Where it came from
Pokémon started as two Game Boy role-playing games released in Japan in February 1996. Satoshi Tajiri had collected insects as a boy and wanted to hand that feeling to children growing up in cities with no fields left to search. Game Freak built the games, Nintendo published them, and The Pokémon Company looks after the brand today.
The loop has barely moved in thirty years. Travel, find creatures, weaken them in battle, catch them, carry six. The animated series, the card game and the mobile spin-offs all grew out of that, and the whole thing is now the highest-grossing media franchise there has ever been.
What the colours are
Every creature carries one or two types, and so does every attack. Match them well and you deal double damage; match them badly and you deal half. That single multiplier is most of the strategy in the series.
The first games shipped with fifteen types. Dark and Steel arrived in 1999 because Psychic had become impossible to answer, and Fairy was added in 2013 to do the same job on Dragon. The colour wall at the top of this page is, in effect, thirty years of balance patches.
Four rules that cover most fights
Nobody memorises the full chart to start with. These four carry you a long way:
- The starter triangle. Fire burns Grass, Grass drinks Water, Water douses Fire. You choose one of these three on your first morning of every game.
- Electricity needs somewhere to go. Electric tears through Water and , and does absolutely nothing to Ground.
- Some attacks simply miss. Normal moves cannot touch a Ghost, and a Ghost cannot be hit back with them either.
- Steel is the wall. Steel resists more types than anything else in the game, then folds instantly to Fire, Fighting or Ground.
Two types stack, which is where it gets sharp. A Water and creature takes four times damage from Electric, because both halves are weak to it. Building a team is really the work of covering each other's holes.
The nine generations
Each one brings a new region, a new batch of species, and usually one mechanic the community will argue about for a decade.
| Gen | Region | Debut |
|---|---|---|
| I | Kanto | 1996 |
| II | Johto | 1999 |
| III | Hoenn | 2002 |
| IV | Sinnoh | 2006 |
| V | Unova | 2010 |
| VI | Kalos | 2013 |
| VII | Alola | 2016 |
| VIII | Galar | 2019 |
| IX | Paldea | 2022 |
If you want to start now
- Skip the first generation. The 1996 games matter historically and play like it. Anything from Kalos onward is far kinder to a newcomer.
- Pick your starter however you like. On type it is a small tactical decision; on which one you think is best, it is the right decision. You will be looking at it for forty hours.
- Catch more than feels necessary. A varied team beats a strong one, because coverage decides fights and raw power rarely does.
- Learn four matchups, not fifty. The rules above will get you through a first playthrough. The rest of the chart arrives on its own, one lost battle at a time.