

In the entries, we used Japanese, American, and Eurpopean release years when marking the dates.

Pokémon’s beginnings go back much, much further than you might think. Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori founded Game Freak in 1989, after their passion for publishing homebrew game strategy guides blossomed into full-on game creation. After analyzing what the Game Boy hardware was capable of, the fledgling firm created a design document in 1990 for a game titled Capsule Monsters, based upon the idea of collecting, training, trading, and battling monsters in duels using the Game Boy’s system link cable.

The team hoped to finish the game for release by the next year, however, the project required more funding than Game Freak had on hand. Development on Capsule Monsters would start and stop over the years the company worked on various outsourced projects to earn extra cash and attempted to get publishers to fully commit to the idea. At one point in 1993, the company considered abandoning development on Capsule Monsters entirely, but when it came to a vote, the overwhelming majority of staff was in favor of finishing the game. Eventually, after years of work (and a solid track record of developing outsourced titles in their name), Nintendo committed to publishing and marketing Capsule Monsters – though, due to trademark issues, the name would need to be changed to Pocket Monsters.

Many a Poke-fan looks back fondly on the days of Red and Blue and the “original 151”, but what many people don’t realize is that Red and Blue weren’t the original duo that debuted in Japan. In February of 1996, Pokémon was first unleashed in the form of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green. Red and Green proved to be a massive sales success, but the games had a few lingering issues: they were incredibly buggy (yes, even more so than the international versions) and rough around the edges in a lot of places. To correct these issues, Game Freak developed and released Pokémon Blue later in the year. Blue featured notable improvements: the battle graphics were overhauled, numerous bugs were caught and corrected, previously unobtainable wild Pokémon could now be legitimately caught, certain areas were re-mapped, and the infamous Lavender Town music was made far less harsh-sounding.

The improvements made to the Japanese version of Pokémon Blue were retroactively applied to Red and Green for Pokémon’s eventual North American debut in 1998. The US Red and Blue versions kept the exclusive Pokémon of the Japanese Red and Green editions, respectively, making the Japanese version of Blue a fairly unique piece of Pokémon history. It also started a precedent which every Pokémon generation since has followed: An initial release of two versions, followed by a third some time later. Green was all but forgotten after the international debut, with Pokémon Yellow assuming its place as the “third game” in that particular Pokémon generation. Clearly, however, the Red and Green versions remain a strong memory in the hearts of Japanese players and the creators – the later Pokémon Generation I remakes for the GBA would be titled FireRed and LeafGreen in all territories.

The “virtual pet” craze sparked by Tamagotchi had already begun to taper off by 1998, but that didn’t stop Nintendo from releasing its own take on the concept. The Pocket Pikachu was a small, Game Boy-shaped device that could be clipped to or carried inside of one’s pocket or purse. The unit’s small screen would display a Pikachu you interacted with by playing games and racking up “watts,” which were earned through a built-in pedometer. Depending on how well and how often you would play with Pikachu, he would treat you differently, ranging from being exceptionally friendly to being distant and reluctant to recognize you. If you checked in on Pikachu at certain times of day, you would see cute animations of his daily routine.

The unit proved successful enough at the time to be reissued during the debut of Pokémon Gold and Silver. The Pocket Pikachu 2 GS featured a slightly altered form factor, a color display, and the addition of an infrared port. The unit was capable of communicating to Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal via the Game Boy Color’s infrared port, and transferring a sufficient number of earned Watts would result in getting various items in-game. Though the Pocket Pikachu lineage would end at the second model, the inspiration for the later Pokewalker and 3DS system is quite obvious.

Portable games are fine and all, but what kid wouldn’t be elated to see their big, bad Pokémon duking it out in full 3D? That was the train of thought that led to the development of Pokémon Stadium for the N64. The game featured a unique “transfer pak” that allowed players to insert a Game Boy cartridge and utilize their personal Pokémon team in full-on, 3D-rendered duels. The Pokémon Stadium that saw release in North America is actually Japan’s Pokémon Stadium 2 – the original Japanese Pokémon Stadium was a horribly unfinished mess, with less than a third of the original 151 Pokémon available for use in battle (the rest had character models, but lacked animations). The series has continued onto the GameCube and the Wii under different, fancier-sounding names (Pokémon Coliseum, Pokémon XD, Pokémon Battle Revolution) but with similar concepts to the original Stadium games.

