30 Years of Catchin' 'Em All
In Tokyo in the early 1970s, a boy named Satoshi Tajiri grew up at a time of rapid change. An avid fan of bug collecting, Tajiri wished for a way to replicate the feel of going out and collecting creatures independently of the growing industrial sprawl of what would soon become the world's largest metropolitan area. Like all Japanese children of his era, Tajiri was absorbed in the sci-fi adventure stories of Eiji Tsuburaya, whose television series, Ultraseven, featured "capsule monsters," summoned from handheld devices to battle for the fate of the planet. He hatched an idea for battling and catching monsters.
Freely adapted from Japanese-English loanwords for "Pocket Monster," Tajiri's Pokémon debuted in 1996 as an ambitious mixture of video games, animation, comics, and trading cards. The initial Pokémon video games came in two versions, Red and Green, expressly encouraging players to trade monsters between the two versions, while also learning about the world and strategies in the anime, which directly paralleled the structure of the games. Nothing quite like it existed prior, and it was a big gamble.
Three decades and over a thousand species later, Pokémon is unanimously recognized as the single highest-grossing media franchise of all time. It appears the gamble paid off.
The resulting international popularity rocketed way beyond Tajiri's wildest expectations, and "Pokémania" swept the United States at the turn of the millennium. In 2026, the franchise is celebrating 30 years, with celebrations extending across the franchise. The trading card game is releasing an anniversary set of classic cards from the series' history, the video games are celebrating both the teaser of their next main installment, Pokémon Wind and Waves, as well as special anniversary events for the augmented reality mobile game Pokémon GO, which created a second wave of Pokémania in the mid-2010s. For the past three of these 30 summers, the world's most popular franchise has celebrated its biggest North American event, the competitive Pokémon North American International Championships (NAIC), from June 12-14 in America's most interesting city.
"Championships" is the key word here. While the New Orleans event has plenty of casual play, card collecting, and general fan experiences, the main attraction is the competitive Pokémon battling, both alternatively over the card mat and on the Nintendo Switch. The Pokémon Video Games Championships (VGC) is a pro-level competition entailing all of the preparation and dedication expected from any other.
"I have been in the competitive Pokémon scene since 2017," remembered Sierra Dawn Hunter, a professional commentator for VGC on behalf of the Pokémon Company International. "Pokémon and VGC have seen incredible growth since then, with more competitors showing up at each event." Coinciding with the 30th anniversary, a separate new game, Pokémon Champions, is designated to function as a competitive platform focusing entirely on the battling aspect of the Pokémon franchise independently of the collecting and trading grind found within the main game titles. Hunter is optimistic about the new battling simulator. "Pokémon VGC hasn't ever really been a focus in the main series titles, so it now being the focal point of the newest game Pokémon Champions should be great for the growth of the scene going forward, giving an easier experience for casual fans to try their hand at VGC." A plushie of Mew, the mythical first Pokémon, can be seen accompanying Hunter, decked out in its own professional commentating headset.
If this level of media focused on this competition seems big, one must understand the extent of the demand when it comes to the other end of the franchise—collecting. There are multiple specialty shops dedicated to the business of trading cards all within just the metro area of New Orleans. Uptown, Media Men Cards & Collectibles is an officially-dedicated competitive Pokémon TCG battle location, hosting more casual, weekly competitions in both the most recent TCG formats and in retro runs of early cards. In Metairie, PokéNOLA Collectibles swaps the competitive focus for breadth of shelf space. NAIC weekend, all the way over at the Morial Convention Center, has historically proven to create PokéNOLA's busiest weekend of the year. House of Cards, formerly Markman Breakers and near the foot of the Causeway, arranges premium card grading, which is to say official preservation and value determination. A computerized kiosk streamlines the process of arranging individual cards' shipment to authoritative valuation companies, and it's usually designed for single trading cards with values starting at around $100.
It is courteous to patronize the various shops and to get into the mindset. In one pack, this writer pulled cards of both Iris, the Champion of the Unova region, and Iono, a Gym Leader of the most recent Paldea region, who fights with electric-type Pokémon and even wears one in an elaborate hairdress. One of the Pokémon Company International executives even stated he'd seen a cosplayer of Iono with a fully functioning replica of the piece last year. The Magnemite's eyes would turn and look at you.
Meanwhile, at the Morial Convention Center, one can imagine pallets of Pokémon gear unloaded for the event-exclusive pop-up store, the Pokémon Center. "Pokémon Center" is of course the titular building in which Pokémon are healed in between their battles, the shopping element perhaps working well considering that the in-game shopping marts, Poké-Marts, have been merged with Pokémon Centers since Generation Five Pokémon in the Unova Region. It was a whole thing.
And so the most popular franchise in the world is finally set to return to the Big Easy, every angle pointing to a nigh-inexhaustible world of collecting, battling, and playing. Maybe it'd take a decade, or three, to really catch it all.
