All Pokémon Video Games: The Complete Series Guide

The main Pokémon series includes twenty-two titles released in French — thirty-eight distinct versions, with paired releases counted here as a single title —, from Red and Blue on Game Boy to Pokémon Legends: Z-A on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, and a tenth generation has already been announced for 2027. This page runs through them in release order, console by console, with what each title added and what it dropped along the way.

Each title gets two to five sentences here and links out to its full feature, from Red and Blue to the most recent entry. To take the series by species rather than by hardware, the guide to the 1,025 Pokémon goes the other way around; to take it by map, see the one on the regions of the Pokémon world.

The saga in numbers: what to know before you read

Thirty years, seven consoles, one single company: the main series has never appeared anywhere but on a Nintendo system playable in handheld mode, including the Switch and Switch 2, which are home/handheld hybrids. It is the constraint that shapes the saga more than any other: every game starts from what the console of the moment can do.

These figures apply only to the main series, that is, the RPGs developed by GAME FREAK, up to Pokémon Legends: Z-A inclusive; only Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl is an exception, entrusted to the ILCA studio. The spin-off series and the mobile games follow other rules and are counted separately; the species themselves are counted in the Pokédex.

The series has never skipped a console generation. Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, DS, 3DS, Switch, Switch 2: each one got its Pokémon game. Born on a February 27, the saga went on to announce its tenth generation on a February 27, thirty years later.

Two of these figures call for a caveat. The regions are harder to count than they look: Hisui is not a tenth region, it is Sinnoh in a distant past. And the headline number depends on a counting convention: the 1996 Japanese versions and the 1998-1999 Western ones fit on a single line, otherwise the ranking gets a different leader.

Before 1996: six years of development and a childhood idea

The story begins far from any console, in the ponds and vacant lots of Machida, a Tokyo suburb where Satoshi Tajiri was born on August 28, 1965. As a child, he collected insects with enough persistence that his classmates nicknamed him "Dr. Bug." By the late 1970s, the fields and ponds he used to comb were disappearing under apartment blocks and shopping centers; his collector's passion shifted to video games and arcades.

That obsession produced a fanzine. In the early 1980s, Tajiri and a few friends launched Game Freak, a magazine devoted to arcade game tips: handwritten in its early days, running to some twenty-eight pages, then handed over to a professional printer. One reader became an illustrator and then a friend, Ken Sugimori, who would draw the creatures' original artwork before taking over as art director of the series. On April 26, 1989, the magazine became a company, GAME FREAK, Inc. — incorporating was the condition Namco had set for publishing Quinty, the studio's first game, a Famicom action game released in the West as Mendel Palace.

The founding idea came from an accessory. Watching two children link their Game Boys with a Game Link cable, Tajiri pictured insects crawling along the wire from one console to the other. The project he drew from it was called Capsule Monsters, a nod to Japanese capsule-toy machines, and it was pitched as early as 1990 to Nintendo and to the Ape studio, the future Creatures. It was turned down at first, and the name, impossible to trademark, became CapuMon and then Pocket Monsters. It was Shigeru Miyamoto's confidence that carried the decision on the second try; he was also the one who suggested splitting the game into two versions after hearing Tajiri talk about children trading creatures with one another.

Development then stretched over six years from the first pitch to Nintendo — seven according to Poképédia —, the longest in the entire series, with a far larger team than on the studio's earlier titles. Sugimori drew every one of the Gym Leaders, Atsuko Nishida a good share of the 151 creatures, including Pikachu, alongside Motofumi Fujiwara and Shigeki Morimoto; Junichi Masuda composed the whole soundtrack, writing along the way the program that let the Game Boy play back a sampled cry unique to each monster. Among their default names, the hero and his rival carry Satoshi and Shigeru: the first names of Tajiri and Miyamoto.

The initial pitch for Capsule Monsters did not yet call for two cartridges: it counted on "phantom" creatures so rare that you would eventually have to ask someone else for them. Trading therefore came before the two-version split in the game's design — the commercial mechanic was grafted onto a social idea, not the other way around.

The paradox is that this game came out on a console running out of steam. The Game Boy, with its monochrome screen and its four AA batteries, had been on sale in Japan since April 21, 1989 : by the time Pokémon Red to Green finally arrived on February 27, 1996, after a delay from October 1995, the console was closing in on seven years old. The Japanese launch showed it: it was sluggish, and nothing, in February 1996, hinted at what the cartridge would become.

The studio had nevertheless left one last trace of its workshop spirit in it. Mew was not supposed to be obtainable at all, and players flushed it out anyway through a glitch shortly after release; Tajiri decided things could not be left there and offered to give it away. The magazine CoroCoro put it up for grabs in the spring of 1996 for twenty readers drawn at random: roughly 78,000 entries came in.

Game Boy: two cartridges, one cable, and the birth of a genre

Pokémon Red to Green came out in Japan on February 27, 1996 and would never leave the archipelago. A third cartridge, Pokémon Blue, came out in Japan on October 15, 1996, at first reserved for subscribers to the magazine CoroCoro Comics, and only went on general sale in October 1999. Yet it is the one that served as the template for the West: the Red to Blue versions sold in Europe reuse its sprites, its backdrops, and most of its glitches, but take from Red to Green their internal data, meaning the encounter locations and the in-game trades with characters. The European release is dated October 5, 1999.

The whole game fits into one instruction: Professor Oak hands over a Pokédex and waits for it to fill up. One hundred and fifty-one species are listed in it, and beating the League is not enough to complete it. The reward does exist, though: a Game Freak employee hands out a Diploma, in the Celadon Condominiums in Celadon City, to anyone who has recorded the 150 obtainable species — Mew is not required. Filling the inventory becomes the engine of the adventure.

Yet this Pokédex is impossible to complete on your own. Each cartridge holds only 139 of the 151 species : eleven belong to the other version, and Mew, which closes out the Pokédex, stays out of reach by any intended route. Without a Link cable, the counter tops out at 124. The Kanto starter trio sets the same rule in the very first minute: two of the three lines go through someone else.

These cartridges set a grammar the series would barely stray from. The player crosses Kanto, earns eight Gym Badges before facing the Elite Four, and along the way drives Team Rocket out of the Celadon City casino, out of the Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town, and then out of Silph Co. headquarters. Its boss, Giovanni, runs the eighth Gym himself, in Viridian City: the villain and the last Gym Leader are one and the same.

The generation also left behind its most famous glitch. MissingNo., literally "Missing Number," is not a Pokémon but a safeguard : the developers had reserved 190 species slots, emptied forty of them for lack of space, and plugged the holes with this error entry to avoid a crash. You reach it through the Cinnabar Island east coast glitch, which involves talking to the old man in Viridian City — answering "no" to his question so that he gives his catching demonstration — before going surfing along the island's east coast. The encounter adds 128 copies of the sixth item in your bag, provided you hold fewer than 128 of it, which is how players ended up rich in Master Balls and Rare Candies.

