On 27 February 1996, Japanese game designer Satoshi Tajiri released the first ever Pokemon games for the Nintendo Game Boy. What started as a childhood passion for collecting insects grew into a giant franchise and global phenomenon with themes of science at its heart. 'It influenced my idea of what animals and natural history were, almost before I knew what real animals in the real world were like,' says Arjan Mann, assistant curator of fossil fishes and early tetrapods at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, who was a child when the television series came out. For Pokemon's 30th anniversary, Nature spoke to scientists from around the world about how their work has been shaped by playing Pokemon games, watching animated TV series and films and trading cards in school playgrounds. For some researchers, themes in the Pokemon games mirror their everyday work. Spencer Monckton, a research scientist at the University of Guelph in Canada, who grew up playing the games and watching the...
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