Is "Digimon" a knock-off Pokémon Game and Anime?
I realized that Pokémon and Digimon has both "mon" in their last syllable. And also realized Pokémon came first. There are a lot of similarities. Except that Digimon's evolutions are more complicated.
But is Digimon a knock-off?
You may discuss your answers here :)
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Pokémon Red and Green were released in 1996 as Pocket Monster, and the Digital Monster toy was released in 1997 as a kind of boy's Tamogochi. It is quite common to abbreviate the names of franchises to a couple of syllables in Japanese, and since both franchises feature the English word monster, it is not surprising that both have the suffix "mon" in their abbreviated name.
It is entirely possible that people working on the team developing Digital Monster may have taken some inspiration from the Pocket Monster game released the previous year. But given how long product and software development takes, I would wager that the concept for Digimon was in development before anyone saw Pokémon.
And again, it was meant to be a Tamogochi for boys, not Bandai's Pokémon.
The creators of Pokémon also cited earlier games like Dragon Quest as inspiration for some of the mechanics and designs. Further, games like the Megami Tensei series that involve recruiting enemy monsters (demons in that case) to fight for you predate Pokémon.
So despite what a lot of the internet seems to think based on their reaction to Tem Tem and Palworld, Pokémon did not invent the concept of catching and battling monsters. And anything that uses similar mechanics is not necessarily a Pokémon rip off.
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What makes some people say it isn't a knock off?
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It is a bit of a knock-off, but Pokémon doesn't OWN the monster catching genre, so you can't really call it just some Poké rip-off or anything. On the other hand, I've never messed with it really.
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Honestly, out of all the Pokemon knock offs, Digimon is copying Pokemon the least. It feels like more of its own thing.
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I've never played Digimon, but I've heard the gameplay is very different. I can also tell you that the anime is completely separate from Pokemon. It's also worth noting that Digimon had mega evolution before Pokemon. In both games, mega evolution is a powerful temporary form that the monster takes.
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