This glitch is purely an accident of localization: it exists neither in Red to Green, nor in the Blue Japanese version that nonetheless served as the basis, and it was fixed in the Spanish and Italian localizations. On the French cartridges, the game freezes on a black screen as soon as it should display 'M or most MissingNo. : only its ghost, Kabutops fossil, and Aerodactyl fossil forms are displayed by this glitch.

The Yellow Version, released in Japan on September 12, 1998 and in Europe on June 16, 2000, is the series' first "third version." It doesn't open a new region: it realigns Kanto with the animated series. No more choice of starter, but a Pikachu that Professor Oak catches right in front of you, one that then refuses its Poké Ball and walks behind you; Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle all three obtainable in a single playthrough, given by characters modeled on the show; Jessie and James in place of certain Grunts. Screen tints also change from place to place, a feature until then reserved for the Super Game Boy; the cartridge talks to the Game Boy Printer, closes the Cinnabar Island glitch by removing the east shore from the encounter areas, and cuts thirteen species you have to trade for from Red or Blue.

Game Boy Color: Johto, or the most generous sequel in the series

Pokémon Gold and Silver came out in Japan on November 21, 1999 and in Europe on April 6, 2001, on a cartridge that still runs on the original Game Boy. Once the Johto League is beaten, Kanto reopens. Sixteen Badges, two regions, about a hundred new species numbered 152 to 251, and an adventure that ends at the summit of Mt. Silver, facing the Trainer the player controlled in Red to Blue, three years earlier in the games' timeline.

The Kanto that comes back isn't the same one: Johto, the neighboring region, has taken up all the room, and the older one is now a shortened trip, without Viridian Forest or Cerulean Cave, and without a plot either. Its role is one of memory: Cinnabar Island has been destroyed by an eruption, the Safari Zone warden has retired, and the mother of the 1996 hero worries about his silence.

The change with the heaviest consequences isn't the one you see on the box. The cartridge carries a clock powered by its battery, which holds both the time and the save file — hence those second-generation cartridges that forget everything once the battery dies. The game follows real time and the days of the week : the graphics change at night, some species only come out at certain hours, and the National Park Bug-Catching Contest is only held on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The Pokégear bundles watch, radio, map and phone together: Trainers you meet along the way leave you their number and call back for a rematch.

Pokémon now have a gender, and two compatible Pokémon of opposite genders left at the Day Care produce an Egg that hatches after a certain number of steps, a mechanic that brings in eight baby Pokémon — Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff, Togepi, Tyrogue, Smoochum, Elekid and Magby. Each Pokémon can hold an item, an emergency Berry or an accessory that boosts a type, like Charcoal or a Black Belt. Two types are added, Steel and Dark, to rebalance Psychic and Fighting : a Dark Pokémon is immune to Psychic moves and hits them super effectively, and Steel then resists eleven types at once — it will lose two of them, Ghost and Dark, in the sixth generation. The physical/special split, for its part, still depends on the move's type alone: Steel always strikes physically, Dark always specially.

Crystallizing Pokémon, released in Japan on December 14, 2000 and in Europe in the fall of 2001 — Pokémon.com gives November 2, Poképédia October 31 —, is the first main series game that no longer runs on the original Game Boy : it needs a Game Boy Color. It also brings the first playable heroine, Kris, sprites animated as a Pokémon enters battle, and it turns Suicune into its running thread: the Pokémaniac Eusine has been tracking it for ten years, the player wakes the three legendary beasts in the Burned Tower, keeps running into Suicune as it flees across the whole region, and only faces it at the Tin Tower.

Part of the game never left Japan. The Pokémon Communication Center in Goldenrod City connected the Game Boy Color to a cell phone, through an adapter sold separately, for trading and battling remotely — and for receiving the GS Ball which, placed in Ilex Forest, called Celebi. The mobile service was dropped for lack of success; only the Celebi event eventually left Japan, the 2018 3DS Virtual Console re-release making it available in every language.

Game Boy Advance: Hoenn, the clean break, and the invention of the remake

Pokémon Ruby to Sapphire came out in Japan on November 21, 2002 and in Europe on July 25, 2003. Game Freak used the move to the Game Boy Advance to rewrite a creature's internal data, which now carries a Nature and what the games called at the time a special ability, today's Ability. The price is immediate: Game Boy cartridges can no longer send anything to Hoenn. Nearly four years of European collections, almost seven in Japan, stay stranded on the old console, and the Pokédex in Ruby and Sapphire stops at 202 entries, only 67 of them older species. The rest of the generation is built around one form of compensation: not the reopening of the Game Boy cartridges, which will never come, but the return of the missing species through other doors.

In exchange, 135 new species bring the National Pokédex to 386, and battling gains three layers at once: the Abilities, 76 of them as early as Ruby and Sapphire, which give each species a permanent power instead of a plain list of moves; Double Battles, two Pokémon against two, where the choice of target and the moves that sweep the field matter as much as raw power; and weather, inherited fromGold and Silver, which Hail rounds out with a fourth weather condition and which Abilities now set up on their own the moment a Pokémon enters battle — Drought for sun, Drizzle for rain, Sand Stream for the sandstorm — where before you still had to call it up by hand. Natures and the Berries you grow in the ground round out the overhaul.

The Hoenn region gives water as much room as land: several sea routes have an underwater stretch you open with HM Dive, and it is below the surface that Seafloor Cavern hides. For the first time, its plot hands the villainous team role to a different organization in each version, Team Aqua and Team Magma, one to awaken Kyogre and expand the sea, the other to awaken Groudon and expand the land.

Hoenn also opens two careers running alongside the League. Pokémon Contests judge a creature on five conditions you feed with Pokéblocks, and not on its power in battle. Secret Bases, for their part, are dug into a tree, a wall or a bush with TM43, Secret Power, and furnished with sixteen decorations. A player who trades data sees a friend's base appear in their own game and, once the Hoenn League is beaten, can battle them there once a day.

Along the way, the generation loses part of what Johto had brought. The day/night cycle disappears : only the clock still matters, for Berry growth and the tide in Shoal Cave, and there is no way to go back to Kanto or Johto. Ruby and Sapphire still sold 16.22 million copies as of March 31, 2013: the break cost them nothing.

The answer to that break reached Europe on October 1, 2004, eight months after the Japanese release, with Pokémon FireRed to LeafGreen, the first remakes in the series. Kanto is rebuilt to Game Boy Advance standards, then extended by the Sevii Islands, an archipelago of seven islands whose last four only open after sixty species caught, the League beaten and the Ruby recovered on One Island. The wireless adapter, packed in the box at launch, replaces the link cable there. These two cartridges act as a bridge : it is through them, and through Pokémon Colosseum then Pokémon XD on GameCube, that the species of the first two generations come back into circulation.

Pokémon Emerald brought up the rear in Europe on October 21, 2005, a year after its Japanese release of September 16, 2004, bringing together what the two versions kept apart: both organizations are there, they clash with each other, and you have to wake Rayquaza at the top of the Sky Pillar to calm Groudon and Kyogre. The Battle Tower becomes the Battle Frontier, a complex of seven buildings each run by a Frontier Brain, and the sprites animated as a Pokémon enters battle, inherited from Crystal, make their return. With 6.32 million copies as of March 31, 2007, Emerald pays the price for its spot in the calendar: a third version that arrived more than two years after the pair it extends, and seven months after the European launch of the Nintendo DS.

