At around 193 million units versus Pokémon’s 155 million, Mario may have sold more games overall, but considering the wide variety of stuff he stars in and the length of time he’s been around; Pokémon is arguably the more significant videogame phenomenon.
Pikachu and the gang have enjoyed peaks and endured troughs since the original game’s 1996 Japanese debut, but no matter how many times people have tried to write off Pokémon, it remains hugely popular. It’s a cultural volcano that can lie semi-dormant for years before erupting to shower a fresh audience with white-hot gobbets of fluffy gaming magma. Without further ado, here are just a few of our favorite/weirdest/most significant Poké-moments from the last decade-and-a-bit.
Unlikely unions
The ability to have pokémon produce offspring in Ruby and Sapphire gave rise to some fairly improbable couplings - not least the union of giant Wailord (14.5m tall, 398kg) with little Diglett (20cm, 0.8kg). No amount of debate has solved the problem of how such a thing would be possible without resulting in the death of one party and the eternal shame of the other.
An AI's mission to 'teach' itself Pokemon Red is going as well as you think - after escaping Cerulean City after tens of hours, it went right on back
Pokemon Legends Z-A's visuals aren't "great" say former Nintendo marketing leads, but hope Switch 2 could allow Game Freak to "go back to the drawing board" and add more detail to future RPGs
