Pokemon and the Game Boy: The Whole Story in One Place

By the start of 1996 the Game Boy was supposed to be finished. It was seven years old, it still drew the whole world in four shades of grey-green, and the rest of the industry had raced ahead to 32-bit consoles, polygons and CD-ROM. Then a small Tokyo studio called Game Freak released two cartridges about catching creatures in long grass, and almost overnight the ageing handheld became the most wanted machine in Japan.

The cartridges were Pocket Monsters Red and Green. Their designer, Satoshi Tajiri, had spent his childhood collecting insects, and he built a game around the same quiet thrill: find a creature, catch it, and show it to a friend. The clever part lived in the Game Boy's link port. To complete the Pokedex of 151 creatures you had to trade with another player, because neither version contained them all. A machine that had always been played alone suddenly gave you a reason to meet up, and a console the industry had written off found a second life.

What followed was less a hit than a phenomenon. Blue and then Yellow arrived, an animated series turned Pikachu into a household face, a trading-card game swept schoolyards, and an avalanche of yellow-and-black hardware followed. Pokemon grew into one of the largest entertainment franchises on earth, and all of it started on the grey brick. That is why the museum keeps a whole Pokemon corner, and why this page exists: to gather every Pokemon story in the collection in one place.

The link cable at the heart of it all

If one idea explains the craze, it is trading. Red and Green were deliberately incomplete on their own, with a handful of creatures living in one version and not the other, so the only way to fill the Pokedex was to connect two Game Boys with a link cable and swap. The same cable that had quietly shipped since 1989, mostly for two-player Tetris, turned out to be the key to the whole design. A solitary gadget became something you did shoulder to shoulder with a friend, and that single choice is the reason a nine-year-old handheld outsold machines a full generation newer.

The craze did not stay in Japan for long. An enhanced Blue edition followed at home, and when the games reached the West in 1998 they arrived as Red and Blue, with Yellow close behind to ride the wave of the animated series. By then the little mouse on the box was famous far beyond anyone who had ever owned a console, and the handheld that was supposed to be winding down was selling faster than it had in years.

Why Pokemon has its own corner of the museum

Pokemon never stayed inside the cartridge. It spilled out into Pikachu-branded link cables, printers and cleaning kits, into a keyring-sized Game Boy that chimes the first games' music, into one-off consoles built by fans, and even into glitches that players passed around like folklore. The collection treats all of it as a single story, because together these pieces show how completely one handheld game reshaped Nintendo, and how a grey 1989 brick ended the decade as the home of the biggest name in gaming. The pages below are the way in.

Explore the Pokemon corner

Everything in the collection that touches Pokemon is gathered here, grouped by the kind of story it tells. Start anywhere.

The big picture

Pokemon on the Game Boy: The Little Monsters That Saved a Dying Machine: how Red and Green, and the insect-collecting boy behind them, rescued a handheld the industry had written off.

How Pokemon Gave the Game Boy a Second Life: the craze that revived a console nearly everyone had declared dead.

Born on the Game Boy, Part 5: Pokemon Changes Everything: the series finale, on how an entire global franchise was born on the grey brick.

The games up close

Pokemon Yellow, the Game With Pikachu at Your Heels: the Japanese original where Pikachu trails behind you and shows its moods, a fourteen-million-selling landmark.

Great Game Stories, No. 7: A Trainer's Journey Across Kanto: a fairy-tale retelling of the Red, Green, Blue and Yellow adventure, from Pallet Town to Champion.

MissingNo and the Most Famous Game Boy Glitches: the glitch that invented monsters and duplicated a generation's Rare Candies, and the other legendary bugs of the grey brick.

Pikachu's hardware and spin-offs

Pikachu's Hardware: The Pokemon Accessories of the Game Boy: the link cables, printers and kits all dressed in yellow and black.

A Miniature Game Boy That Plays Pokemon's First Music: a keyring-sized DMG-01 replica that chimes the music of Red and Green.

A Pikachu of My Own: The Fan-Art Game Boy Console: a one-off, fan-made Pikachu console, kept because fan culture is part of the story too.

Guides, cards and the wider craze

The Paper Trail, Part 2: Player's Guides and Strategy Books: the German Pokemon Player's Guide, with its poster map and sticker sheet, among the strategy books on the shelf.

Game Boy in Disguise, Part 4: Cards, Stickers and Sweets: the Pokemon Collectors Egg and the sweet, papery Pokemon tie-ins that rode the craze.

In the collection

Gotta Collect 'Em All: The Pokemon Corner of the Collection: a guided tour of the games, the accessories and the fan pieces gathered on the Pokemon shelf.

From two cartridges in 1996 to a shelf full of yellow hardware, Pokemon is the clearest proof that the Game Boy was never just an old games machine running down the clock. Pick a page above, or come and explore the rest of the collection.