Pokémon

Pok?mon: ???? Pok?mon, although frequently mispronounced Poh-Kee-MAN, is a video game franchise, created by Satoshi Tajiri and published by Nintendo for several of their systems, most importantly the Game Boy. It has been merchandised into anime, manga, trading cards, toys, and much more. The name Pok?mon is a portmanteau of the words Pocket Monsters (????????? Poketto Monsut?), which is its Japanese name.

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Pok?mon is also the collective name for the fictional creatures within the Pok?mon games. The franchise has 386 unique monsters that lie at the heart of the Pok?mon series (391 including currently known Pok?mon from future games and 393 including glitches). These figures have grown from the 151 monsters - including the almost unobtainable Mew - from the original games.

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The Pok?mon games are strategy games with a small RPG element which allow players to catch, collect, and train pets with various abilities, and battle them against each other to build their strength and evolve them into more powerful Pok?mon. Pok?mon battles are based on the non-lethal Eastern sport of fighting insects, but the Pok?mon never bleed or die, only faint. The game's catchphrase used to be "Gotta catch 'em all!", although now it is no longer officially used. The games have sold over 100 million copies to date, not counting the ones released for home consoles (such as the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo GameCube). This makes it the second biggest-selling games franchise ever (after Nintendo's Mario series).

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The Pok?mon characters have become pop-culture icons, with a Pikachu balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, thousands of merchandise items, and in 2005, a theme park in Nagoya, Japan. The prone to offend cartoon South Park spoofed Pok?mon in Episode 310, entitled "Chinpokomon" ("chinpoko" is Japanese slang for penis), in which the executives behind it were revealed to be Japanese ultranationalists bent on avenging Japan's admitted defeat in World War II. Shows such as the Simpsons have made mild references to Pok?mon and other anime in their cartoons.

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Because of the unprecedented popularity of the franchise, Nintendo formed a subsidiary company called The Pok?mon Company to handle the franchise. The subsidiary handles everything from publishing the games in Japan to running the official merchandise stores, the Pok?mon Centers. The Pok?mon Company in turn has a U.S. based subsidiary called Pok?mon USA, of which a minority owner is 4Kids Entertainment, the international distributors (outside Japan) of the popular Pok?mon anime series.

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Video game: A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device. However, with the popular use of the term "video game", it now implies any type of display...

Satoshi Tajiri: Satoshi Tajiri (田尻 智 Tajiri Satoshi, born August 28 1965) is the creator of Pocket Monsters, which later became shortened to Pok?mon....

Nintendo: Nintendo (Japanese: 任天堂; , ) was originally founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards, for use in a Japanese playing card game of the same name. Over the years, it became a video game company, one of the most powerful in the industry. Aside from vid...

Pokémon related Images and Photos (experimental)

Pokemon	Pokemon 3: The Movie (DVD)	Pokemon: All Stars Box Set	Pokemon Elements Vol. 5 (Ice)
Pokemon Elements Vol. 2 (Fire)	Pokemon Elements Vol. 6 (Dark)	Pokemon Elements Vol. 1 (Grass)	Pokemon Elements Vol. 3 (Water)
Pokemon Elements Vol. 8 (Dragon)	Pokemon Elements Vol. 7 (Psychic)	Pokemon Elements Vol. 10 (Rock) (DVD)	Pokemon Elements Vol. 9 (Ghost) (DVD)