Notes:

Although Pokemon was fairly successful in Japan in 1996, 1997 was the year it truly became a phenomenon. Pokemon Red/Green/Blue sold 4 million copies in 1997 alone, over twice of what it sold in 1996. 1997 also saw the launch of the popular anime and manga series Pokemon Adventures, along with three sets for the new Trading Card Game. It was thus inevitable that the series would expand, including spinoffs.

This all came at a fortunate time for Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 only sold about 1.2 million units in 1997, leaving it far behind the PlayStation and roughly on par with the already ailing Saturn The opportunity to spread the success of Pokemon to the struggling N64 would have seemed very fortunate for Nintendo.

Ultimately, the N64 would receive five Pokemon games in Japan, and although these games didn't exactly win the generation for Nintendo, they WERE very successful in Japan. Pocket Monsters Stadium would end up the #5 best-selling N64 game in Japan, and the other 4 games each landed in the Top 20, selling about 3.8 million copies combined in Japan, making it the biggest franchise on the N64 that wasn't Mario. The N64's sales also remained fairly stable through 1999, suggesting that Pokemon helped stabilize the console.