Nintendo DS: Sinnoh, Unova and the great cleanup

Pokémon Diamond to Pearl came out in Japan on September 28, 2006 and in Europe on July 27, 2007. They carry a reform that touches every single move in the game, and it fits in one sentence: a move is physical or special according to what it does, and no longer according to its type. In the first three generations, the category was read off the type and not off the action: nine types always used the Attack stat, eight always Special Attack, bearing in mind that the first generation did not yet have Steel or Dark and knew only a single Special stat, serving as both attack and defense.

The result doomed entire species. Gengar, 65 Attack versus 130 Special Attack, saw its Ghost moves run off its worst stat; Tyranitar, 134 Attack versus 95 Special Attack, suffered exactly the reverse with its Dark moves. Classifying moves one by one finally gives them back the use of their own type, just as it does for Weavile, a Dark/Ice with 120 Attack and 45 Special Attack, a profile its pre-evolution Sneasel had already carried without being able to use it, 95 versus 35, since the second generation. The full breakdown is in the guide to move categories.

The fourth generation is also the one where the series plugs into the internet. Diamond to Pearl are the first main series games playable online : you trade and battle with the whole world from the Global Trade Station in Jubilife City, where you drop off a creature and state which one you are looking for in return. The day/night cycle is back, 107 species are added, Sinnoh's Underground Path lets you dig out your own base and unearth fossils in it, and the Poké Radar rewards chains of forty identical encounters with far better odds of running into a Shiny Pokémon.

Pokémon Platinum returns to Sinnoh in Europe on May 22, 2009 and fixes the original pair's shortcomings one by one. The regional Pokédex goes from 151 to 210 entries, which finally makes the evolutions the generation itself had invented available before the end of the adventure. Above all, Giratina gets its Origin Forme and a territory of its own: the Distortion World, a dimension where time stands still, space is unstable and gravity is skewed, to the point that you surf up a waterfall. The Battle Frontier there becomes a complex comparable to that ofEmerald. 7.06 million copies as of March 31, 2010 : the definitive version of Sinnoh landed on a market the original pair had already served.

The March 26, 2010 in Europe, six months after Japan, HeartGold to SoulSilver bring Johto and then Kanto to the Nintendo DS. The first Pokémon in the party walks behind the player at all times and answers when spoken to, the bulkiest ones slipping back into their Poké Ball at the entrance of a building. A pedometer, the Pokéwalker, is tucked into the box and turns twenty steps into one watt of its own currency. Johto's Pokédex climbs to 256 entries, and the Pokéathlon adds an athletic career alongside the Trainer's career.

87 out of 100 on Metacritic, and no other remake in the series has done better: Omega Ruby to Alpha Sapphire top out at 83 and 82, FireRed and LeafGreen at 81, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl at 73. With 12.72 million copies as of March 31, 2021, these two cartridges remain the benchmark against which every return of the series to an older region is measured.

Pokémon Black to White, the March 4, 2011 in Europe and nearly six months earlier in Japan, take exactly the opposite gamble. Unova's Pokédex holds 156 entries and not a single older species before the end of the adventure : along with Kanto's, it is the only regional Pokédex in the series made up entirely of Pokémon from its own generation, and, at launch, none of its creatures had an evolution or a pre-evolution in another generation. A player in 2011 therefore starts from scratch, just as in 1996.

The story follows N and Team Plasma, who demand the liberation of Pokémon and force the player to defend what they have been doing for fifteen years, while Ghetsis bends that message to his own ends. Battling gains two three-on-three formats along the way, the Triple Battle and the Rotation Battle; the seasons last a month each and therefore come around three times a year, changing the look of the routes and which areas can be reached, and the sprites finally stop being still images and stay animated throughout the battle. All of it for 15.64 million copies as of March 31, 2021.

Black 2 to White 2 close out the generation on October 12, 2012 in Europe, nearly four months after Japan. They are the only direct sequels in the main series, set two years later in the same Unova, with a redrawn map, a former rival turned Gym Leader and a regional Pokédex of 301 species, this time drawn from every generation. The Pokémon World Tournament puts the Gym Leaders and League Champions of earlier generations back on the line.

These five titles also close a hardware era: the online services of the fourth and fifth generations were shut down on May 20, 2014.

Nintendo 3DS: 3D, Mega Evolution and the end of Gyms

Pokémon X and Y launch on October 12, 2013 in Japan, Europe, America, Australia and Korea: the series' first simultaneous worldwide release. Two other new features arrive with them. You pick the language when you start the game, from a choice of seven, instead of having it locked in by the cartridge; and the main games become downloadable on the eShop.

The most visible shift is elsewhere. Since 1996, Pokémon had been sprites redrawn with every generation; X and Y replace them with animated three-dimensional models, a first for the main series on a handheld console. The price of that overhaul shows in the Pokédex: only 72 brand-new species, for a total of 721, the smallest batch of any generation, when Unova had brought 156. In exchange, Kalos, a region modeled on the northern half of mainland France, films battles from several angles and lets you dress your character in clothes bought in stores.

The generation also corrects an offensive imbalance the Dragon type had kept up for a long time. The Fairy type, revealed at the Nintendo Direct of June 11, 2013 at the same time as Sylveon, is immune to Dragon moves on top of being effective against them, and it is effective against Fighting and Dark as well. The operation reaches far beyond the newcomers: older species change type, and three moves that had been Normal-type until then — Charm, Sweet Kiss and Moonlight — move over to Fairy.

Kalos finally brings Mega Evolution : a Pokémon holding its Mega Stone changes form in the middle of a battle as soon as its Trainer activates the Key Stone in their Mega Ring, gains a hundred base stat points, HP excluded, sometimes an Ability or a type, and turns back into itself at the end. There are twenty-eight of them in X and Y, and only one Pokémon per team can use it in a given battle. Pokémon Bank, an online storage service, opens in Europe on February 4, 2014.

Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire arrive in Europe on November 28, 2014, a week after Japan, and add twenty Mega Evolutions to the previous twenty-eight. Hoenn gains three ideas that belong to it alone: Primal Reversion, which gives Groudon and Kyogre an ancestral form the moment they enter battle, without the Trainer having to activate anything; Soaring in the sky, which lets you fly over the region on the back of Mega Latios or Mega Latias once the Eon Flute has been obtained; and the Delta Episode, a scenario that opens up after the League, where an asteroid hurtles toward an islet southwest of Sootopolis City, where the Sky Pillar stands, and where Zinnia, heir to the Draconid people, puts Rayquaza back at the center of the game.

Pokémon Sun and Moon, on November 18, 2016 in Japan, America, Australia and Korea, and on November 23, 2016 in Europe, do what no game in the series had ever done: they do away with Gyms. In their place, the island challenge, a rite of passage in seven trials spread across the four islands ofAlola. A trial is not necessarily won in battle: sometimes you have to track down items or answer questions, and it ends on a Totem Pokémon, larger than others of its kind and able to call for backup. Each island closes on a grand trial, against that island's kahuna.

