On February 27 1996, Nintendo launched Tajiri's game in Japan as a Game boy game called "Pocket Monsters"(known as Pokemon in most other countries now). The next day, CoroCoro Comics released a new comic series, "Pocket Monsters". The first comic's title was "Strange Pokemon Pippi" (Pippi is Clefairy in English).
By September 1996, 1 million Pokemon game boy games were sold. This game proved to be a huge success, and on October 20th, the Pokemon Trading Card Game was distributed in Japan. By March 1997, 3 million Pokemon games were sold.
On April 1st, 1997, the first animated show, "Pocket Monster" was aired on Television Tokyo. By June '97, Pokemon Blue was released into the Japanese market, which also proved to be a huge success. By August, the combined sales of Pokemon Green, Red, and Blue exceeded the total amount sold of the game series "Super Mario Brothers". On April 25, 1998, the first Pokemon Center opened in Tokyo. On July 18 1998, the first Pokemon movie, "The Revenge of the Pocket Monster Mewtwo" and "Pikachu's Vacation" was released in Japan.
In September 1998, Pocket Monsters, was introduced as Pokemon to North Americans. By the end of the month, over 1 million copies of the game were sold. By January, pokemon cards were being sold all across North America. By the end of the year 1999, over $4 billion dollars (US) of Pokemon merchandise and games had been sold worldwide.
The Pokemon phenomenon has been one of the most profitable things ever. New games, cards, and merchandise is still being sold across the world, in many, many different languages. Though its popularity has declined starting in 2002, it is still extremely popular where it started- Japan.
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