May 19, 2007

Pokémon is a Japanese video game franchise created by Satoshi Tajiri for Nintendo in the 1990s. It is now made up of animated television programmes (Anime), Japanese comic books (Manga), trading cards, and toys, but most importantly, the video games. There are currently 493 monsters of whom Pikachu is the most well-known.

When the idea was invented, there were only 150, which was upgraded to 151 (including Mew) when the Blue version in Japan was released. In the United States and Europe, the number of Pokémon was 151 from the beginning.

The Pokémon games involve making decisions about what to do and when to do it. They allow the player to catch the monsters, train them to attack other monsters so that they get better abilities and possibly evolve into different Pokémon. It is also possible to trade Pokémon with a friend. The Pokémon in the battles never bleed or die; they only faint. Over one hundred million (100,000,000) of the games have been sold so far, not counting the ones released for the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo GameCube. This makes it the second best-selling video game series of all time (after Nintendo’s Mario series).

Seven versions of the animated television series exist, from 1998 until now on The WB and Cartoon Network. Additionally, eight full-length movies have been made since 1999. Each year from 1999 to 2006 has seen the release of a feature length movie. There is another Pokémon movie scheduled for release in 2007. These Pokémon movies have served to promote the Pokémon franchise.

In 1997, one episode caused some serious problems for viewers in Japan and now scientists have an idea why.

On the evening of December 16, 1997, millions of people all over Japan sat down in front of their TV sets to watch Pokemon (episode #38). About 20 minutes into the programme there was a scene of a rocket explosion that flashed red and blue lights at a rate of about 12 times per second. This explosion scene was mixed with about five seconds of flashing lights from the eyes of ‘Pikachu’, a popular Pokemon character. Suddenly, viewers started to complain of blurred vision, headaches, dizziness and nausea. Some people even had seizures, convulsions and lost consciousness.

A total of 685 children were taken to hospitals by ambulances. Scientists believe that the flashing lights triggered ‘photosensitive seizures’ in which visual stimuli such as flashing lights can cause altered consciousness. Italian scientists have detailed an abnormal brain response to flashing lights in people who suffer from photosensitive seizures. They examined the brain’s electrical response to changing light patterns in both normal and photosensitive volunteers. They found that like the normal people the brain response in photosensitive people also increased with higher contrasts, but it did not level out at the highest contrast levels as it did in normal people. This was especially apparent when the lights flashed at rates between four and ten times per second. The scientists believe that the brains of photosensitive people have a defective or absent mechanism that controls the reaction to visual information. This may have caused the attack linked with the Pokemon episode #38.