Before its première, Nintendo didn't appear too confident in a project which had arisen from what was previously a magazine about video games, worked on by Ken Sugimori, Satoshi Tajiri and Junichi Masuda.
The three of them worked together to become developers and were able to publish the first instalments together with Atsuko Nishida, one of the franchise's most significant yet forgotten designers. The creator of Pikachu.
In the end, the games were released as the first notable intellectual property owned by Game Freak, but they were far from a total success. It wasn't until the discovery of Mew that the public fell in love with the saga.
Sales shot up and eventually they were able to follow up by producing new instalments. However, the second generation increased sales by so much that they decided to carry on.
It became an endless circle. People became interested in the series through the anime or the films, stayed for the video games and then moved on to the card game to draw out their Pokémon fever until the early 2000s.
Each game came with its own anime season and fans even got used to receiving a steady stream of films. Pokémon: The First Movie particularly stood out as it led to a boom for the franchise in the West thanks to the character of Mewtwo.
New generations, expansion packs for the card game and even some spin-offs continued to be released. Since Pokémon Stadium, we've had everything from pinball games based on the franchise to the recent Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
Of course, some of the releases have attracted less interest. However, The Pokémon Company have always found a way to revive the franchise to demonstrate that they still had plenty up their sleeve and their copies sold have never fallen below 6.5 million.
A great example of this was Pokémon GO, which came after the latest instalments (Pokémon X and Pokémon Y) received a lot of criticism. It became one of the most successful mobile games in history, achieving over 1 billion downloads.
The recent launch of Pokémon Legends: Arceus had a similar effect, lifting the franchise back up after Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield were harshly criticised. Lots of players even think that the future of the saga should be more similar to this edition.
We mustn't neglect to mention some of the biggest Pokémon eccentricities over time, and the fact that success can lead to the launching of the strangest products.
We've had games like Pokémon Unite, which try to turn the game into a kind of League of Legends based on collectible monsters; Café Mix, which invited us to run a Pokémon-style restaurant; and even an educational product to encourage children to brush their teeth.
Pokémon has reached every corner of the Earth following a quarter of a century of launches. However, it has managed to ensure the survival of its brand even when faced with the infinite imitations that have appeared over the years.
A total success that has changed the world and become one of the main workhorses for Nintendo, who own all the games almost exclusively despite their initial uncertainty about the developers' ideas.
So, there are dozens of Pokémon games... which is your favourite?
