You may find it hard to believe but this year will be the 15th anniversary of the anime in the United States. 

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_anime_episodes - September 8, 1998 was the airdate of the first episode.

If you lived in the United States or a related English-speaking country, 1998 is a big year for Pokemon. Power Rangers has a 20th anniversary thread made up so it is only fitting that there is also a thread for this occasion.

Hypno's Naptime takes me right back

http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/a/a5/EP027.png

Remember the Pokemon rap:

http://pokemon.akaihane.co.uk/images/general/psyduck_rap.jpg

From the series came awesome VHS tapes:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GH0QX1TFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg


VHS tapes would often be yellow:
http://favim.com/orig/201105/21/film-movie-pokemon-the-first-movie-vhs-Favim.com-51365.jpg

The handbook even mentioned the anime.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51bYzu533OL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I was never into it. I have heard about it around 1999 first, but I didn't know what the big deal was. Maybe I was just too old.

References to the anime were present in the yellow version of Pokemon

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61PH3G5R9ML._SL500_SS500_.jpg

I was never into it. I have heard about it around 1999 first, but I didn't know what the big deal was. Maybe I was just too old.


Do you mean the anime specifically, or the games as well? The anime was very hit or miss among people around my age (some liked it, some thought it was too "kiddie"), but everybody I knew played the hell out of the Gameboy carts, myself included.

Do you mean the anime specifically, or the games as well? The anime was very hit or miss among people around my age (some liked it, some thought it was too "kiddie"), but everybody I knew played the hell out of the Gameboy carts, myself included.


Yeah, anything that had something to do with anime. What would you say was the target group in ages?

I liked Pokemon for a brief time as a child. ;\ About six months to a year maybe?

I stopped liking it about the time I broke my arm playing a silly game centered around Pokemon. It left a bad taste in my mouth for the series you could say.

Now it's just a very old series and I don't get the appeal of it anymore -- especially the anime. A good portion of the show is just cute anime characters saying their names over and over again. 

The video games are tolerable I suppose.

It is difficult to believe it has been 15 years since the anime aired in America though.

Yeah, anything that had something to do with anime. What would you say was the target group in ages?


Hard to put an exact date on it, but I'd say the fad around the anime probably centered on those born in the late 80's and early 90's. I knew some mid 80's born guys that liked the show when I was in junior high, but that was rarer.

But like I said, everybody loved the original Gameboy games (Red, Blue and Yellow). Even my older cousin who was born in the early 80's played those back in the late 90's.

Hard to put an exact date on it, but I'd say the fad around the anime probably centered on those born in the late 80's and early 90's.


There were some guys in one of my English courses at University last week who talked about Pokemon nostalgia. I think they were all born in the early 90s.

The only thing that came to my mind: WTF are they talking about??? Am I so old? Have I missed something? ;D

But like I said, everybody loved the original Gameboy games (Red, Blue and Yellow). Even my older cousin who was born in the early 80's played those back in the late 90's.

I think the Gameboy series came out around 2000 over here. After I got my PC, I stopped playing Gameboy and buying games.

I think the Gameboy series came out around 2000 over here. After I got my PC, I stopped playing Gameboy and buying games.


That makes sense then. Red and Blue came out here in America back in 1996, and after sort of flying under the radar for a few years, they really started taking off after the anime in 1998. They went on to become among the biggest selling games in history, so they obviously achieved a reach beyond just the fans of the TV show though.

Actually, Red and Blue came out in 1998, not 1996.

In Japan, Red and Green came out in February 1996, then a third version called Blue came later that year.

The US version was release was in September of 1998, which is quite a lengthy time period just for localizing a game. The reason for this was due to the original Red and Green's source code being too fragile to simply translate the game into English, so they took the Japanese Blue version and redid it into two versions.

(The Japanese Blue version was made due to the fact that Red and Green, while not making record sales, were selling at a steady pace. Most of Red and Green's monster sprites were kind of ugly, so they did a updated version with better graphics and got their cash cow)

Anyway... back to the cartoon.

