ATLANTA -- Hundreds of people crane their necks, their eyes fixed on a giant red-and-white ball positioned high above them at the sprawling Nintendo booth. As smoke begins to rise, the sphere opens, revealing a cute pudgy creature, who peeks out at the crowd, sniffs -- and then bursts open, spewing hundreds of little puffy, zippered balls. A frantic scramble ensues.
Pokemon, or "pocket monster," won't even hit America until September, but it's already a smash hit with the game industry folks here at E3.
Pokemon is the collective name for 150 insufferably cute creatures, each distinct from the other, each with its own name. Across the Pacific, the Pokemon phenomenon turns up in many guises: Nintendo GameBoys (8 million sold and counting), cartoons, virtual pets, stuffed animals, pencil sharpeners, and other toys. Japanese children memorize the names of all 150 characters with the help of repetitive pop songs; so far, more than a million CDs have flown off the shelves.
The idea behind the GameBoy version is that people collect and "train" pocket monsters to earn the title "Pokemon Master." Some monsters are quite rare, and players trade them back and forth with a cable that links two GameBoys together. The game actually depends on trading, which has led to a schoolyard (and water-cooler) craze that shows no sign of slowing. More than 100 million little stuffed Pokemons have been sold through vending machines in Japan.
Pokemon is so huge in Asia that when the 151st character -- a yellow, vaguely feline stuffed creature called Pikachu (pronounced peek-at-you) -- was recently introduced there, a crowd of over 200,000 gathered to try and catch their very own, from hundreds ejected into the throng. It was a scene repeated at E3, albeit on a much smaller scale.
"You got the rarest one," Nintendo game-play counselor Thom Leonard tells me, when I proudly show him the Pikachu I fished off the floor.
Bringing Pokemon to the United States is something of a gamble, since not all anime-inspired Japanese characters have succeeded in America. Japanese aesthetics, often accompanied by very complicated storylines, can be lost in translation over the Pacific. But Nintendo is banking on the trading and collecting element of Pokemon to generate its appeal in the States.
Also likely to catch on is the Pokemon Pitachu, a virtual pet in the style of Tamagotchi, but one that doubles as a pedometer. When the pet's owner walks, the motion keeps the toy happy. In a kind of twisted guilt trip, if you don't get your exercise, Pitachu gets mad at you.
Takehiro Izushi, Nintendo's Kyoto-based general manager of research and development, attributes the Pokemon craze in part to the game's underlying theme of love for nature and animals -- and the absence of such natural wonders in modern Japan.
"We are trying to convey what [Pokemon's creator] experienced as a child, especially insect collecting, and his playing in the mountains and in the rivers," said Izushi, through a translator.
"Of course the subject has changed into these creatures called Pokemon, and unfortunately there is not so much nature around children in Japan right now. I believe this is one of the reasons why children are actually appreciating what they cannot enjoy now."
Pokemon has had it ups and downs, though, even in Japan. Last December, about 700 television viewers, many of them children, suffered seizures after focusing too intently on an elaborate Pokemon cartoon. A number of people actually required hospitalization.
The problem lay with a particular animation technique called "transparent light filming," which creates a stunning flashing-light effect that Izushi said can lead to seizures in those already susceptible to the condition. It can also be experienced while traveling through a tunnel at high speed, he said.
Needless to say, the US Pokemon cartoon, scheduled to launch 7 September in the top 40 domestic markets (that's 86 percent of the nation), won't be flashing anything.
Except dollar signs.