What would it be like to train and directly command a Pokémon with your voice? That’s the concept behind the interesting--though quite dull--Hey You, Pikachu! The game came with a microphone attachment for the N64 controller, which you could use to issue simple directions to the wild Pikachu you were interacting with. You didn’t battle Team Rocket or anything, though--most of your interactions were menial tasks like looking after Caterpie babies and going fishing.

Originally called “Pikachu Genki Dechu” (a pun that translates roughly into “Pikachu’s doing well”) in Japanese, the game would be released in the US a little under 2 years later, following a complete retooling of the voice recognition engine for American English speakers--making for the longest wait between Japanese and North American releases after the original Red and Blue. Hey You, Pikachu! never appeared in Europe, primarily due to the difficulty of further language-recognition retooling. Even the English-speaking UK was left out--the rumor is that the voice recognition was so finicky that it wouldn’t function correctly with the wide variety of accents seen across the territory. (Don’t worry, guys, you didn’t miss much.) The experiment paid off in the end, though: Hey You, Pikachu! is said to have been a testing ground for many features that were eventually implemented into the phenomenally popular Nintendogs franchise.

The Pokémon card game spin-off has always enjoyed a great deal of popularity, and the tabletop version was eventually adapted into electronic form for the Game Boy Color. The goal, much like the mainline Pokémon titles, is to work your way up the ranks of the Pokémon League, defeating eight Club Masters before fighting four Grand Masters for control of the powerful Legendary Cards. This adaptation was successful enough to earn a sequel, though only in Japan.

Titled Pokémon Card GB2: GR-dan Sanjou!, the game was a direct follow-up to the original, though with numerous improvements. The selection of a male or female protagonist--now a Pokémon standard--was added, as was a useful feature that could analyze the effusiveness of the player’s deck. Rather than just trying to defeat the Grand Masters, you had to build decks to compete with and defeat the threat of Team Great Rocket (the GR of the title). It’s unknown why Nintendo didn’t opt to bring this one Stateside, given the continued popularity of the card game and the warm reception of the original adaptation, but our guess is that Nintendo simply decided to focus more on the upcoming domestic Game Boy Advance launch.

Pokémon Snap was one of the first Pokémon spin-offs to be released outside of Japan, and it proved just how well the franchise’s name alone could potentially carry a game that might otherwise get the cold shoulder from consumers. The gameplay itself doesn’t sound terribly exciting: you simply take an on-rails ride through predetermined paths while trying to time photo shots to get the best possible pictures of Pokémon doing, well, Pokémon-y activities. But actually playing Snap revealed a unique, strangely relaxing, and intriguing experience. Since Pokémon fever was burning high at the time of its release, Snap performed very well, and it is still quite fondly remembered by many players. Pokémon Snap is available on the Wii’s Virtual Console, so interested fans would do well to check it out.

Out of all the Pokémon titles that have appeared over the years, Pokémon Picross is among the most mysterious, mainly because it never saw any sort of release. Based on the “picross” series of nonogram picture puzzles (most recently seen in Picross 3D), Pokémon Picross was set to release on the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, and featured picture puzzles of various Pokémon. The only information about the game comes from an announcement in a Japanese magazine--any trace of the title eventually vanished, though Pokémon-themed puzzles have shown up in a few other Picross titles.

Image via Bulbapedia

Before it was swallowed up by Nintendo, HAL published one of the first pinball games for the Game Boy, an odd little title called Revenge of the Gator featuring a reptile-themed table. Nintendo kept that experience in mind when assigning development duties for a Poke-themed pinball title (though another developer, Jupiter, would also help out). Pokémon Pinball released on the Game Boy Color in a fairly unique “rumble” cartridge, which required an extra AAA battery and would provide force feedback as the player bounced the Poke-ball all around the two selectable tables (Red and Blue). A later GBA sequel, Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire, would be released in 2003, missing the rumble feature while including many more Pokémon.

