>>52837471The games absolutely mattered.
Pokemon revived the Gameboy on both sides of the Atlantic. Every fucking kid around was carrying one of those bricks with a set of extra batteries and one of those attachable lights.
30 million units for GSC being sold in 1999-2000 was insane.
Johto was well sold as a new mystery for people to explore, and really it delivered on that. The kids talking about how they found Godzilla in the game and being called liars come to mind.
RSE coming out when it did, several years later where kids started getting to the age of being embarrassed to like Pokemon again. And it being an underwhelming sequel took the Pokemania down as a pair.
