Pokemon reaches American stores just before a color Game Boy
Pokemon Red and Blue went on sale in North America on September 28, 1998, with the Game Boy Color arriving weeks afterward. A nine-year-old handheld line became a mass-market product all over again.
North American release of Red and Blue; the Game Boy Color reached North America weeks later
Entry 98 of 164 in the record
What happened
Nintendo's American arm was cautious about the property. It was already two years old in Japan, it ran on monochrome hardware most of the industry had written off, and the premise took some explaining. The company chose a large coordinated push anyway, with a television series entering syndication around the same period and a trading card release to follow, so a child who encountered one part of it found the others waiting nearby. The effect compounded quickly through the autumn and into the following year.
Two things made the games spread differently from an ordinary hit. Ownership was incomplete by design, since neither version contained every creature, and the missing ones could only be obtained from another player through a cable. That turned playgrounds into trading floors and made the handheld a social object rather than a solitary one. Adults found the whole business baffling and occasionally alarming, a reaction several school districts confirmed by banning the cards from classrooms outright.
The Game Boy Color, which reached North America that November, gave the line a modest technical refresh without breaking compatibility with anything already on shelves. It was not a powerful machine by the standards of 1998, and it did not need to be. Nintendo had learned that software mattered more than specifications, a conclusion the company applied repeatedly afterward, most visibly in the handhelds and the consoles it built across the following decade.
The world at the time
Handheld gaming in 1998 looked like a mature and shrinking business. Rivals with color screens had failed against the Game Boy on price and battery life, and the Game Boy itself was nine years old. Attention in the American market was fixed on 32-bit and 64-bit consoles, and a monochrome cartridge game was not where publishers expected growth.
Historical significance
The Western launch turned a Japanese success into a global franchise and bought Nintendo's handheld business a second decade. It also provided the clearest demonstration yet that designing for exchange between players, rather than for solitary completion, can sell hardware on its own.
What it changed
The franchise became one of the highest-grossing media properties in the world, spanning television, film, cards and merchandise. Nintendo's portable line stayed dominant through several more generations, each launching alongside a new entry in the series. The trading and collecting structure was widely imitated, and it reappeared almost two decades later in a location-based phone game built on the same creatures.
Sources consulted
- Replay: The History of Video Games
- Consolidated financial statements and hardware shipment data
- Pokemon
Listed sources support the facts in this entry. Wording throughout is original to this archive. Read more about how entries are researched in sources and methodology.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026. Report a correction