Top of mind for me after reading this article is that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet should just be called The Heretic Prophet, and Horizon: Zero Dawn should have just been called Zero Dawn.
Top of mind for me after reading this article is that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet should just be called The Heretic Prophet, and Horizon: Zero Dawn should have just been called Zero Dawn.
Yeah, but Flynn’s suggestion (and I’d very much agree) is to save that for the sequel. You’ll get a much more memorable title for your first entry, and then you can market off of that. If I might retroactively ruin a few other series that way:
Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds Battlegrounds is such a weird case. The name was stupid to begin with, everyone ended up just calling it PUBG. Then they rebranded to PUBG being the company name and the game name, but then slapped Battlegrounds back on the end anyway?!
Pokemon also started out as Pocket Monsters in the original Japanese release. When it came to release outside Japan, there was trademark issues and they had to find an alternative name… ended up with Pokemon. Later they rebranded the game in Japan too. Someone correct me if I’m wrong here.
Here to correct as requested: it’s Pokémon. You’re welcome!
It’s ポケモン
Japanese loves abbreviating english loan words to two syllables (see also: remote control -> remokon, personal computer -> pasokon), so I’d suspect it was called pokemon colloquially very early and then the international branding caused it to become official.
Wikipedia seems to agree but i didn’t check sources
The original games name was Pocket Monsters, but the community just abbreviated it to “Pokemon”, because Pocket Monsters isn’t a word they can pronounce correctly. But it wasn’t the part of the name at all. You can check the game title, cartridge image and packaging. In a later international release because of the trademark issues they just used the shorter name instead.
I think to this day the games are named “Pocket Monsters” in Japan, but with “Pokemon” added in front. But I’m actually not sure about this. One source to look for are game box-art covers: https://pokemondungeon.com/media-downloads/box-art and on https://archives.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Category:Game_covers
But in newer games (I don’t know since when) they seem to have dropped the “Pocket Monsters” part from the actual game name entirely:
I’d rather have numbered titles in the series so that I don’t have to memorize the order.
Yeah, the companies would rather not, though, because people may think you need to play them in order…