Alola sets up three other ideas. The regional forms, unveiled on August 1, 2016 with the Alolan Sandshrew, Sandslash, Vulpix, Ninetales and Exeggutor, rewrite older species without giving them a new number: eighteen for Alola alone, fifty-five as of September 2026 across all regions — nineteen for Galar, sixteen for Hisui, two for Paldea. Z-Moves, one per type, can only be triggered once per battle. The Ultra Beasts, eleven creatures that came from another dimension through Ultra Wormholes, add silhouettes that look like no known Pokémon to the bestiary. HMs disappear in the process, replaced by Poké Ride.

Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon close out the 3DS cycle on November 17, 2017 by telling the same story differently, entirely refocused on Necrozma : the legendary fuses with Solgaleo or Lunala to become Dusk Mane or Dawn Wings, then Ultra Necrozma. The game opens up Ultra Megalopolis, a world whose light Necrozma stole, and adds four Ultra Beasts as well as Zeraora. With 9.28 million copies as of March 31, 2026, it is the worst-selling of the console's four Pokémon RPGs, released only a year after Sun and Moon when the Switch was already there.

Nintendo Switch: the living room, the open world and the past

Until 2018, the main series had never left handhelds, from the Game Boy to the 3DS; home consoles only ever got the spin-offs, from Pokémon Stadium to Colosseum. The Nintendo Switch does away with the question by being both at once, and a main-series Pokémon RPG appears on a television for the first time. That comfort comes at a price: the animation and scenery flaws that went unnoticed on a 3DS screen are now plain to see on a living-room screen.

Let's Go, Pikachu and Let's Go, Eevee open the era on November 16, 2018. They are remakes of Pokémon Yellow Version tailored for an audience coming over from mobile: ordinary wild Pokémon are no longer battled, they are caught with a flick of the wrist using the Joy-Con or the Poké Ball Plus. Only the so-called interactive Pokémon — Electrode, Snorlax, the legendaries — are still fought, and Trainer battles stay unchanged. The Pokédex stops at 153 entries, Kanto's 151 plus Meltan and Melmetal; a GO Park takes in the creatures sent over from the mobile game; and two people can play at the same time on the same save for the first time.

Pokémon Sword and Shield, on November 15, 2019, give the series its first brand-new region since Alola. Galar holds its Gym battles in stadiums packed with spectators and introduces Dynamax : three turns during which a Pokémon becomes giant and has its moves replaced, Gigantamax being the variant reserved for certain individuals, which also changes their silhouette. The Wild Area, a vast free-camera zone where encounters depend on the place and the weather, introduces four-player raids, which the series will go on to reuse.

Galar has no third version: a two-part expansion pass takes its place, The Isle of Armor on June 17, 2020 and The Crown Tundra on October 23, 2020, which between them bring back more than two hundred older species. The other break went over less well: at the E3 2019 Treehouse, Junichi Masuda announces that only Pokémon in the Galar regional Pokédex can be transferred, the others being absent from the game's data — that is, 401 compatible species at launch, the 400 in the Galar Pokédex plus the Mew from the Poké Ball Plus, out of the roughly 890 catalogued at the time. Player anger got a name, "Dexit"; updates and expansions eventually brought the compatible total to 664. The games came away with 80 out of 100 on Metacritic.

Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, on November 19, 2021, are the first main-series game Game Freak did not develop : the job went to the Japanese studio ILCA. Announced on February 26, 2021 as "faithful remakes", they keep their word to the letter: the map and the progression of the originals — 2006 in Japan, 2007 in Europe — are reproduced barring a few additions, with no Mega Evolution and no Dynamax. Some players held that faithfulness against them, and the games earned 73 out of 100 on Metacritic.

A little over two months later, on January 28, 2022, Pokémon Legends: Arceus does exactly the opposite. Hisui is a Sinnoh from before Pokémon training existed, carved into large open areas you explore with gear you craft yourself. You throw the Ball straight from exploration, with no mandatory battle, and a wild Pokémon's moves can hurt the Trainer. The rest of the system is dismantled: no more Abilities, no more IVs or EVs — replaced by Effort Levels —, no more held items, evolutions triggered by hand, and a conditional turn order where two move styles, Agile and Strong, decide who acts and when. The game earned 83 out of 100 on Metacritic.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, on November 18, 2022, deliver the series' first completely seamless open world : towns, routes and buildings all fit in a single map you travel in whatever order you like. Paldea offers three storylines run in parallel — "Victory Road" and the Gym Leaders, "Path of Legends" and the hunt for Herba Mystica, "Starfall Street" against Team Star — before a final shared chapter in Area Zero. The Terastallization mechanic replaces the earlier phenomena here, and the professor is not the same in Scarlet and in Purple.

The technical execution, though, did not keep up: choppy frame rates, scenery loading in late, display glitches. Metacritic settles on 72 out of 100. Sales did not budge: with 28.46 million copies as of June 30, 2026, Scarlet and Violet post the franchise's best result on Nintendo Switch.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A brings up the rear on October 16, 2025, on Switch and on Switch 2, where it exists as a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. Everything plays out in a single city, Lumiose, in the middle of an urban redevelopment, and battles move to real time : every move has a range, an area of effect and a cooldown, you reposition, you dodge with a roll. Once night falls, the Z-A Royale turns whole districts into ranked zones, from rank Z to rank A. Mega Evolution returns here enriched with twenty-six brand-new forms, raised to forty-five by the expansion Mega Dimension, whose second wave came out on December 10, 2025, and it even reaches wild Pokémon under the name Rogue Mega Evolution.

As of March 31, 2026, five and a half months after release, the game had sold 8.85 million copies counted on Switch and 3.94 million on Switch 2, or 12.79 million in total — with Nintendo filing digital Switch 2 Edition copies under the Switch line. The two Legends games do not break the formula the same way: Arceus bets on free exploration, Z-A on real-time combat. The follow-up has already been announced: Pokémon Winds and Waves, announced on February 27, 2026 for the franchise's thirtieth anniversary, will open the tenth generation on Switch 2 in 2027.

Pairs, third versions, remakes, Legends: four families

The main series has twenty-two games in all, or thirty-eight cartridges if you count each version separately, since most come out in twos. They do not all serve the same purpose: four families share the list, each answering a specific problem. Nine launch pairs plus one sequel pair, five third versions, five remakes and two Legends.

Pairs open every generation: two versions sold the same day, same region, same story, deliberately incomplete rosters — Red and Blue, Gold and Silver, Ruby and Sapphire, Diamond and Pearl, Black and White, X and Y, Sun and Moon, Sword and Shield, Scarlet and Violet. Nine pairs in twenty-three years, plus one exception, Black 2 and White 2, the only duo in the series that is a true sequel: the same region, two years later. No other family opens a region: each launch pair opens its own, and the other three all return to a setting already in place.

