Pokemon: Links & Fan Works
Pokemon came out right as most homes were getting access to the Internet. Naturaly, kids used their new-found voice to express their love for the series, & marketers used the web to spread info about all the avaliable Pokemon merchandise.
But wait, how could kids make a website? HTML might be easy, but hosting is expensive. Simple: in the late 90's there were a lot of companies offering free webspace. Most, sadly, are gone, but a few, like Anglefire, still ramain. I don't know how long they'll last tho...
I first heard of fansites in a magazine, Beckett's Unofficial Pokemon Collector.. They had a small section reviewing fan pages in thier second issue. Seeing that, I wanted to create a webpage myself, but our family didn't get the internet till '08 or '09.
Below you'll find links to old Pokemon pages, both official & fan-made, some only avaliable on web archives:
Official Sites
| Pokemon World | Nintendo's official Pokemon Website, from 1998. Just an online brochure listing Pokemon merchandize. I got the main menu's "I'm an official Pokemon Trainer" button & the Craze page's map of the Pokemon World from a later version of this site. |
| KidsAnimation.com | Pioneer released the Pokemon Anime on VHS & DVD, one three-episode volume at a time. This is their official website from 2003. |
Fan Pages
| Zapados Pokemaster | A farily typical old fan site, found in the Wayback machine from a reddit link. The webmaster found the site archived, & decided to share it. | | Dratinigirl's Pokemon Site | This site has a lot of fan resources, plus a fairly long summary of the first movie, summary of each of the League episodes, info on the games, etc. | | Ash & Misty's Love | A collection of scenes the webmasters believed indicated Ash & Misty had a crush on eachother. Awwwww... | | Pokemon Fantasy | A very early fan site, from when the series was still in syndication. Lots of pictures. | | PokeTown | This appears to be a professional site, created to attract Pokemon fans. Well-designed, with lots of links to infoon the series. | | Pokemon Central | Has a long episode guide, done as a single block of text. Also has a preview of Gold & Silver | | The Rise & Fall of Pokemon | A history of the Pokemon fandom, from 2001. I've read it before, & found it again via a link in reddit. The author showed up there to defend it. It's not a bad article, & it sums up the feeling of the era correctly. |
| PokeDream.com | A large old fan site with guides to the games, still updated. Archived an interview with Satoshi Tajiri. Pretty much the only place I can find online to confirm that the anime & early games had the same protagonist. | | SailorClef's Missingno. Page! | Neat old fan page with an article covering the rumors kids made up about Pokemon Red, Blue, & Yellow. Also has a guide to Missingno, with a bit about the Mew glitch. | | PokeBeach | Fan site focused on the trading card game. Still updated. I linked to an interview with Masamitsu Hidaka, the anime's former series director. |
It mighty be fun to look at Pokemon-related News Articles too:
Pokemon In The News
| The Ultimate Game Freak | Here's that TimeAsia article PokeDream has archived, from the original source, archived on the Wayback Machine. "TIME Tokyo bureau chief Tim Larimer speaks with Satoshi Tajiri, the quiet, complex man who created a video game in which no one dies--and who in the process launched the worldwide phenomenon known as Pokemon. In this extended interview, Tajiri explains, among other things, the logical trajectory from bugs to Pikachu." From November 22, 1999. | | The Secret World of Pokemon | Rather negative article explaining the series from Salon.com (1999) I got the surfing Pikachu picture you see above from this page. | | Time: Beware of the Pokemania | Another conpempoary article on the craze, from Time magazine. Actually not a bad history of the franchize to that point in time, but it carries a cautionary tone, noting that kids have gotten into fights over trading cards, etc. | | Pokemon on Telexitos | Telexitos, NBC's Spanish-language network for classic TV, started airing Pokemon earlier this year. It seems soo weird to think of the series as classic TV, instead of that weird thing only kids could understand. |
| The History of Pokemon | 2008 article from Cheat Code Central, made for the series' 10th anniversiary outside Jpan. |
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