A Deeper Look at Pokemon Fusion and Its Origin

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Earlier this year, the internet was awash with memes created through Pokemon Fusion. Read on to discover what it is and where it originated from.

Pokemon Fusion on social media

With regards to Pokémon, you are either an ardent fan and have been following related animations, games, the movies, or even just exchanging cards, or you are totally stupefied by the Pokémon craze that’s on the Internet.

No matter what camp you are in, sit back and let’s take you back to Pokemon’s history and find out the reason for Pokemon Fusion’s resurgence.


The History of Pokemon

Pokémon is the short name for “Pocket Monsters”. We can trace the franchise’s back to a gaming magazine that was popular in the mid-1980s in Japan—Game Freak. The magazine was created by Satoshi Tajiri who was the writer and Ken Sugimori who was the artist.

When Tajiri and Sugimori pitched of Pokémon’s idea to Nintendo, however, the publishers did not grasp the idea. However, they gave them the benefit of doubt given the immense success of Game Freak's past titles.

Tajiri had to work under the guidance of Shigeru Miyamoto to make Pocket Monsters: Green and Red. This was a game in which people collected and traded off monsters. The Pokemon Franchise was established in February 1996 and it has gone on to become one of the most popular gaming franchises in history competing with the likes of Mario.


About Pokemon Fusion

While it may seem like Pokémon Fusion is a new trend, they are rather old. The first time Pokémon were conjoined was in 2008 when the Kongregate message board put out a contest to see who would create the best “Pokéfusion.”

In 2010, Alex Onsager, a Colorado developer who lives in Japan, created and launched the renowned Pokemon Fusion generator. However, the project did not gain traction until 2013 following the “Be strong for mother” meme comic which originated from ohcorny on Tumblr. The meme came about after the fusing of Doduo with Weepinbell to create Weepinduo.

By 2017, the craze had passed. Fans would once in a while post their fusions on social media platforms such as Instagram or Tumblr. It was not until 2019 that Pokéfusions would make a comeback after a Tumblr user put out a post stating “Whatever Pokemon appears when you load Pokefusion is now your government assigned starter.”

The post gained more than 35,000 notes on Tumblr and eventually found its way to other popular social media platforms including Reddit and Twitter.


How it works

The Pokemon fusion generator selects two random Pokémon merges their dissimilar attributes to make a crazy new monster. The monster also has a new name. Also, you can manually choose the two monsters you want to merge.

However, it's considerably more amusing to let the generator create something crazy from the 151 unique characters in its database. You will get different results depending on which monster combinations you choose.

The first monster gives you the head, coloring, as well the first half of the new monster’s name. The second monster provides you with the body and the last part of the name. This explains why users can change the order of the selected monsters to get different results.

Since its inception, other websites with the same concept as that of Onsager have come up over the years. Some have gone on to add monster generations that go way beyond what was originally on Onsager’s list. While most of them work reasonably well, PokeFusion generator is still the go-to tool for people who want an authentic feel.

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