“people like talking about pokemon”
– Nameless Rumia

Pocket Monsters(ポケットモンスター), or Pokémon(ポケモン), is a long-running Japanese video game franchise, credited to Satoshi Tajiri, that released their first handheld console games in 1996 and sparked a worldwide phenomenon. It is owned by a three-way venture called The Pokémon Company.

In recent years, the franchise has received its fair brush of criticism as a cash cow on a tight release cadence, pumping out an anime series, movies, trading cards, video games, etc. To keep things brief, this article is only focused on the core video game franchise.

As the story goes, the Pokémon universe features humans co-existing with Pokemon creatures that humans can generally collect, raise, breed, and train to victory. The premise is simple, but you do have to consider that the games were quite innovative for its time when you consider everything that the developers could jam into a mere cartridge, despite their modern reputation of being a completely buggy mess.

This section contains a handmade list of 'Walk Through Walls' (WTW) cheat codes, namely for the first three generations of the core games.¹⁾ I've been looking these up for years, mostly out of a fascination with the map design. These shouldn't require a 'master code' and aren't guaranteed to work with hacks or cracktro variants. Any help with the Japanese codes would be appreciated.²⁾

For Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, the last digit of your Trainer ID will determine a few optional events which were meant to be exchanged whenever you mixed records with other players. As a side note, multilingual record mixing is only possible with Emerald. Record mixing isn't possible in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, so this information may not be applicable and these events may play out differently as a result.

This chart does not include the Pokémon Center Lady in Lilycove City, since their calculation method is more complicated, and your trainer class in the Union Room is randomized. While we're here, if you happen to be hunting for a Feebas on Route 119, their six fishing spots actually rely on the trend in Dewford Town, which you can calculate with the Feebas Tile Calculator.

At some point, I considered making a simple ROM hack of Emerald, and wrote down brief summaries of the intended experience with the Hoenn Battle Frontier. I no longer have use for these notes.

• Battle Factory - Choose from a random selection of Pokémon and see how far your team goes.
• Battle Arena - You have three turns to beat your foe, then your performance is judged.
• Battle Dome - Bring three, only use two. This becomes a tense guessing game as you progress.
• Battle Pike - Select from three doors and hope for the best. It's all about taking risks.
• Battle Palace - This facility mainly depends on your Pokémon's nature and how lucky you get.
• Battle Pyramid - Calculate every move. Brave conditions, conserve power, find items, etc.
• Battle Tower - Every single trainer usually has a useful held item. Sounds simple enough, yeah?

Due to its international reach, the franchise has been localized into many different languages, so things like attacks, characters, monsters, events, labels, and so forth can have multiple names, which can easily get confusing. This makes it a prime subject of translation analysis. However, do note this article will not be going over everything, that's just too much and some of it is out of my scope.

In the Johto games, you have the Week Siblings, a group of non-playable characters that will show up at certain spots on certain days of the week. The following chart is a compilation of their names, next to the respective day of the week in the respective language, since I didn't like how Bulbapedia presented the data. For fun, I've also included some fan translations that didn't just copy the English names.³⁾

While Pokémon was introduced to China in 1998, the PRC's ban of video game consoles from 2000 to 2014 hampered localization efforts,⁴⁾ limiting the experience to anime, manga, and bootleg copies. As a result, Pokémon had several names amongst its Mandarin-speaking and Cantonese-speaking audiences. It was not until 2019 that The Pokemon Company settled on “Bǎokěmèng” (宝可梦).⁵⁾

• It's often said that Dragon Quest and MOTHER served as major inspirations for Pokémon.
  • The MOTHER and Pokémon franchises have a special tie, as Tsunekazu Ishihara worked with Ape Inc. before setting up Creatures Inc. with his former co-workers. Shigesato Itoi has also mentioned in a 2019 GameCenter CX interview that the team that had stepped up to develop MOTHER 2 is the same team that went on to develop Pokémon.⁷⁾
  • Personally, I'd like to believe MOTHER's localization attempts may have helped Pokemon reach a broader audience, considering that Kanto relies on a generic urban fantasy feel than having explicitly Japanese influences, so players may not even realize that the game was even Japanese. Contrast with Yo-kai Watch, a very Japanese franchise that hasn't had a lot of reach.
• Now, here's a handful of notes on the Japanese versions of the first generation Pokémon games:
  • The Japanese RGB boxart has a Lv. 5 Charmander named Sepultura,⁸⁾ fighting this Lv. 18 Pidgeotto that might belong to the rival in Cerulean City.⁹⁾ This name was later referenced by an NPC on Route 21 in XY, but only in the Japanese, Korean, and English versions.¹⁰⁾
  • For some reason, an Indian elephant (インドぞう, Indo zou) is oddly mentioned in the Pokédex entries for Raichu and Gastly in Japanese Red and Green, International FireRed, etc.
    • While GSC added the Ground-type elephants Phanpy and Donphan, SwSh added the Steel-type elephants Cufant and Copperajah to serve as a more blatant reference, as the latter is mentioned in the Pokédex entry for Raichu in Legends Arceus.
    • This mainly addresses the whole issue of Ground-type being immune to Electric-type. It doesn't do much for the Ghost/Poison-type,¹¹⁾ but that entry never mentions any attack per se.
  • During the Silph Co. takeover, a Team Rocket scientist on the sixth floor talks about being sent to the “Ponaya Tsungusuka” (ポナヤツングスカ) branch in Russia, often believed to be short for Podkamennaya Tunguska¹²⁾ as a reference to the Tunguska event. The international version changed this to Tiksi in northern Siberia, then LGPE sorta guts the reference.
  • No, “Lavender Town Syndrome” (シオンタウン症候群, Shion Taun Shōkōgun) isn't real, kid.¹³⁾
• The Eeveelutions are often called the “Buizu”/“Vees”/“Vs” (ブイズ) in Japanese.¹⁴⁾ I don't know why Bulbapedia insists on “Ībuizu”/“EVs” (イーブイズ) or “Buibui”/“Veevee” (ブイブイ) instead.
• According to illustrator Ken Sugimori, the male protagonist of RSE (and ORAS) is wearing a knit cap,¹⁵⁾ alternatively known as a beanie, a toboggan, a toque, a watch cap, a winter hat, etc.
• I personally insist that Green is the boy and Blue is the girl. However, I will concede that Leaf, while she is definitely a Blue variant, is probably just a weird Kris to Lyra situation.
• In BW, “The Riches” in Undella Town are called “Bourgeoir” (ブルジョワール) in Japanese, directly referencing the bourgeoisie. This is retained in the Chinese, Korean, and Italian versions.
• The game color palettes were directly borrowed from Bulbapedia, specifically the lighter palettes.¹⁶⁾

• Bootleg Pokémon Games - A list of unlicensed Pokémon games, excludes sprite hacks.
• Kaizō Pokémon (改造ポケモン) / Pokémon ROM Hacks:
  • List of Pokémon ROM Hacks that use Existing Regions - Tentative name.
  • Moekko Monsters - It's one of the oldest Japanese hacks, featuring humanoid moe creatures.
  • Touhou Ningyougeki (Touhou Puppet Play) - The obligatory Touhou Project crossover.
  • VIP Monsters - An old Japanese VIP-themed ROM hack, featuring AA characters from that era.
• Twitch Plays Pokémon