Pokemon 20th anniversary

                                                      Pokémon 20th Anniversary-Wenhao Fan

   As most people may know, this is the year when Game Freak, the company that created the Pokémon franchise, released Pokémon Go, and it will also be releasing the seventh generation game, Pokémon Sun and Moon in a few day's time. However, what many may not know that the year of 2016 is also the year of the 20th anniversary for the Pokémon franchise.

    Satoshi Tajiki, who can be considered the father of Pokémon, was very fond of capturing insects and tadpoles as a child, and that’s how he first came up with the idea. With the help of many friends, Tajiki formed the Game Freak. After noticing the Game Boy system, he and his friends came up with the idea of making his hobby-capturing small critters-into an electronic game. Therefore, they began to suggest the idea to Nintendo. It wasn’t easy, a company as big as Nintendo has no reason to pay much attention to a newly developed group. In the end, with the help of Shigeru Miyamoto, a famous Japanese game designer, Nintendo finally agreed to fund the project called Capsule Monsters. After six years of the development, the game was finally released under the name Pocket Monster, or Pokémon, due to trademark issues.

    Officially, the first game of the series was released onto the Game Boy system on February 27, 1996. It wasn’t so famous at the beginning, but once people discovered New, the first Legendary Pokémon in the game, it went viral. The videogame and toy magazine, CoroCoro, certainly influenced by holding a distribution of twenty Mews to twenty participants. This competition received 78000 entrants in the end, and people finally began paying attention to the game of Pokémon.

    Unlike many games which only have the general public’s attention for no more than two years, the Pokémon franchise has lasted for two decades now. Its constant development is what made it special, it is always able to surprise us. On one hand, it constantly upgrades the original game, from pixel to HD, from 2d to 3d, and developing new Pokémon's every year. On the other hand, it does not only follow the track of the monster capturing RPG, it also develops the same game in different forms, such as the Pokémon go, or the Pokémon Tournament (a not very well known Pokémon action combat game). The constant hard work and stubbornness of the creator is what made the game different from all others, the spirit of never giving up is what made it last. It’s no longer just a game, it has become a memory, a symbol of the childhood of many people all around the world. Pokémon, happy 20th anniversary.