Pokémon is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and The Pokémon Company International has a year of events, programs and new licensing partners lined up to mark a banner year for this multi-platform powerhouse brand.

The “Pokémon Red” and “Pokémon Green” video games, released in Japan in 1996 for Nintendo Game Boy, marked the official birth of the franchise. The video games (renamed “Pokémon Red” and “Pokémon Blue”) were released two years later in the U.S. in 1998, and went on to become the No. 2 best-selling video game of all-time with 279 million copies sold.