Not when the sales numbers speak for themselves.
The combined sales of the original Gameboy and the Gameboy Color, which were the two main handhelds that people used around that time, were more than 44 million in the Americas
alone. Coupled with the fact that Pokemon was the most successful-selling titles for the handheld systems and with the Gameboy Color coming out around the same time as Pokemon Gold/Silver which, surprise surprise, now featured full colour, it definitely didn't hurt their sales.
Now here's the funny part: The Gen 1 games (Red/Blue/Yellow/Green [Japan Only]) actually outsold the number of Gameboys in the Americas. Obviously other people around the world bought them too, but when the number of games sold is a whole
2 million more than the combined sales of all Gameboy systems in the largest region... you know you've got something special.
Specifically, it breaks down like this:
Gen 1
Red/Blue/Green (GB): 31.38 million
Yellow (GB): 14.64 million
Red/Blue/Green/Yellow (Virtual Console [not counted because not technically on Gameboy and reflect
recent sales of older games) : 1.7 million
Gen 2
Gold/Silver/Crystal (GBC): 29.49 million.
Combined Sales:
75.51 million
So when it comes to Pokemon, which debuted on the Gameboy and carried the system away from being an 'adult-friendly' system (the original was bundled with Tetris, which was one of the best-selling games for it for a while) into an almost staple in playgrounds and schools, I think it's safe to say that the majority of people bought Gameboys for Pokemon.
That's not to say that other games weren't popular too or that other games didn't exist, but no offense... most people weren't really in demand for a side-scrolling Alice in Wonderland or a Mario-Kart ripoff with Toy Story. Then again, I liked Nail 'N Scale and almost no one knew about that game.
Pokemon Sales ,
Gameboy Sales
@LuckyCharms Said
I never got into the pokemon craze. I did play my fair share of video games. The last system I had was the N64. I sincerely liked Zelda Ocarina of Time and the Banjo-Kazooie series was a blast.
I remember playing "Combat" on the old Atari system.
I unfortunately didn't have an N64, so I watched my friends when they played Ocarina and Banjo-Kazooie. I finally got a chance to play and beat Ocarina of Time on my 3DS when I borrowed it from a friend of my dad's, except I did it on Master Quest which I didn't know made the game tougher as well as swap the map. I'm used to seeing Death Mountain on the
left side of Hyrule.