"Gotta catch them all!"

Pokémon is a media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, a Japanese grouping between Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures. The franchise was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995, and is based on fictional creatures called "Pokémon", which humans, known as Pokémon Trainers, catch and train to battle each other for sport.

The franchise began as a pair of video games for the original Game Boy.. The franchise now spans video games, trading card games, animated television shows, movies, comic books, and toys. Pokémon is the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's Mario franchise.

Pokémon Red and Green Versions were finally released to sale on February 27th, 1996, in Japan. Initially sales were modest, but the discovery and highly exclusive distribution of news through CoroCoro magazine soon whipped buyers into a frenzy, and Pokémon became a cultural phenomenon.

The franchise exploded; toys, t-shirts, bedspreads, socks, backpacks, fast food, stationary... nothing was spared. It became a global phenomenon that has rarely been matched before or since. Now in 2016 we see Pokémon Go: a free-to-play location-based reality mobile game. It was released in most regions of the world in July 2016. Making use of GPS and the camera of compatible devices, the game allows players to capture, battle, and train virtual Pokemon creatures, who appear on device screens as though in the real world. From a Technological perspective, Pokemon Go is based on very sophisticated maps and lightweight augmented or mixed reality. As users race around capturing Pokemon, they’re actually following real world maps. This is also known as ‘Augmented reality.’

Reviewers praised the overall experience of the game and the incentive to adventure in the real world, while noting technical issues that were apparent at launch. The game has quickly become one of the fastest downloaded and most used smart device apps, surpassing the previous record held by Candy Crush Saga in the United States. In the past few days the game has been downloaded by more than 30 million people worldwide.

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