Digimon Video Game History
As a big fan of Digimon, video games and research, this article will cover my deep dive into all the Digimon franchise video games released in North America. My history with Digimon started with watching the Digimon Adventure anime. I’ve always enjoyed the character designs and the video games related to the series.
If you’d rather watch a video version of this content please see the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzdUKWK5CgM
To understand where Digimon came from let’s first rewind to 1997 Japan. The 90s were home to various fads like Beanie Babies, fanny packs, pogs, Furby and Tamogatchi. Electronic “pets” like Tamogatchi were exploding in popularity in the late 90s. Bandai was battling various electronic companies entering the fad market. Tiger Electronic’s competition Giga Pets and decided to release a “male” equivalent of Tamogatchi called Digital Monsters.
The Digital Monster pet entered the North American market on February 10th, 1998. Consumers loved the fact that there were many different monsters to raise and battle against friends. Although not as popular as the original Tamogatchi, Digital Monsters sold 14 million units outside of Japan. I don’t think anyone could guess how Digimon would transition from a fad into a full blown franchise in just a short amount of time.
