“It’ll never work again. And if it does, it’ll definitely never work again over here,” so the fools said, and say about Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire for Game Boy Advance.

And yet the games occupy the top of the Japanese sales chart for 2002, easily seeing off the competition. Pokemon Advance managed this despite only being released in December.

The two games combined sold an incredible 3,197,762 units and together occupy Famitsu’s number one slot in its top 100 Games of 2002. The closest anything came to Pokemon was Winning Eleven 6, which managed 1,115,707 sales.

So, it’ll never be as big again, eh? Just wait for Pokemania 2, kicking off in Europe later this year. Remember when everywhere, in every shop window and on every TV screen, all there was to be seen was Pikachu and co.? Imaging that, but twice as powerful and you might be getting close.