>>51221711The first monster games were SMT
A lot of Pokemon was just copying Dragon Quest which did monster recruitment before it
Digimon was a Tomagatchi spin off
And Yugioh started as manga with absolutely no connection to Pokemon or intention of becoming a toy advertisement, and the card game started as a parody of Magic the Gathering during a time when Magic was still fairly obscure in Japan.
They were all doing their own thing.
I feel like you were shitposting but I also know you wouldn't know these things.