After Pokémon took over the world in the form of side games, anime, and dozens of toys, it was finally time for the series to have its first true sequel. Taking place three years after the first game and set in a whole new region, Gold and Silver had a similar story of becoming a Pokémon Master, but it introduced so much to the series. 100 new pocket monsters joined the stable, a day night cycle was added, you could now breed Pokémon, and thanks to the Game Boy Color’s main characteristic, the adventure was in color too.

GS also gave the series some needed continuity, especially in the endgame that reintroduced the Kanto region and all its Gym Leaders, including Red, the protagonist of the last game. The third game in the set, Crystal, upped the importance of story even more, giving a ton of background to the Legendaries that you’re chasing throughout the game. And in a tradition that continues to this day, it let players choose the gender of the hero. Gold, Silver, and Crystal ushered in a new era for Pokémon, proving the series was here to stay.

Intelligent System’s excellent tile-matching puzzle game Panel de Pon is noteworthy in that it’s never seen a release in North America in its original form. It was rebranded with Yoshi’s Island-themed visuals in the late SNES release Tetris Attack, and then redone again years later as Pokémon Puzzle League and Pokémon Puzzle Challenge on the N64 and Game Boy Color. Pokémon Puzzle League is also historically interesting in that it never received a Japanese release, as it was built and tailored specifically around the 4kids-produced dub of the anime series. The N64 version is available on the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Building upon the ideas of the Pocket Pikachu, Nintendo introduced its smallest cartridge-based system to date in 2001. The Pokémon Mini had a similar form factor to the Pocket Pikachu, with the added feature of interchangeable, teeny-tiny game cartridges, each containing a different, simplistic game. The unit lacked Pocket Pikachu’s pedometer (and the Pocket Pikachu 2’s color display), but featured an infrared port for transferring data, limited force feedback, a shock detector, and a realtime clock function. The units were released in Pokémon-themed colors: Chikorita green, Wooper blue, and Smoochum purple.

The system proved to be very short-lived outside of Japan, with only four games (Pokémon Party mini, Pokémon Pinball mini, Pokémon Zany Cards, and Pokémon Puzzle Collection) being released in North America. Japan got new releases up through the end of 2002, including Pokémon Race mini, Pichu Bros., and Togepi’s Big Adventure. The system’s lifespan was just under a year in every territory it saw release in, making it one of the least successful Pokémon ventures. We wouldn’t see another dedicated Pokémon portable unit until 2010’s Pokewalker.

By the time the third generation rolled around, the series got a graphical upgrade on the Game Boy Advance to go along with 135 new monsters added to the series. Another story of a kid going out into the world to become a Pokémon Master, introduced some major new concepts to the series. You had double battles, increased EV and IV training, and each you Pokémon caught became more specialized thanks to individual Natures and Abilities. Some may have complained at the time it was too similar to previous games in the series, but the truest fans could tell this was an adventure all its own.

Some titles are forgotten for very good reasons, and Pokémon Channel is a prime example of this. Make no mistake about it--Pokémon Channel is a terrible game, offering little in the way of fun or even basic interaction. In many ways, it feels like a prototype for the numerous awful, effortless Wii barely-games that flooded the market.

Pokémon Channel involves you and your Pikachu pal testing out a new television network developed by Professor Oak to entertain both Pokémon and trainer alike. You watch terrible television, broken up by brain dead, barely interactive minigames. You can leave the house to talk to wild Pokémon and earn in-game cards, but by and large the majority of the game is you and Pikachu vegging in front of the tube, no doubt getting fat on Mountain Dew and canned Slowpoke tails. The lack of, well, anything in Pokémon Channel is no doubt why it’s barely remembered – why would anyone think a game based around watching TV was a good idea?

Not so much a game as a utility, Pokémon Box allowed you to transfer and store up to 1,500 generation 3 Pokémon from a GBA cartridge to a GameCube memory card using the GBA link cable. It could also be used to play Ruby/Sapphire on a TV without the need for the Game Boy Player add-on. It’s not a particularly exciting piece of software, but we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we scratched over it.

Ruby/Sapphire was exciting in how it embraced the tech of the GBA, but it had one big drawback for longtime fans of the series: It couldn’t communicate with the older entries in the series. Pokémon from Red/Blue/Yellow/Gold/Silver/Crystal were stranded on their original carts, unable to transfer off the Game Boy. To remedy this lack of First and Second Gen monsters, Game Freak did their first remakes in series history, transforming Red and Blue into FireRed and LeafGreen. It retold the story of the first games, but still reflected many of the improvements made in the past eight years, especially the ones from the Third Generation.

