Imagine you're standing in a bright, busy city in Japan. It's 1996, and you're holding

a brand new Game Boy in your hands. All around you, kids are talking about a fun, new game.

They call it Pocket Monsters. You're so excited to see what it's all about. You pop the tiny

gray game cartridge into your Game Boy. The screen lights up glowing

green in your hands. Suddenly you spot a little yellow creature called Pikachu. It has pointy ears,

red cheeks, and a cute lightning bolt tail. Pikachu blinks at you, making you smile and feel excited.

You don't know it yet, but Pikachu will become

very famous in Pokemon games. Soon people all over the world will recognize Pikachu and love

seeing it in cartoons, toys, and even movies. This year 202026 is very special. It's the 30th

anniversary of Pokemon. For three whole decades, people have been catching, trading, and playing with Pokemon.

Let's go back to the very beginning and find out how Pokemon became one of the biggest games anywhere.

Pokemon started with a young man in Japan named Satoshi Tajuri.

When Satoshi was a boy, he loved to catch bugs

in the fields near his home. He would watch them crawl, jump, and sometimes fly away. He liked

to collect them and see how many different kinds he could find. His friends called him

Dr. Bug. As Satoshi grew up, the field started to disappear.

New buildings and roads replaced them.

Satoshi missed the days when he could search for bugs.

He wanted to make something that would let kids feel the same joy he felt.

Satoshi also loved video games, especially the Game Boy, a small gray box you could take anywhere

to play. He wondered if he could make a game where kids could collect creatures, like he'd

once collected bugs, he had a big idea, a game where players could find, trade, and

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