All ‘Pokémon’ games in order

Many cultural brands and movements have been ‘just a phase’ over the course of the last half-century or so. Grunge, BlackBerries, Sidekicks, Myspace, you get the idea. One gaming franchise that seemed to just be a phase in the mid ‘90s, was Pokémon.

However, Pikachu, alongside their ever-expanding roster of pals, endure to this day. In fact, they’re more popular than ever. Initially debuting in Japan for Nintendo’s Game Boy in 1996 (the first generation of games didn’t land on North American store shelves until 1998), Pokémon developer Game Freak’s mainline series has only continued to grow. There are currently nine ‘generations’ of these flagship games, landing on increasingly shiny and powerful handheld consoles.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll only cover off these main titles. While there’s many a spin-off that’s more than worthy of the Pokémon name (we love you, Stadium, Mystery Dungeon, and Detective Pikachu), that list would be absolutely vast. So – to keep things simple, here’s every single mainline Pokémon game, in the order they were released in the U.S.

Related: The Best Pokémon Games Of All Time – Ranked on Attack of the Fanboy

Every main Pokémon game in release order

It is worth noting that some of the games listed in the table below are remakes of earlier titles, usually developed for more modern hardware. The titles of the games alone should be a dead giveaway, however to minimise any confusion, the remakes have also been marked with an asterisk. If you’re using this list in an endeavor to catch ’em all, or become the very best that no one ever was (or perhaps both), we wish you the best of luck. Happy training!