The first Pokémon game on the Nintendo DS was hardly Diamond/Pearl--it was this oddly experimental little racing game from early 2005. Playing as Pikachu (or other Pokémon in multiplayer modes), the player uses the DS stylus to guide your Pokémon competitor around the track in a madcap race to tag various checkpoints scattered around the tracks. There are different types of terrain to keep aware of, and plenty of scattered power-ups to grant your Pokémon an added boost.

Though it might not have been a rip-roaring success, Pokémon Dash certainly left behind some inspiration for later titles, as the game bears obvious similarities in control and theme to the Pokeathlon minigames in HeartGold and SoulSilver. It was also one of the first games to feature connectivity via the DS’s built-in Game Boy Advance cartridge slot, allowing players to play special courses shaped like the Pokémon in their Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/FireRed/LeafGreen teams. Finally, Pokémon Dash delivered the official introduction of Munchlax, keeping a tradition of introducing upcoming Pokémon through spinoffs and other media going strong.

Chun Soft is quite a famous developer in Japan, and one of their premiere franchises is the “Mysterious Dungeon” series of roguelikes. It’s unknown how and why they were approached to transplant the world of Pokémon into their dungeon-crawler formula (perhaps Nintendo was impressed by their previous efforts with the Dragon Quest series), but the result has been the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series. The games take place in a world seemingly disconnected from the usual Pokémon setting, where Pokémon and only Pokémon exist and interact with each other, teaming up and going on “rescue missions” in randomly generated dungeons. The series has never been particularly well received in North America. It’s typically viewed as too obtuse and frustrating for a younger audience, but too dumbed-down for the small but devout roguelike fanbase. Despite this, the games keep on getting released abroad--save for the recent batch of WiiWare Pokémon Mystery Dungeon titles, which look to remain Japan-exclusive.

Not all places in the wide world of Pokémon utilize Poke Balls to train and capture their Pokémon. In the Pokémon Ranger series, you take the role of a sort of nature protector who subdues wild Pokémon with the help of a special device called a Capture Styler, which traces rings around them until they’re friendly enough to work with. This sub-series remains widely available and has been quite well-received, no doubt due to a bonus provided in the initial releases: the Ranger games are the easiest way to obtain the rare Manaphy in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum.

Pokémon is no stranger to the world of puzzle games, but if you ask fans about Pokémon Trozei!, you’re likely to get some blank stares. For whatever reason, this strange puzzler just didn’t make a mark. The game’s title (and core mechanic) is a rather unusually styled romanization of the Japanese title, Pokémon Torou Ze! (Let’s Catch Pokémon!). The game plays similarly to Yoshi’s Cookie: players shift rows of stacked Pokémon faces vertically and horizontally to line up four or more matches. From there, the player can initiate “trozei,” or combos, with slightly less stringent restrictions, including fewer matches needed and allowing unusually shaped match formations to be cleared, until a time window expires.

Pokémon Trozei also features an interesting story mode involving secret agent Lucy Lightfoot going up against an evil organization called the Phobos Battalion. The art style of Trozei is wildly different from any other Pokémon game out there, looking very similar to the aesthetic of the Mr. Driller puzzle games. It’s not too hard to find, either, so depending on your interest in the franchise, Trozei might be worth tracking down just for its unusual aesthetic alone.

The first entry made for Nintendo’s dual screen handheld, Generation IV took advantage of the many tools the DS offered. You explored the Sinnoh region, a world bursting with 107 new Pokemon to capture while battling the dastardly Team Galactic. Most likely the most important change, Pokémon Diamond/Pearl used the DS’s native Wi-Fi to help players share and battle easier than ever, and it was also one of the very few DS games that could interact with the Wii.