Third versions bring the player back to the region the pair has just opened. Internally, the studio calls them upper versions (アッパーバージョン); "third version" is the label coined by Western fans. Only five titles : Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, Platinum to Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, the latter being the only ones themselves released as a pair, and the last of the family. They do not replace the pair, they extend it: same region, rewritten story, added content, and species from other regions that the original pair does not host.

Remakes rebuild an older generation with the engine of the day, without reusing any data from the original : FireRed and LeafGreen for Kanto, HeartGold and SoulSilver for Johto, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire for Hoenn, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl for Sinnoh, and Let's Go, Pikachu to Let's Go, Eevee as a very loose take on Yellow. The first of these remakes answered a technical need more than nostalgia: Pokémon from the first two generations could not be carried over into the third; Kanto handed back the first hundred, the Sevii Islands those of Johto, and the remainder — Mew, Ho-Oh, Lugia — came through event distribution. Only the first two remakes were planned; demand forced the ones that followed. Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were in fact released with no symbolic date attached, running late for the anniversary of Ruby and Sapphire ; it is HeartGold and SoulSilver (ten years ofGold and Silver), Let's Go (twenty years of Yellow) and Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl (fifteen years of Diamond and Pearl, twenty-five years of the franchise) that are timed to an anniversary.

The Legends games number only two, Pokémon Legends: Arceus to Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which the comparison ofArceus and Z-A contrasts point by point. These are action RPGs sold as a single version, with no pair and therefore no cartridge exclusives, set in already familiar regions, taken at another time or from another angle. Collecting becomes a solo affair again, and the family serves as a testing ground in a familiar setting.

The third version had already died out twice before paid expansions: Generation V preferred a sequel, Generation VI got nothing at all. Generations VIII and IX then filled the slot with paid content. On January 9, 2020, Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori announced the Expansion Pass forSword and Shield explaining that they wanted to extend the adventure without going through a new title, the way it had been done for Platinum or Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Galar and then Paldea got their expansions on this model, in two parts each. A third version had to be bought over again in full, an expansion opens inside your current save — and the model has spilled over to the Legends, since Z-A in turn received its own, Mega Dimension. The shift can be read on the box art: the spot once held by a third version's Legendary now goes to an expansion's, Urshifu and Calyrex for Galar, Ogerpon and Terapagos for Paldea.

Lastly, this count of twenty-two excludes the spin-off series. Mystery Dungeon, Colosseum, Ranger, Snap, Unite and the rest are not part of it, and neither are the mobile games. The criterion is not quality but the nature of the game : an RPG developed almost exclusively by Game Freak, where you play a Trainer who explores a region and fills a Pokédex.

Filing a title under its family avoids three buying mistakes. A third version does not spare you the pair it extends: you still have to link up with it to complete the regional Pokédex. A remake, for its part, extends nothing, it replaces. And a Legends game works like none of the other three families: the third mistake is buying one expecting to find the structure of a pair. A title's family says more about the experience it offers than its generation does.

Why two versions at once, and what it changes for you

Since 1996, a generation has launched in two versions on the same day, in the same region and on the same story. The intended difference lies first in the roster : each cartridge denies you species that the other one hosts.

The volume of these exclusives grew until Galar before receding. Red to Blue reserve eleven species for each cartridge; Diamond and Pearl climb to twenty, Sword and Shield to thirty-four entries per version in the base game, Gigantamax forms included, and Scarlet and Violet drop back to twenty-five entries per version, the first of them setting only two forms of the same Paldean Tauros against each other. The principle itself has not changed in thirty years : the species missing from one version most often have their counterpart in the other, chosen to echo each other by type or by where they are caught.

The most visible of these exclusives is on the box. Outside the games set in Kanto and in Hisui, the cover mascot is the Legendary available at the peak of the story, and on pairs it changes with the version: Ho-Oh and Lugia, Groudon and Kyogre, Dialga and Palkia, Reshiram and Zekrom, Xerneas and Yveltal, Solgaleo and Lunala, Zacian and Zamazenta, Koraidon and Miraidon. Kanto illustrates the exception : Red to Blue showed Charizard and Blastoise, two final forms of starter Pokémon.

The rest of the differences are less conspicuous, sometimes structural. In Ruby and Sapphire, the organization you fight switches sides: Team Aqua settles for a supporting role on the Ruby side, where Team Magma drives the plot, and becomes the main threat on the Sapphire side. Black and White go further by giving each version a city of its own, Black City or White Forest. Sun and Moon shift the internal clock by twelve hours from one cartridge to the other, which swaps day and night.

Two of the eight Gyms in Sword and Shield change Leader, type and Badge outright: in Stow-on-Side, Bea and the Fighting type in Sword against Allister and the Ghost type in Shield ; in Circhester, Gordie and the Rock type against Melony and the Ice type. Scarlet and Violet move that difference beyond the species list: for the first time, the Pokémon professor himself depends on the version, Sada in Scarlet, Turo in Purple.

The practical constraint, for its part, eased in stages. Through the third generation, trading meant two players sitting side by side, linked by a Game Link Cable and then, right at the end of the run, by the Game Boy Advance Wireless Adapter. The Nintendo DS opened up local wireless and then the internet, and the GTS put players who had never met in touch for the first time. The constraint changed in nature without going away : you still need a second player, but that player no longer has to be in the same room.

The blunt fact remains: completing a Pokédex on your own is still impossible in most of the games. Version exclusives are not the only reason, since several species evolve only at the exact moment of a trade. Recent games bend the rule without lifting it: in Scarlet and Violet, joining a Tera Raid launched from the opposite version, or going through the Union Circle, lets you come across species your own cartridge does not hold. The version-by-version rundown of exclusives gives, for each generation, the species you have to go looking for in the other cartridge.

The format lives on with the Switch 2 : Pokémon Winds and Waves will also be released in two versions.

What each generation added to the game system

A Pokémon generation is not just a region and a hundred more creatures: it is first of all one more line added to a set of rules. Most of these additions stack instead of replacing one another, so a game started today still handles the stats of 1996, the breeding of 1999, the Abilities of 2002 and the move reform of 2006 — Japanese dates; in France, those four layers arrived in 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2007 respectively. The table below keeps only what was added to the system, setting regions and species aside. How these gears work in detail is explained in the guide to types and battle mechanics.

Read from top to bottom, that last column sketches out a method: the series almost always adds a battle rule and a collection rule at the same time. What gets noticed less is what it takes away. The third cut compatibility with Game Boy cartridges and dropped the day/night cycle, which only came back in the fourth; the fifth replaced Contests and the Pokéathlon with the Pokémon Musical; Sun and Moon erased HMs, handing them over to Poké Ride, and shelved Gyms in favor of the island challenge — before Let's Go, Pikachu to Let's Go, Eevee gave Kanto its Gyms back. That same seventh generation nevertheless opened a door the series has never closed again, that of regional forms, taken up again afterward in Galar, in Hisui and in Paldea.

