THE LIBRARY

Read the denomination first (50 or 105 units), then the issuer and promotion lines in the small print, then the printed card code on the back: a teleca states…

McDonald's first true TCG set came in 2011: twelve holographic cards with Happy Meal toys in North America, following a nine-card Japanese run in 2010; the sets…

Wizards Black Star Promos 40 (Pokémon Center) and 41 (Lucky Stadium), made only for the opening of Pokémon Center New York on November 16, 2001, and obtainable…

Cards with Dot Code strips for Nintendo's e-Reader (Japan, December 1, 2001; North America, September 2002): the Expedition, Aquapolis and Skyridge sets, Japan's…

Because Japan turned store openings into card releases: Mega Tokyo's Pikachu (2014), Sapporo's Pikachu (2016), Tohoku's Pikachu in a Rowlet poncho (2017), and…

Japan's first pair was Red and Green in February 1996. Blue arrived as a mail-order special edition, and the West was built on Blue instead.

Two games called Blue, two different games: Japan's 1996 special edition swaps wild encounters, trades and prices against the Western release.

The first version exclusives: Ekans and Vulpix in Red, Sandshrew and Bellsprout in Green and Western Blue, and the trades no cartridge can skip.

The games came first: February 1996. The trading cards followed that October, and the anime arrived in April 1997, fourteen months after Red and Green.

Shigeru Miyamoto suggested splitting Satoshi Tajiri's single game in two, so that trading between different cartridges became the heart of Pokémon.

Twenty copies, chosen from about 78,000 contest entries in CoroCoro Comic: Mew began as a prize almost nobody could win, hidden by one programmer.

No. The truck by the SS Anne is scenery and nothing more, in a game whose actual 151st Pokémon was distributed twenty copies at a time by a magazine.

The anime edition: September 12, 1998 in Japan, with a Pikachu that follows you, refuses its ball, speaks in its anime voice and judges your friendship.

Yellow alone sold 14.64 million. The first generation's totals shift with the source, because Nintendo has counted the versions differently over the years.

The trading card game as a Game Boy game, December 18, 1998 in Japan: eight clubs, the Grand Masters, and a bundled promo card that changes by region.

No reason was ever announced. The sequel launched in Japan on March 28, 2001, one week after the Game Boy Advance, and the moment had already passed.

There is a motor in it. The 1999 cartridge carries a built-in rumble feature powered by its own AAA battery, under a bulging shell you can unscrew.

Panel de Pon in a Pokémon skin: Nintendo's falling-block puzzler, reworked for Johto in September 2000, and the last puzzle face of the Game Boy Color era.

Japan received three Stadium games where the West received two: the first Japanese Stadium could only field 42 Pokémon, and the numbering never matched again.

Announced in magazines in the spring of 1999 and never released: Jupiter's Game Boy Color puzzle game is the first generation's famous ghost.

One hundred new Pokémon, two new types, breeding, held items, a real clock and a second region: the biggest single leap any Pokémon generation has made.

Three shades of day, set by a battery-powered clock inside the cartridge: morning from 4 AM, day from 10 AM, night from 6 PM, each with its own wild Pokémon.

The save lives in battery-backed memory, and the battery also runs the clock: when it dies, a Gold or Silver cartridge forgets everything, trainer included.

The popular story says Iwata's compression bought the space. The primary source says something smaller and more interesting, and Kanto's roots run to 1997.

December 14, 2000 in Japan: the third Johto game made its mascot the plot, animated every sprite, opened the first Battle Tower and connected to a phone.