Let's Theorycraft a World Where Pokémon Never Existed

[Gromoff]

Pokémon is one of the most influential and highest grossing media franchises of all time, but let's imagine a world where Pokémon doesn't exist.
Everything else about the universe is 100% identical except for the fact that Pokémon as a whole simply doesn't exist, and whatever ripple-effects that would cause.
How different would pop-culture be as a result of this? For example:

• Would Nintendo have still released the Game Boy Color, or would they have jumped straight to Project Atlantis (the GBA's predecessor)?
• Would Digimon have become a monster taming game, or would it have remained an obscure Tamagotchi clone?
• Would the western anime industry be as big as it is now without Pokémon to introduce so many people to the medium?
• Without Pokémon money constantly flowing in, how much more worse would Nintendo be doing in the N64, GCN & Wii U eras?
• Without Pokémon fulfilling the JRPG niche in Nintendo's library, would we see more games in series like Golden Sun or MOTHER to fill the void?
• What would Game Freak be doing without Pokémon? Would they just remain code-monkeys for hire, or would they find some other niche, or just dissolve?
• Finally, how different would YOUR life be if Pokémon was a non-factor into it?

Feel free to input any other things you believe would change with no Pokémon as well.

 

[Yousef]

Unsure on project Atlantis. But I don’t think Pokémon was the reason they made a GBC.


Digimon was virtually doing its own thing almost all the time. It’s like it wasn’t even aware Pokémon existed. It borrowed a lot more from SMT, Shonen tropes and Tokusatsu than anything else.

Yes it would. Dbz, sailor moon, yugioh and many others would still be there.

Nintendo home consoles would do more or less the same without Pokémon existing.

Golden sun and mother would thrive without Pokémon.

I’m not sure if gamefreak would be around today if it weren’t for Pokémon.

My life would be exactly the same without Pokémon.

I think most of the universe wouldn’t be that different without Pokémon. It’s just the clones wouldn’t exist but even then, there’s not many definitive clones. Even monster rancher was likely a Digimon-like.
So yeah almost nothing would change. The “monster collecting” genre would likely just be attributed to smt or Digimon or god-forbid, the chao garden in sonic.

 

[ATenderLad]

At the very least, the trend of two nearly identical games releasing together wouldn't have taken off, cutting the GBA and GBC libraries by fuckin' half.

That's a bit of hyperbole, but seriously, it's insane they ever got away with it.

That they *still* get away with it.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Without Pokemon, Nintendo would have had a really hard time pitching the link cable to their costumers and is likely that that they wouldn't have been able focus so many of their resources on multiplayer games, dual releases and multimedia franchises.

 

[Yousef]

At the very least, the trend of two nearly identical games releasing together wouldn't have taken off, cutting the GBA and GBC libraries by fuckin' half.

That's a bit of hyperbole, but seriously, it's insane they ever got away with it.

That they *still* get away with it.

Nintendo is a very, very, very silly company.

 

[7eve70rd]

I played Pokemon Red on original Gameboy hardware.

I remember thinking it was stupid to release the same game in two minimal variations.

 

[DunkeyKong]

Then I couldn't sleep without them plushies

 

[Gorse]

Something else would have filled the void. The late 90s were full of creature franchises, and Tamagotchi was already on the scene in western nations a year before Pokemon. The next big thing would have sprouted from that world of virtual pets — if not Tamagotchi, then Digimon (which 100% would still exist, because it was just the boy Tamagotchi), Neopets, Sony AIBO, that Japanese dolphin PC game… there were a lot of options.

Pokemon succeeded because it had more monsters that were better-designed than those other franchises and was on a very popular and cheap games console, but there was clearly a desire being filled even without it. I think people at the time just really liked the idea of little computer animals you could be friends with.

 

[Gromoff]

You know what I mean.View attachment 7175

Ok, but consider the following: