>>46488178People who were adults then aren't going to be able to contextualize how big pokemania was because they weren't the target demographic. I was an adult when Minecraft blew up, but I didn't really understand how big it was until zoomers got on the internet and started talking about how it affected their childhoods.
Red/Blue/Yellow sold 32 million copies off of an entirely young demographic, SWSH might hit 25 million off of an increasingly equal mix of kids and nostalgic adults (the majority of which started in Gen 1) and that's the biggest success the mainline games have had since Pokemania. The anime was a phenomenon that arguably kickstarted the entire franchise and the first movie broke a western animation record when it hit theaters and remains by far the highest grossing anime movie in the west with the second pokemon movie still in second right behind it, while the show today struggles to find someone who will carry it with it bouncing from network to network. The TCG had Go-sized events where people traded the cards, while nobody but boomers who see the cards as an investment give a shit about it today.
It was as big as Go was at its peak, except it lasted from the summer of '99 to the end of 2000. Granted Go released in the widespread internet era where trend begin and end far faster than they used to, but its still the biggest the entire franchise has ever been.
