On paper it looks really easy: ‘Digimon’ is a plagiarism of ‘Pokémon‘. And a crude one at that. The series starring Ash Ketchum began airing on April 1, 1997, and the Digital World series would not arrive until March 7, 1999, two years later. But things, at least in Japan, are not usually that easy. Get ready to digievolve on this trip to the late 1990s, because curves are coming. Well, digicurves.
Now everything is out of control
On November 23, 1996, Bandai launched in Japan what was to become the key toy of a whole generation: the Tamagotchi. If nobody in your class burst into tears because the bug had died in the middle of math class, you didn’t live in the late 90s. The toy sold by the bucketload almost immediately, especially to women, and the company saw a huge opportunity: what if they released another virtual pet, but this time for children?
On June 26, 1997, the famous toy company once again tried to revolutionize the Japanese market with the male counterpart to the Tamagotchi: the Digital Monsters, or Digimon for short. It was not so different from the previous year’s invention, except that in this case the monsters fought each other. And of course, new mechanics had to be added, such as making it lose weight by training it to gain strength or healing it before it could start another battle. All very macho, apparently.
Digimon sold 14 million units and of course, an animated series had to be prepared to accompany the sales. As chance would have it, in the same year as the Tamagotchi, a small studio called Game Freak launched a small creature-trapping game called Pokémon for the Game Boy… And so began a false rivalry that, in the hearts of several generations, Nintendo won.
By the way, if you’re curious, in Japan you can still buy Digimon virtual pets (the latest, Pendulum Z, came out in November 2020)… and Tamagotchi, which has had more than one resurgence. Although, of course, where there’s a Pikachu, millennial nostalgia be damned, right?
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