Help me understand... everyone says Pokemon got its start in 1996, but the first games are clearly dated 1995. It's the very first thing you see when the game boots. No reference to the actual 1996 release anywhere. Also, every piece of Pokemon media ever released seems to have (c)1995-[release year] written on it somewhere.

This makes no sense. Some might claim it's just referencing the year it was trademarked. I have two problems with this:
- I'd still expect the in-game copyright to say 1995-96. The actual release was nearly 3 months into '96. They really didn't have time to correct this? This isn't like a glitch or oversight, it's the first thing you see every time you turn the game on.
- I don't know a single other franchise that uses the date it was trademarked as its starting point. It's always the year the first piece of media came out. Off the top of my head, Splatoon was revealed in 2014 and was definitely trademarked well in advance of that, but they still use the 2015 release as the franchise's starting point.