Pokémon.com

Pokémon.com is the official international Pokémon website which was created on January 8, 1998[1]. Each iteration has had an online Pokédex. On January 11, 2010, the website was overhauled, now having full episodes, new online games, and Trading Card Game information, among others.

Logo used for the website until the 2010 overhaul

Sections

Fun Zone

 
The Pokémon Fun Zone Logo

The Fun Zone contains games, wallpapers, and screensavers. Before the 2010 update, the games were mostly based on Generation III and Pokémon Platinum; after the update the games featured a larger number of Generation IV Pokémon, all translated from the Japanese Pokémon Daisuki Club. The games released after the site revamp are interactive, and allow players to earn Trainer Tokens, also brought over from the Pokémon Daisuki Club. The games that were previously available on the site are not available any longer.

TCG

Before the overhaul, most TCG news was on Go-Pokémon.com. However, after the overhaul, the TCG was brought to Pokémon.com. The Trading Card Game section of the site includes sets from EX Ruby & Sapphire to the current set, strategies, and news. Most news articles and images from Go-Pokémon were not transferred over, and thus have been lost.

Pokémon Trainer Club

The Pokémon Trainer Club is the equivalent of Japan's Pokémon Daisuki Club. Many features have been brought over from the Pokémon Daisuki Club, including customizable Trainer personalities for each user. Outfits and accessories are bought with Trainer Tokens, which are rewarded when playing the online games. Users must have a Pokémon Trainer Club account in order to register high scores in the online games or to earn tokens. Anyone who has a Pokémon Trainer Club account can also keep track of their Organized Play statistics.

Anime

Before the overhaul, the anime section simply had synopses of almost every anime episode. After the overhaul, a changing selection of episodes can be viewed, along with summaries and screenshots for every episode and movie.

Video games

Before the overhaul, the video games section had information of the games, with some of them having mini-sites and sub-sites. After the overhaul, the section was expanded to include game strategies, and information about video game Organized Play. However, many of the game mini-sites were removed.

Defunct sections

Pokémon Center

 
The Pokémon Center website on its last day of operation

The Pokémon Center was an online store where people could buy different kinds of Pokémon merchandise over the internet. It also featured exclusive items only available at the online store. The store closed on January 31, 2008. When it was closed, it was claimed that Pokémon merchandise would now be mainly distributed by other retailers.

Mailbag

The Pokémon.com mailbag was an official source of information from the company directors. Fans could write in and ask questions about the games, anime, and other aspects of the franchise. It had been updated quite regularly, often providing information that was not available in other sources (such as the English name of one character from the eleventh movie), but the last update came in October/November 2009. When the site was revamped in January 2010, the mailbag section was removed.

Media player

The site once contained a media player that played music from the Pokémon X collection. Like the mailbag, it was removed in the revamp.

Errors

Throughout Pokémon.com's lifespan, it has been notorious for errors. Some of these are as minor as referring to Team Galactic as Team Rocket, others as important as erroneously stating that Phione was a legendary Pokémon (although this is a subject of debate). Other errors are stated below.

Trivia

  • Several (but not all) Pokémon namespaces (such as "bulbasaur.com") redirect to either Pokémon.com or Nintendo.com, and others, such as Manaphy.com and Darkrai.com, redirected to their respective minisites. Ironically, typing the correct spelling of Pokémon in the URL, Pokémon.com, will not redirect. After the update in January 2010, many links became broken as the respective pages no longer exist at the same location. Such namespaces have since been changed to redirect to the website's Pokédex page on that Pokémon.
  • Despite the overhaul the site received in early January 2010, the old version was made available for a limited period of time at http://origin.pokemon.com/. This also affected links that got broken with the revamp, making them available again, only at a different address.
    • However, since the old version is no longer available, all old links are once again broken.
    • A minisite about Darkrai which originally appeared in 2008 was located at http://origin2.pokemon.com, but has since been taken down.

External links

References

  This article is a part of Project Fandom, a Bulbapedia Project that aims to write comprehensive articles on every aspect of the Pokémon Fandom.