WiiWare seems like a dumping ground for a lot of boring, half-formed junk (which is quite unfortunate for all of the good titles on the service), and My Pokémon Ranch doesn’t really do much to alleviate that perception. Costing 1000 Nintendo Points, My Pokémon Ranch allows your Mii to interact on a cozy little farm with several zoos’ worth of transferred Pokémon you’ve caught in the Diamond/Pearl games. You can play and do simple interactions with the Pokémon, as well as potentially earn some new critters and visit other players’ ranches. But with no ability to train or otherwise level up your transferred Pokémon, the novelty wears off incredibly quickly. To top it off, Japan got an update to increase the title’s Pokémon capacity and make it compatible with Pokémon Platinum – an update other territories never saw.

Another WiiWare exclusive, Pokémon Rumble goes the Smash Bros route of representing the in-game Pokémon as toys… very, very strange looking toys that the developers literally re-used from My Pokémon Ranch.

But beyond the adorably polygonal visuals, the game is a multiplayer action title played with a sideways-held Wii Remote or a Classic Controller. As you run through overhead-view levels, waves of enemy Poke-toys assault you, and you use your mechanical monster’s abilities to take on both the tiny toys and the big bosses. At the end, everyone participates in a no-holds-barred “arena” battle to see who will emerge the victor. It’s a rather decent--if extremely repetitive--effort, but most players won’t find it to be worth the 1500 Wii Points it runs. A sequel, Pokémon Rumble Blast, came to 3DS last year, the first Pokémon game for the new handheld that added virtually every Pokémon in the five generations to the game.

After the original Game Boy entries had been remade on GBA, it was only a matter of time before the team at Game Freak return to the Second Generation of Pokemon. Retelling the same story and remade to take advantage of all the changes that happened up to Gen IV, Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver also added tons of minigames, Easter Eggs, and uses for the DS’s second screen. Updated with new ways to catch previously hard to find Pokemon from older generations, HG/SS was a fitting tribute to the series’ history, and it set the stage for the big changes that would come in Gen V.

Does “Game for Wii” automatically translate into “minigame collection?” We wish it usually didn’t, but PokéPark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure is yet another entry into this unexpectedly crowded genre. Fourteen pieces of the Sky Prism are missing, and they’re scattered about PokePark. Pikachu needs to befriend and use the assistance of other Pokémon to find the pieces, and said befriending involves, you guessed it, minigames! At least the games are mercifully short, but there’s really nothing terribly interesting or exciting about this day at the park, or its sequel from 2012, which added multiple Generation V Pokémon, including starters Tepig, Oshawott, and Snivy.

When the Fifth Generation rolled around, the franchise was in need of some renewal, and that’s just what Pokémon Black/White had in store for players. The graphics got a complete overhaul, the Wi-Fi capabilities of the DS were taken advantage of in interesting new ways, and most importantly, it introduced 156 new Pokémon, and they were the only Pokémon you encountered until you beat the game. It gave a sense of renewal that many fans had felt was overdue, while also making the series even friendlier to new players than it was already.

B/W also had the best story in franchise history, placing your mild-mannered trainer against a massive, ancient conspiracy to separate people all over the world from their Pokémon. The stakes were higher than ever, and the plot asked questions about the general legitimacy of Pokémon ownership, a difficult topic the developers had previously shied away from. The engrossing narrative continues in Pokémon Black/White 2, the first ever direct sequel in the history of the main series.

Around the late 90s and early 00s, there were several “edutainment” PC games that utilized the Pokémon license, though none of them had even the slightest bit of involvement from Nintendo. Strangely enough, not a single one of them was a typing tutor. Flash forward to 2011, and a new Pokémon-themed typing tutor has been announced… not for the PC, but the DS. Released in Japan and Europe, but not the US, the game is bundled with a Bluetooth keyboard that is used to play the various minigames contained on the card.

One of the most bizarre crossovers of all time, recently Pokémon fans were treated to the strange combination of pocket monsters with Japanese history. Combining Pokémon with the long-running (but little known internationally) Nobunaga’s Ambition, Pokémon Conquest’s turn-based, strategy gameplay fit well within the world of Pokémon. Despite inheriting some of the more esoteric economy systems and rules of Nobunaga, it still works as a great introduction to the realm of strategy games for Pokémon fans.

That's are wide-ranging overview of the series history. We'd love to see your more specific memories of the franchise, so let us know in the comments!

And if you've still got Poké Fever, check out our Pokémon Black / White 2 review and our list of the most disturbing Pokémon of all time.