A pattern has set in since the sixth generation: each generation brings its own transformation mechanic, and that mechanic disappears along with it. The Mega Evolution was only ever used in the main games of the sixth and seventh generations; Z-Moves made a single appearance in the main series, Alola's; Dynamax exists there only in Sword and Shield ; Terastallization belongs to Scarlet and Violet. Only one has come back, twelve years after its debut: Mega Evolution, brought back by Pokémon Legends: Z-A and its Mega Dimension expansion. This rotation has a practical consequence: two players coming from two different generations are not playing the same battle game.

The spin-off series: Mystery Dungeon, Colosseum, Ranger and the rest

Alongside the main series, the franchise has produced dozens of titles with no Gyms, no Elite Four and no Pokédex to fill. They sort better by genre than by date : each one takes away one of the player's habits and looks at what is left. The full survey is in the overview of the spin-offs.

Home-console battle games make up the oldest family. Pokémon Stadium (Nintendo 64, April 7, 2000 in Europe) has neither a story nor catching: it replays, in 3D and on the big screen, the battles from a Game Boy cartridge slotted into the Transfer Pak, and Pokémon Stadium 2 (October 19, 2001) does the same with Johto. Pokémon Battle Revolution (Wii, December 7, 2007) extends the formula and was the first Wii game to use the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Pokkén Tournament (arcade in Japan on July 16, 2015, Wii U on March 18, 2016) changes register: Bandai Namco applies the grammar of Tekken, blocks and combos included.

Two titles in this family are the exception and offer a story-driven adventure from beginning to end. Pokémon Colosseum (GameCube, May 14, 2004) is the first Pokémon adventure entirely in 3D. It takes place in Orre, an arid region where, at the time of Colosseum, there is not a single wild Pokémon: you do not catch there, you steal other Trainers' Pokémon using the Snag Machine. These Shadow Pokémon have had their hearts closed off by Cipher, and the whole game consists of purifying them — dark, grim settings, higher difficulty, a serious plot. Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness (November 18, 2005) goes back there only eighteen months later, but five years after the events of Colosseum, and the feature devoted to Shadow Pokémon goes into snagging and purification in detail.

The rogue-like fits into a single series, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, and into one reversal: the player is no longer a Trainer, but a human turned into a Pokémon, waking up with no memory in a world without humans. A personality quiz decides which species you play as — the player has been able to turn it down since Super Mystery Dungeon, and it had even disappeared from Gates to Infinity —, and the dungeons are generated automatically on every visit. Seven games make up the series, one of them never leaving Japan: fromRed and Blue Rescue Team (2006) to Explorers of Time and Darkness (2008), then to Explorers of Sky (2009), to Gates to Infinity (2013) and to Super Mystery Dungeon (2016), before a return to the starting point with the remake Rescue Team DX (Switch, 2020). The first pair sold 5.23 million copies worldwide as of March 31, 2007 and the second 4.50 million, again worldwide, as of March 31, 2009, while critical reception stayed measured: IGN gave 6.5 out of 10 to Explorers of Time and Darkness.

Photography has a lineage of its own: Pokémon Snap (Nintendo 64, September 15, 2000 in Europe) is an on-rails photo safari where you catch nothing at all : the player presses the shutter, but also throws apples and Pester Balls and plays the Poké Flute to make the Pokémon react. New Pokémon Snap (Switch, April 30, 2021) picks the idea back up at Bandai Namco Studios. Action-adventure goes back to the trilogy Pokémon Ranger (Nintendo DS, 2007, 2008 and 2010), played with the stylus: you do not throw a Poké Ball there, you circle the Pokémon with the Capture Styler until it becomes an ally, one that heads back into the wild once the favor is done. Its installments take place in Fiore, Almia and Oblivia, three regions absent from the main series.

Strategy comes down to a single title: Pokémon Conquest (Nintendo DS, 2012), crossed with the Nobunaga no Yabō series by Koei Tecmo, a turn-based conquest game across the seventeen kingdoms of Ransei, never translated into French. Puzzle games have a line of their own, from Pokémon Trozei! (DS, 2006, Link! in Europe) to Pokémon Shuffle to Pokémon Picross (2015), free and funded by microtransactions. The MOBA arrived late: Pokémon UNITE (Switch on July 21, 2021, mobile on September 22) pits two teams of three to five Pokémon against each other, five on five in the standard format, and victory there comes down to points scored in the opposing goal zones, not to knockouts.

Sleep tracking holds a category all on its own: Pokémon Sleep (July 18, 2023 in France) is played at night, the phone tracking your sleep to turn it into encounters, under the patronage of Snorlax. That leaves Pokémon Masters EX (August 29, 2019), which pairs a Trainer with a Pokémon into a sync pair and pits three sync pairs against three others in real time: this is where Z-Moves and Mega Evolution live on, long after they were dropped from the main series games, joined in August 2021 by sync moves inspired by Dynamax.

Pokémon GO and the shift to mobile

Pokémon GO launched on July 6, 2016 in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, then in Japan on July 22 and in France on July 24. It grew out of a collaboration between The Pokémon Company, Nintendo, and the American studio Niantic, which placed its PokéStops and Gyms on a selection of the portals from its earlier location-based game, Ingress ; the map itself draws on the collaborative OpenStreetMap project. As early as August, Guinness World Records awarded it five world records, including most downloaded mobile game in its first month and fastest time to reach one hundred million dollars in revenue.

Three differences in mechanics separate GO from the console games. Catching does away with battling entirely : the creature appears on the map, you throw the Poké Ball, and it either stays or breaks free, without a single Pokémon from your team stepping in. The classic stats come down to three values here — Attack, Defense, and HP — summed up on screen by a single number, the CP, or Combat Power : the higher it is, the more powerful the Pokémon and the harder it is to catch. Where the main series relies on battle experience, two resources do the work here: Stardust, collected with every catch, and Candy, specific to each evolutionary family. Powering up a Pokémon to raise its CP costs both at once, while evolving it takes only Candy. The Trainer, meanwhile, saw their cap rise from level 40 to level 50 on November 30, 2020, then to level 80 on October 15, 2025.

That leaves the most visible difference: geolocation replaces exploration. Items are picked up at PokéStops, modeled on real-world locations, and Eggs hatch only after 2, 5, 7, 10, or 12 kilometers actually walked. Raids, introduced in July 2017, later brought the game closer to its elders: they gather players in front of a Gym against a Pokémon that has to be beaten alone or as a team depending on its tier, and they remain the main way to catch a Legendary; the Remote Raid Pass, born during the pandemic, made it possible to take part without gathering in person. Console mechanics followed, from Mega Evolution to Max Battles and their Power Spots, the mobile transposition of the giant phenomenon from Galar. The details of these differences are in the feature on what Pokémon GO changes.

The bridge to the consoles opened in 2018 with Let's Go, Pikachu and Let's Go, Eevee, the first main series games to accept Pokémon sent from mobile. The GO Park replaces the Fuchsia City Safari Zone there : species sent from the phone can be caught again there, and the first transfer unlocks the Mystery Box in return, the main way to make Meltan appear with the "Let's GO, Meltan" Special Research. A second bridge opened on November 10, 2020 to Pokémon HOME. Since February 27, 2023, sending a postcard to Scarlet and Violet earns a Coin Bag, the only way to get the Roaming Form of Gimmighoul.

