Around the time that Pokemon exploded in Japan, there was a company called Natsume who decided that they wanted to create a franchise centered around the concept of battling, trading, and two versions for the price of one. Imagineer was hired on to do that very job and an ambitions artist by the name of Rin Homura would lead the charge in designing the concept that would become the foundation of the Medarot, or Medabots as it's known here in the US. The first games were released in November 1997 which was a year after Pokemon Red & Green made their debut in February of 1996. This franchise had a lot of differences compared to Pokemon and we'll detail all of them here.
The world of the first game is similar to ours in a way but in a not so distant future of Japan. You star as Hikaru Agata:
There was also a pseudo remake called Shingata Medarot which means the True Medarot in English released for the Game Boy Advance in December of 2004 which really screwed the graphics and music but uses a slightly updated battle engine that we'll talk about in the next post which will cover the 2nd game. This game bombed so hard due to the bad graphics that the franchise slumbered till a new game was made for the DS some years later.
Videos are from Kimbles and Yanik Mangan's channels
Main characters image taken from scan of the manga.
