Which handheld console hosted the original Pokémon games?

The original Pokémon games were hosted on Nintendo’s Game Boy.

Pokémon Red and Green launched in Japan on February 27, 1996, for the original monochrome Game Boy. These role-playing games introduced the collecting, training, battling, and trading systems that became the foundation of the franchise.

International versions were later released as Pokémon Red and Blue. Although the games could also be played on later systems with backward compatibility, their original platform was the Game Boy, not the Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance. The enhanced Pokémon Yellow was also first released for Game Boy in Japan in 1998.

The second generation, Pokémon Gold and Silver, was designed for the Game Boy Color. That later platform distinction often leads to confusion when people remember Pokémon as a color handheld series. The first generation’s Game Boy hardware helped Pokémon become one of Nintendo’s most successful portable franchises.