Mobile reaches well beyond GO : Pokémon Masters in 2019, which became Pokémon Masters EX in 2020, Pokémon Café Mix the same year, renamed Pokémon Café ReMix in 2021, Pokémon UNITE on phones in 2021, Pokémon Sleep in 2023, and Pokémon TCG Pocket in 2024, the last of which has passed two hundred million downloads. Each one carries one facet of the franchise to phones rather than a complete Trainer game, and the full picture is covered in the feature on the spin-off series.

What GO changed for the series is measured first by its audience: it took the franchise off the console and onto a device millions of people already had in their pocket. This audience does not buy cartridges and learns species names from the map rather than from the Pokédex. The economic weight of the shift was put in numbers in 2025: Niantic sold its games division, Pokémon GO included, to the mobile publisher Scopely for $3.5 billion, announced on March 12; the team was renamed Scopely Explore on July 6, 2026.

Series sales, from the 1996 record to the Switch peak

Nintendo publishes cumulative sales for its games at every fiscal close: each total is fixed to a date, never final, since a title still on sale keeps climbing while one pulled from shelves stays frozen. Because both versions of a pair are counted together, a row here stands for a single title or for a pair, and only figures confirmed by Nintendo's investor data or by the Bulbapedia encyclopedia appear.

Two titles are deliberately absent from the list: Yellow Version to Crystal, for which no worldwide total is published by Nintendo or recorded by Bulbapedia. The two rows at the top call for the same caution: their source gives no cutoff date. The total for Pokémon Legends: Z-A adds together 8.85 million for the Switch version and 3.94 million for the Switch 2 edition.

The top of the ranking tells a story about its era above all. Red and Blue, counted together with the Green Version and the Japanese editions of Red and Blue, are the only Pokémon games to have passed thirty million, carried by years of sales on a Game Boy installed all over the world. Scarlet and Violet come close at 28.46 million and quietly mark a break along the way: on every Nintendo machine that has hosted a main series game, the best seller had always been the first one released on it, and the Switch is the first console where that is no longer true.

Then comes the mechanical effect of the installed base. The Nintendo DS sold 154 million units as of March 2026, the Switch 156.59 million as of June 30, 2026: two almost identical bases. And yet Diamond and Pearl, the best-selling Pokémon game on the DS, top out eleven million copies belowScarlet and Violet. With an equal installed base, the series today reaches a far larger share of console owners. Conversely, it is the narrower base of the 3DS, 75.94 million machines, that caps the total of its best entry, X and Y, at 16.80 million — measured against the number of consoles, it is in fact the best penetration rate of the three.

The bottom of the table brings together two categories of their own. Third versions are overrepresented there, Platinum to Emerald bringing up the rear: they arrive when the audience is already equipped. Remakes, for their part, have seen their status change: FireRed and LeafGreen were the worst sellers of the kind with 12 million as of March 31, 2013, before their Switch re-release of February 27, 2026 added over 4 million copies in six weeks; meanwhile, Let's Go have become, at 15.07 million, the first remakes to outsell the game they are drawn from, the Yellow Version — a finding Bulbapedia reports without publishing the total. That leaves the most instructive gap of all, the one between sales and critical reception: Scarlet and Violet are the worst-reviewed main series games in the press, and they still sold more than ten million copies in a single weekend. Black and White, by contrast, are the lowest-selling original pair.

Where to play the older titles today

The series has never had a single catalog: each generation has stayed tied to the machine it was written for. The overview that follows covers only what is officially available.

The Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console had taken care of the first two generations. Red and Blue to Yellow Version arrived there on February 27, 2016, for the franchise's twentieth anniversary, Gold to Silver on September 22, 2017, Crystal on January 26, 2018. These ports were not mere emulations: the console's wireless communication replaced the Game Link Cable there, trades, battles, and the Time Capsule included. The Nintendo eShop for the 3DS and the Wii U closed on March 27, 2023 : no purchase is possible there anymore, and only titles already bought can still be redownloaded.

The Nintendo Switch Online classic games service, renamed Nintendo Classics in 2025, took over: a Game Boy app and a Game Boy Advance app opened there on the same day, February 9, 2023, the latter reserved for the higher subscription tier. No main series game is included. The service's Pokémon catalog is limited to Pokémon Trading Card Game, a Game Boy Color title, in the Game Boy app, to Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team on Game Boy Advance, and to the four Nintendo 64 titles — Snap, Puzzle League, Stadium to Stadium 2 — detailed by the spin-off series overview ; add to that the port of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, which arrived on March 17, 2026 in the GameCube app, available only to higher-tier subscribers on Switch 2, and which is due to be joined by Pokémon Colosseum at a date yet to be announced.

Announced on February 20, 2026 and released a week later, on February 27, 2026, at the thirtieth-anniversary Pokémon Presents, FireRed and LeafGreen returned to Nintendo Switch, digital only and sold separately in each language. The AuroraTicket and the MysticTicket are obtained there by entering the Hall of Fame with at least one Pokémon that does not already carry the Champion Ribbon, which opens up Birth Island for Deoxys and Navel Rock for Lugia and Ho-Oh with no event distribution at all. Its code even provides for a connection with hypothetical Switch versions of Ruby, Sapphire to Emerald, which have not been announced.

As for the rest, every main-series entry released on Switch since 2018 is still in print, boxed as well as digital, and the Switch 2 reads those game cards. Eleven releases — twenty versions — have, on the other hand, never been re-released as they stand : Ruby to Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond to Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold to SoulSilver, Black to White, Black 2 to White 2, X to Y, Omega Ruby to Alpha Sapphire, Sun to Moon, Ultra Sun to Ultra Moon. Those can only be played on their original console, with their original cartridge.

One last practical point: two regions can be replayed on Switch today through their remake rather than their original — Kanto with FireRed to LeafGreen, Sinnoh with Brilliant Diamond to Shining Pearl. Johto did not get that treatment: HeartGold and SoulSilver can only be played on a DS cartridge.

Moving your Pokémon from one generation to the next

Transferring is not trading: until Pokémon HOME, a Pokémon that moved up from one generation to the next never came back down. The chain was built in stages, each one inventing its own crossing, and for a long time it only ran from the oldest games toward the newest.

The first link was, at first, a break. Ruby and Sapphire dropped the Game Boy cartridge format: no first- or second-generation Pokémon reaches the third by any conventional means, and the only arrival from another platform is a Jirachi, a third-generation Pokémon, unlocked in Pokémon Channel on GameCube. FireRed and LeafGreen were designed as an answer to that gap.

Pal Park reopens the crossing on Nintendo DS. Once you have the National Pokédex, it imports six Pokémon from a Game Boy Advance cartridge slid into the slot provided for it, then asks you to catch them again with Park Balls that never fail. It requires a DS or a DS Lite, the only systems fitted with that slot: on the DSi and every later machine, the operation is impossible. Diamond and Pearl, like Platinum, cap transfers at six Pokémon per day and per cartridge; the Johto remakes lift the limit.

