Being that it is New Year’s Eve, news is pretty light this morning. Nevertheless, The Pokémon Company took the lull in coverage to reveal a new logo for Pokémon’s upcoming 30th anniversary. The original Game Boy games, Red and Green, released in Japan on February 27th, 1996. As you can expect, people are now realizing they’re old, but also the franchise is commemorating a milestone birthday.
Serebii Update: Pokémon has released a small animation to commemorate the start of 2026, the year of Pokémon’s 30th Anniversary
www.serebii.net
— Serebii.net (@serebii.bsky.social) December 31, 2025 at 9:04 AM
Once thought to be a passing fad that kids would grow tired of, Pokémon has gone on to become the most profitable media franchise in history. While Nintendo gets most of the credit for its existence, the games are actually the product of developer Game Freak’s imagination. Created by Satoshi Tajiri after his interest was piqued by the Game Boy’s link cable functionality, he envisioned monsters and bugs crawling back and forth between two handhelds and spun the idea off from that. He had been an avid bug collector as a kid, so he wanted to take his hobby and turn it into a game.
The rest is history, really, because Pokémon has become so ubiquitous that Pikachu appears in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. He’s been doing it for two decades at this point! It’s hard to imagine a world where Pokémon doesn’t exist. I’m sure we’ll be getting all kinds of announcements this year, but for the time being, let’s just appreciate how the brand has managed to remain relevant when other titles fell out of favor.
Check out more Pokémon content
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Pokémon Pokopia will introduce new forms for Pikachu and Snorlax for the first time
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
