Pokémon

Pokemon, short for Pocket Monsters, is a Japanese media franchise created by Satoshi Tajiri and developed by Game Freak, launched by Nintendo with the video games Pokemon Red and Green for the Game Boy in 1996, in which players capture, train and battle creatures called Pokemon while traveling through a fictional region. The franchise expanded quickly into an anime television series that began airing in 1997, a widely traded and collected trading card game, films, manga and an enormous range of merchandise, and by combined revenue across games, cards, media and licensed merchandise it is generally regarded as the highest grossing media franchise in the world, with estimates placing its total revenue above 100 billion dollars. Its mobile game Pokemon Go, released in 2016 and built around real world augmented reality gameplay, became a global cultural phenomenon in its own right, and the franchise's mascot, the electric mouse Pikachu, is among the most recognized fictional characters anywhere in the world.