Thought Experiment: What if the Pokémon franchise never existed?

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EmperorofPaldea

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In 1996, a pair of video games dubbed Pocket Monsters Red and Green (although you probably know the franchise by its western name, Pokémon) released for the Game Boy in Japan. Inspired by director Satoshi Tajiri's love of insect catching and the Ultraman television show, the games were set in a world inhabited by magical creatures known as Pokémon, who people could catch and battle each other with. The competitive, strategic nature of the games and the way their dual-version nature encouraged socialisation through trading soon made the games very popular. More games, mangas, an anime, a tarding card game and other media soon follwoed, and over the years Pokémon worked its way up the pop culture ranks to become a multi-billion dollar franchise - the highest-grossing of all time, in fact.

And yet there was a real possibility early on that noen of that could have happened. Bulbapedia has this to say on the development of Red and Green:

"The project nearly drove Game Freak to bankruptcy. Five employees quit due to the financial conditions, and Tajiri worked many unpaid hours."

So what if, in an alternate universe, that threat of bankruptcy came to pass and the entire Pokémon franchise was snuffed out in the crub?

DIscuss!
 
Ooooh. This is a great question!

No Pokémon means that pop culture would look absolutely different. A lot of creature collecting games were inspired by Pokémon. And with no Pokémon, those don't come into fruition. Considering that some real world things are named after Pokémon, it affects more than just pop culture but also just some aspects of science as a whole.

Oh, and of course, no Pokémon means no Bulbagarden and thus, this entire website wouldn't exist.
 
Instead of collecting pokemon, all of us would have to contend with collecting stamps. /j

MTG would have a lot more players, and Shin Megami Tensei series would probably develop more spinoff games that targeted the same demographics as the original Pokemon.
 
*Pop culture would be very different if Pokemon never existed since the series is always referenced in other media.

*I think the Nintendo Handhelds wouldn't be as successful since Pokemon is the reason why lot of people bought the GB and 3DS later in their lives. Especially the latter since I think Ultra Sun and Moon alongside Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia were the only ones successful after the Switch released.

*Palworld and Yo-kai Watch wouldn't exist. Digimon was a coincidence since it was created as an alternative to the Tamagotchi so it would still exist.

*Maybe some of the Pokemon designs get reused in other Nintendo games if the series was still being made but canceled.
 
Maybe Digimon would be bigger, but not necessarily… or maybe the genre would be more niche without the popularity of pokemania.
 
This question is really interesting not just because of how the world at large would change, but also how my individual life would change quite a bit.

Pokemon has been a huge interest of mine for the majority of my life, and it's hard to imagine what kind of person i'd be if i never was able to get into it. I have to question if i'd even be that much of a fan of video games and anime without pokemon. I think realistically id still be very nerdy as a person because both of my parents introduced me to a lot of nerdy stuff fairly young, but it's interesting to think about where the path could have spilt.
 
Ooooh interesting thread topic and thinkpiece

I think a very interesting wrinkle in this is that Pokémon hit at a time Nintendo proper wasn't doing too hot irt to N64 along with the Game Boy showing it's age, so it kinda gave them a massive boost at the time (they notably had a 250% increase in profits during 1999 compared to '98, and almost certainly the now global Pokémania was a leading factor in that)

Do we think Pokémon's absence would've greatly affected Nintendo's bottom line? I don't think they'd have gone the way of SEGA or whatever, post-N64 or GameCube, but i do think they'd have less expenses and such. Perhaps we'd see a lesser game output?
 
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Juliyet said:
Do we think Pokémon's absence would've greatly affected Nintendo's bottom line? I don't think they'd have gone the way of SEGA or whatever, post-N64 or GameCube, but i do think they'd have less expenses and such. Perhaps we'd see a lesser game output?
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I think it would probably only affect their handheld sales. Pokemon on home consoles pre switch was never going to be a big hitter for Nintendo, but was THE sales juggernaut on handhelds. I do believe the DS would’ve still sold really well on its own, but I’m not even sure we would’ve gotten to that point without pokemon on all three gameboy systems. Maybe this timeline sees Nintendo call it quits with handhelds after the GBA. Alternatively, we could’ve seen more people get in on the handheld market due to Nintendo being less dominant. Maybe sega makes a successor the game gear, Sony makes more than two handhelds, and Microsoft creates one in general. That would’ve been really cool.
 
Pigrider09 said:
I think it would probably only affect their handheld sales. Pokemon on home consoles pre switch was never going to be a big hitter for Nintendo, but was THE sales juggernaut on handhelds. I do believe the DS would’ve still sold really well on its own, but I’m not even sure we would’ve gotten to that point without pokemon on all three gameboy systems. Maybe this timeline sees Nintendo call it quits with handhelds after the GBA
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One notable one is the 3DS since I think it would have peaked earlier without Pokemon. Maybe by 2015 in the west after the release of Smash 3DS.

Maybe the New 3DS XL would have released later or not at all in North America because of less demand. The regular New 3DS was already almost nonexistent there so it's possible that NoA would have just skipped the whole line.
 
I wonder how much it would affect the handheld market; Pokémon was one of the few must-have titles on the Gameboy, and I sometime wonder if the Gameboy Advance or DS would have come out without their massive sales.

Another thought is how it would affect Dragon Quest Monsters. DQM came out a few years after Red/Blue, but the seeds for it started appearing well before that, and it seems from the Dragon Quest wiki that they started planning a monster based spinoff a bit before Pokémon released. The Dragon Quest wiki claims a few of DQM's ideas were inspired by Pokémon, and that Pokémon's success inspired the idea of making it a Gameboy game.
I suspect, however, that in this timeline we may not get an English version of the early DQM games; Dragon Quest had a shaky record for games being localized a long time.
 
Pokémon became a way for me to make conversation and maintain friendships. I many have still had those friendships, sure, but it’s a big thing that’s connected me and lots of other people. It’s the biggest thing my dad and I bonded over, it helped me feel so much closer with him. A big coping mechanism in troublesome times too. I would have survived, but I don’t like to think of a world without pokémon. So many happy memories I’ll never forget.
 
English dub wise, Pokémon was massively popular for 4Kids so not only would they have likely not lasted very long in the industry before biting the dust much earlier but they probably wouldn't have gotten Yu-Gi-Oh either with that going to a different company. And without Pokémon I'm not sure people would have recognised Veronica Taylor or Sarah Natochenny or Lisa Ortiz any of the other many VA's involved (or they would but it'd be for an entirely different series that's popular in Bizarro Land).

Also would have meant that not only would Pikachu not exist at all (a terrible thought in my case being a big fan and all) but also Ash Ketchum would never exist, he'd have never started his Pokémon journey as a result, there never would have been a change in leads years later (so no Liko or Roy or The Explorers) and Arceus would have just stayed in bed. Oh wait, he can't do that cause he doesn't exist either.
 
The world would certainly be VERY different but since Digimon came before Pokemon my guess would be, Digimon would have become what Pokemon is today. There is also Monster Rancher and Dragon Quest Monsters to consider and may have grown much bigger too but I can't think how different things would be for Nintendo.
 
Deadman said:
The world would certainly be VERY different but since Digimon came before Pokemon my guess would be, Digimon would have become what Pokemon is today.
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Internationally to be specific since Pokemon released earlier in 1996 in Japan compared to Digimon which was at 1997.

Digimon would still existed.
 
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