What this is
When the Pokémon Trading Card Game first went on sale in Japan: October 1996.
How it’s built
- Read from the history timeline on The Pokémon Company's Japanese corporate site, which lists 'October: Pokémon Card Game released' under 1996.
What we assumed
- Only the month is sourced; the day in the record is not from the timeline.The timeline lists year and month only, so the record should be read to the month.
Sanity check
This is the Japanese launch only. The English-language game came later, so it does not date the card game's arrival outside Japan.
Where it comes from
The line in the source
10月 ポケモンカードゲーム発売