I have watched the anime on and off, although I prefer the movies more. I own 6 of them.

Actually, Red and Blue came out in 1998, not 1996.

In Japan, Red and Green came out in February 1996, then a third version called Blue came later that year.

The US version was release was in September of 1998, which is quite a lengthy time period just for localizing a game. The reason for this was due to the original Red and Green's source code being too fragile to simply translate the game into English, so they took the Japanese Blue version and redid it into two versions.

(The Japanese Blue version was made due to the fact that Red and Green, while not making record sales, were selling at a steady pace. Most of Red and Green's monster sprites were kind of ugly, so they did a updated version with better graphics and got their cash cow)


Thanks for correcting the record there. It didn't even occur to me that I had gotten the dates mixed up until well after I posted that. ;)

On another note, I wonder if the complicated localization process has anything to do with the absurd amount of glitches the first gen Pokemon games have? I mean, I know that early Game Boy games tended to be glitchy back then, but some of the stuff on Red and Blue (like Missingno. and the unlimited Master Ball glitch) was pretty ridiculous.

Thanks for correcting the record there. It didn't even occur to me that I had gotten the dates mixed up until well after I posted that. ;)

On another note, I wonder if the complicated localization process has anything to do with the absurd amount of glitches the first gen Pokemon games have? I mean, I know that early Game Boy games tended to be glitchy back then, but some of the stuff on Red and Blue (like Missingno. and the unlimited Master Ball glitch) was pretty ridiculous.


The Japanese versions have the glitches too(although the original Red and Green's Missingno. glitch did something different, I'm not sure about the Japanese Blue version though). There was actually a glitch in the original Red and Green that got fixed in the later versions. It's called Dokokashira door glitch.

The Dokokashira door glitch takes advantage of the fact that in Pokémon Red and Green, the player is able to switch the slots of items as well as Pokémon. However, an oversight of this feature was that if the player were to press the Select button on the items screen and then attempt to switch one of his or her Pokémon, he or she would arguably be switching a Pokémon with an item.

When the player attempts to switch an item with a Pokémon, this is essentially like switching information about other data in the game, such as what kinds of items the player has, or the map location of the player. The game will take an item to be the information about one of the "Pokémon" past the sixth slot (or data after the amount of Pokémon that the player currently has in the party).

When the player switches Oak's Parcel as the second item in his or her Bag with his or her first Pokémon, this will 'shuffle' several bytes within the game. Some of these effects are undesirable, such as slight graphical errors on the main map interface; however, one of the more useful effects will ensure that the warp location of the next door the player walks through is relevant to the amount of extra steps he or she takes, with the warp location changing every extra four steps.

It's understandable why they removed that one in later versions.

The reason for the source code being a problem to work with during the localization was due to the lengthy development time of the original Japanese versions.

Satoshi Tajiri and his crew actually started working on Pokemon(at that time called Capsule Monsters, before being renamed Pocket Monsters) back in 1990 with the intent of releasing it in 1991. However, at the time, they weren't what you would call a wealthy 3rd party developer. They often had money issues that caused them to stop development of the game. They ended up doing other games to help get the money to continue working Pokemon. It was an on and off cycle, money problems were a reoccurring theme with the original game's development. This cycle continued until they finally got it done for release in 1996. Having game code like that shelved part of time made it pretty unstable and poor(probably more due to them having to retrace where they were at when resuming). It wouldn't surprise me if the glitches were a byproduct of the unusually lengthy development time.

In a way though, it's good that they used the Japanese Blue version(Which had fresher coding, making it possible to translate)  instead of Red and Green, as it had better monster art sprites than the originals.

Another interesting fact: The localization team working on the originals talked to Nintendo of Japan's president about changing the monster art and beefing up some of them, to try and help them appeal to the American audience. They were afraid the games wouldn't sell that well with the cutesy monster art. He flat out told them no(something that I'm happy was rejected, I probably wouldn't have gotten into the series if those changes had happened).

The handbook even mentioned the anime.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51bYzu533OL._SL500_AA300_.jpg


Holy crap! I used to have that handbook back then!  :o