Pokemon Encyclopedia
Pokemon Encyclopedia is a book published on 5 April 1996, roughly a month after the release of Red and Green. It was the first Pokemon encyclopedia of its kind. Its creation was supervised by Pokemon producer Tsunekazu Ishihara. The artwork in the book was provided by Game Freak. The release of this book predated the start of the production of the anime by half a year. The book is notable for featuring a completely unique Pokedex, and pieces of in-universe info which has since never been reused in any other Pokemon product.
At the end of the book is an interesting interview regarding the development of Red and Green, as well as some really cool photographs of Pokemon's dev team.
DidYouKnowGaming videos[edit]
In 2021, the YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming released a three-part video series about this book: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
In creating them, DidYouKnowGaming commissioned Pokemon translator Nob Ogasawara to translate all Pokedex entries into English, resulting in what you could call a semi-official, partly translation of Pokemon Encyclopedia.
Release[edit]
Pokemon Encyclopedia was published on 5 April 1996 by Aspect and ASCII.
Google Books, amazon.co.jp, amazon.com.
ISBN: 978-4893664945.
The book is in bunkabon format, which to my knowledge is the only version of it that exists. The picture on Amazon shows an obi strip, but the copy I received didn't have one.
As with all books on this site, Pokemon Encyclopedia is rare, out-of-print, and exclusive to Japan. Curiously, however, the book is printed in Western style, instead of the traditional Japanese style. In other words, the book's text is to be read from left to right then top to bottom, instead of top to bottom then right to left. Perhaps an indicator that a Western release was considered?
Download[edit]
For a ZIP file containing all scans, go here (667 MB).
Here is a mirror of the ZIP file at MEGA.
Gallery[edit]
Group image of the dev team. Crop of p136.
Satoshi Tajiri. Crop of p137.
Ken Sugimori. Crop of p137.
Junichi Masuda. Crop of p137.
Takenori Oota. Crop of p139.
Shigeki Morimoto. Crop of p139.
Tetsuya Watanabe. Crop of p141.
Motofumi Fujiwara. Crop of p141.
Koji Nishino. Crop of p142.
Atsuko Nishida. Crop of p142.
