Pokemon coloring picture game Pokemon is a media franchise published and owned by the video game company Nintendo and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996. Originally released as a pair of interlinkable Game Boy role-playing video games developed by Game Freak Pokemon has since become the second most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world behind only Nintendo''s own Mario series. Pokemon properties have since been merchandised into anime manga trading cards toys books and other media. The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006 and as of 28 May 2010 cumulative sales of the video games (including home console versions such as the "Pikachu" Nintendo 64) have reached more than 200 million copies. The name Pokemon is the romanized contraction of the Japanese brand Pocket Monsters as such contractions are quite common in Japan. The term Pokemon in addition to referring to the Pokemon franchise itself also collectively refers to the 649 fictional species that have made appearances in Pokemon media as of the release of the Pokemon role-playing game (RPG) for the Nintendo DS Pokemon Black and White. Like the words deer and sheep the word Pokemon is identical in both the singular and plural as is each individual species name in short it is grammatically correct to say both "one Pokemon" and "many Pokemon" as well as "one Pikachu" and "many Pikachu". In November 2005 4Kids Entertainment which had managed the non-game related licensing of Pokemon announced that it had agreed not to renew the Pokemon representation agreement. Pokemon USA Inc. (now The Pokemon Company International) a subsidiary of Japan''s Pokemon Co. now oversees all Pokemon licensing outside of Asia.