Today (February 27) marks the 25th anniversary of the Pokemon game series, a big milestone for any franchise and one that makes people my age feel so much older than we really are.

While a vast majority of my generation were into Pokemon when it first hit, I was an especially easy mark for it as I already had an interest in dinosaurs, Godzilla and all varieties of monsters before I even knew what a Pokemon was.

Created by game designer Satoshi Tajiri, Pokemon was inspired by Tajiri’s childhood hobby of bug collecting and a desire to provide kids with that sense of adventure he had.

For readers not in the know: Pokemon (derived from the term “Pocket Monster”) are a wide variety of creatures inspired by real life animals, mythological creatures, household items and other assorted concepts. They are further divided into 18 different types that have various advantages and disadvantages against each other, usually with some internal logic (fire beats grass, grass beats water, water beats fire, and so on).

The basic premise involves catching, battling and trading all of these creatures with the ultimate goal of completing an in-game encyclopedia called the Pokedex. The other goal consists of taking on a regional champion by first battling eight different Pokemon gym leaders to enter into the league.

Throughout the game, like many RPG games, these Pokemon can level up to learn new skills and some at certain levels or with unique items can evolve into stronger creatures.

The first two games released in Japan were Pokemon Red and Green (the US versions were Red and Blue), these games took six years to develop and very nearly bankrupted developer Game Freak. The games were a huge success and saved the Game Boy and helped Nintendo’s sales.

Pokemon was serious business to kids in the 90’s, trading cards at recess, talking about rumors and myths in the game, finding out who everyone’s favorites were (for the record, mine are Poliwhirl and Typhlosion). It was a zeitgeist.

Social interaction has always been a big part of the franchise, trading with a link cable after all was necessary to be able to have all of the Pokemon since several were exclusive to a particular version and most kids only had one.

Pokemon had a bit of a resurgence in my age group. Most of us dropped off when we got into high school, but once I moved to college it felt like everyone was revisiting the games. We recaptured some of that fun sense of community we had as children experiencing these games.

25 years is a big milestone for any franchise, and I don’t see this one slowing any time soon.