Pokémon Statues

Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, a company founded by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. The franchise was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996, and is centered on fictional creatures called “Pokémon“. In Pokémon, humans, known as Pokémon Trainers, catch and train Pokémon to battle other Pokémon for sport. All media works within the franchise are set in the Pokémon universe. The English slogan for the franchise is “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!“. There are currently more than 900 Pokémon species. The franchise began as Pokémon Red and Blue, a pair of video games for the original Game Boy handheld system that were developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo in February 1996. It soon became a media mix franchise adapted into various different media. Pokémon has since become the highest-grossing media franchise of all time. The video game series is the fourth best-selling video game franchise, behind Nintendo’s own Mario franchise, Tetris and Call of Duty with more than 380 million copies sold and one billion mobile downloads, and it spawned an anime television series that has become the most successful video game adaptation with over 20 seasons and 1,000 episodes in 183 countries.

In addition, the Pokémon franchise includes the world’s top-selling toy brand, the top-selling trading card game with over 34.1 billion cards sold, an anime film series, a live-action film (Detective Pikachu), books, manga comics, music, merchandise, and a temporary theme park. The franchise is also represented in other Nintendo media, such as the Super Smash Bros. series, where various Pokémon characters are playable. In celebration of its 25th anniversary in 2021, the upcoming core series games, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will be released on November 19, 2021, and Pokémon Legends Arceus on January 28, 2022, both for the Nintendo Switch. They are remakes and a “premake” of the 2006 Nintendo DS games Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, respectively. Pokémon is set in the fictional Pokemon universe. There are numerous regions that have appeared in the various media of the Pokémon franchise. There are 8 main series regions set in the main series games: Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh/Hisui, Unova, Kalos, Alola, and Galar.

Each of the eight generations of the main series releases focuses on a new region. Every region consists of several cities and towns that the player must explore in order to overcome many waiting challenges, such as Gyms, Contests and villainous teams. At different locations within each region, the player can find different types of Pokémon, as well as helpful items and characters. Different regions are not accessible from one another at all within a single game, only with the exception of Kanto and Johto being linked together in Pokémon Gold, Silver, Crystal, HeartGold and SoulSilver versions. There are also regions set in spinoff games and two islands in the Pokémon anime (Orange Islands and Decolore Islands), all still set within the same fictional universe. Each main series region in the Pokémon universe is based on a real world location. The first 4 introduced regions (Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh/Hisui) are based on parts of Japan, with later regions being based on parts of the United States (Unova and Alola), France (Kalos) and the United Kingdom (Galar).