was pokemon a game first?

[nesman85]

just curious, was pokemon a video game first and then they made a tv show etc. out of it since it was so popular, or was it something else then they decided to make a game from it?

[NE146]

I believe Pocket Monsters was a humble Gameboy game first, then made into a cartoon. Then the whole shebang got imported to the states as "Pokemon".

But I'm not sure of course. The cartoon may have been planned as a companion to the game...

[Queen Of The Felines]

I think it went from video game, to cartoon, to collectible card game, to video game based on the card game, etc. :)

Kristine

[WiseSalesman]

QOF is correct.....and I'm ashamed I know that.

[CrazyImpmon]

It was mentioned in an article a couple years ago (Newsweek I think) that Pokemon was created as a Gameboy game only. The creators never envisioned anything beyond this but the game was so popular it spurned cartoons and toys. And then the movies.

The reason that article stuck with me is because most of the time the game was created *based* on movies, cartoon, or even existing toys. Pokemon was created before anything else and defied the expections. It defied the rule of entertainment industry as well.

Incidently, Pokemon wasn't the first monster type game. Digimon was out in japan a year before Pokemon.

[WiseSalesman]

Wasn't Monster Rancher before Digimon as well?

[CrazyImpmon]

That... I don't know. I do know MR isn't doing as well in USA though and USA is pretty much the only country in the whole frickin' world that hasn;t seen 3rd season yet. >:( >:( >:( >:(

I'll ask about this on my favorite MR forum.

[DBOZ]

Ha your all wrong. The guy who made it was for comics first. Then they did a cartoon along with the video game. I think he started it back in the late 70's early 80's getting ideas for it. I should know i was part of it and still am, but that was many years ago, like 6th grade.
Darrell

[Chunky]

One of the original PRs that i read was it was a game to come out with the release of the gameboy Pocket.

or who's ass did i pull that from?

[CrazyImpmon]

I don't know about the comics but Digimon was still first, then MR (AKAK Monster Farm in Japan) and finally Pokemon. here's a C&P from my favorite MR forum:


Well, the games came before the cartoons, so those are the ones that any "which came first?" questions should be based on.

The Japanese release of Monster Farm pre-dated Pokemon by about half a year. Or that's what I've been told, by very reliable sources. So Monster Farm was the first, and Pokemon second.

However, that the two games were created independently, without either being a "rip off" of the other, goes without saying. The design cycle of a video game is MUCH longer than six months, and so it's unlikely that the two design teams had any contact. The games themselves are very different, MR is a simulation/raising game, while Pokemon is an RPG.

By the time MR2 and Pokemon Gold and Silver came along, however, the two games had had time for "cross contamination", as it were. Mocchi was clearly a character designed to appeal to Pikachu's fans, while the Pokemon games added characters similar to MR's, including the Phoenix. Each game retained their own, individual style, but tried to increase the similarities between the games, to capitalize on that appeal, of battling monsters.

Digimon is kind of a special case. Digimon developed from Tamaguchi, which pre-dated both MR and Pokemon by at least a year or two. So I think it IS likely that MR was influenced by Tamaguchi, and it's emphasis on raising and training something. It took time before Digimon evolved into their final form of the Digivice, though, and even longer before they became a video game. (In fact, its video game was AFTER its cartoon) So I would call Digimon and MR both offshoots of the same thing, Tamaguchi, and the genre of raising and dating games popular in Japan prior to that.

After all of that, *I* personally, like to remind people of a game published by Electronic Arts in 1986. It was called Mail Order Monsters, and it was released for the Commodore 64, as well as the Apple and Atari computers, I think. It featured a selection of monsters, including several dinosaurs, a plant monster, a shape-changing blob, a psychic humanoid, and a one-eyed round creature with no arms. (but two legs)

You bred your monster in the "Vats", built up its stats by buying upgrades and weapons (like machine guns and gas grenades!) and put it in an arena to battle other monsters. The arena battle was a top-down 2D "player/missile" type of combat, like most games at that time. This was one of my favorite games when I was a kid, and when I first saw MR I knew I would love it. And I did. <G>