The fifth generation replaces the Park with Poké Transfer, a machine in the Poké Transfer Lab set up on Unova's Route 15 and reachable only once the story is finished. You need two DS- or 3DS-family systems and a Poké Ball throwing minigame, still in groups of six but with no daily cap : Black 2 and White 2 work the same way as their predecessors.

On 3DS, Pokémon Bank centralizes everything. Released in Europe on February 4, 2014, it stores 3,000 Pokémon in a hundred boxes and directly receives those from the eight main-series 3DS games, from X and Y to both versions of Ultra. Its companion app, Poké Transporter, also sends it the first box from Black, White, Black 2 to White 2, and the one from the Virtual Console versions of the first two generations.

Pokémon HOME, launched on February 12, 2020, closes the chain. The Switch version is the only one that moves Pokémon to and from the Switch games; both versions, mobile and Switch alike, receive deposits from Pokémon Bank and from Pokémon GO, both of them one-way. The free plan holds only 30 Pokémon in a single box ; the Premium plan takes 6,000 of them in two hundred boxes — 9,000 starting with the October 2026 update — and is required for anything coming in from the Bank.

The Bank became free when the 3DS eShop closed, for those who had already installed it, and survived the shutdown of the console's online services in April 2024, but in August 2026 Nintendo announced its end on February 26, 2027. After that date, no deposit, withdrawal or transfer will be possible: whatever is left in the Bank is lost there. The unique ID that HOME assigns to each Pokémon rules out any workaround, and every game released on the consoles that came before the Nintendo Switch will be permanently cut off from HOME.

On the Switch side, HOME gained Scarlet to Purple on May 30, 2023, then Pokémon Legends: Z-A on April 2, 2026 — but that one is a dead end, since whatever goes into it or comes out of it never heads back to the earlier games. Pokémon Champions, released on April 8, 2026, instead borrows Pokémon from HOME without taking them out of it, for a stay during which they can be neither traded, nor released, nor transferred to another game. The Switch versions of FireRed to LeafGreen will join the service in October 2026, deposit only and by whole boxes.

Which game to start with, depending on what you're after

There is no single way in, but different answers depending on what you come looking for. Six profiles come up again and again, and each one leads to a different game.

If you're discovering the series, start with Scarlet and Violet. It's the most recent game in the classic mold, its single seamless open world can be explored in any order you like, and nothing in it assumes you know the earlier entries. Its technical execution drew heavy criticism, but no other entry lets you choose the order of its three storylines.

If you're playing with a child, pick Let's Go, Pikachu or Let's Go, Eevee. They are the first main-series games where two people play at the same time in the same adventure : the second controller helps with catches as well as with Trainer battles, with no separate game or save file to manage. Motion catching, inherited from mobile, does away with the battle against wild Pokémon and removes the main source of failure along with it.

If you come for the story, go to Black and White. The plot of N and Team Plasma asks head-on the question the series had been dodging — do we have the right to shut creatures inside Poké Balls? — and is careful not to answer it for the player. Its Pokédex holds nothing but brand-new species until the credits roll, which makes the region entirely new, even for a veteran.

If you want to go back to the origins, choose FireRed and LeafGreen. They retell the Kanto adventure exactly, with the Sevii Islands added on, but with the comforts of the third generation: Abilities, Natures and Double Battles, all absent from the Japanese cartridges of 1996, which reached Europe on October 5, 1999 under the names Red to Blue.

If you want to watch the series reinvent itself, boot up Pokémon Legends: Arceus. There the Poké Ball is thrown straight from exploration, without going through a battle, and a wild Pokémon can knock the Trainer themselves out of the fight. Its ideas come back in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which packs the entire adventure into a single city.

If you want long-term content, stay with Sword and Shield. The Wild Area and Dynamax raids stretch the adventure well past the League, and successive updates and the two expansions, the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, took the number of species compatible with the game from 401 at launch — the Galar Pokédex plus the Mew from the Poké Ball Plus — to 664, spread across the Galar, Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra Pokédexes, the Dynamax Adventures and twenty-four extra Pokémon. All of this content can be worked through without ever replaying the main story.

The only ordering constraint in the whole series concerns Unova: Black 2 to White 2 take place two years after Black to White, in the same region and with the same characters. Playing them the other way around amounts to reading the ending before the beginning. Everywhere else, each generation tells a self-contained story, and the release order only serves to follow how the mechanics evolved.

🎁 Once the game is over, the adventure carries on at home with the products in the starters' colors, which bring back the three companions from the first chapter.

The twenty-two main games in order

As of September 2026, the main series has twenty-two released games, from Kanto's 151 species to the single city of Lumiose — a twenty-third, Pokémon Winds and Waves, was announced on February 27, 2026 for 2027 on Nintendo Switch 2. Of the twenty-one games also released in Japan, the European order follows the Japanese order ; Red and Blue, for its part, never came out in Japan. Every row of the table links to the feature devoted to that game.

This count stops at the core series. It leaves out the spin-off series and the mobile games, as well as Red and Green, released only in Japan in 1996: for the international launch, it was Red to Blue that took their place, adapted not from them but from the third Japanese version, Pocket Monsters Ao. The dates are those of the European release, France included.

In short

Twenty-nine years separate the first Pokémon game on Game Boy from Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and yet the 1996 framework has not moved: a Pokédex that no single cartridge is enough to fill, trading still mandatory until the Linking Cord in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, a journey marked out by ever stronger opponents. No entry has given up the Pokédex or that step-by-step progression, not even the ones that removed Gyms or dropped the pair of versions. What has changed comes down to the hardware and the scale: the move from a monochrome screen to a seamless open world, the arrival of online play, and the ability to rebuild an old region with the tools of the day.

The same story can be read through entry points other than the console. The same world is also told through its species, spread across nine generations : that is the subject of the guide to the 1,025 Pokémon, from Kanto to Paldea, while types and battle mechanics explain the rules these games have piled up over the generations. Species by species, the Pokédex index covers every creature met along the way.

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In the shop

Cartridges and game cards are not sold here: the shop takes care of everything around the screen. The section closest to this page is the gaming corner, with forty keycaps in diorama style, one species per key, and twenty-five mouse pad in XL format, several of which feature the Kanto starters. Six LED neon signs and twelve night lights complete the lineup among the lamps, Poké Ball included.

Part of the catalog nods directly to the games rather than the characters. Eight of the forty-one iPhone cases reproduce the layout of a Pokédex entry, number and stats included; three of the thirteen puzzles take a place as their subject rather than a species, from a Sinnoh forest to Kanto pop art; and the plush toys include a complete set of eight Poké Balls, from the Great Ball to the Master Ball. This is the section where the object tells the story of the game, not just the creature.

As for the rest, twenty-seven posters, thirty-three stickers and twenty-seven throw blankets cover decor, and fifty-one stationery items cover the school section. Sorting by age, by budget and by occasion is done in the buying guide, which covers the same sections from a different angle: how to choose the right Pokémon gift.

See all Pokémon merch

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Explore the Pokémon universe

This page is part of a series of guides covering the whole Pokémon universe:

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Frequently asked questions about the Pokémon games