Yo-Kai Watch or Youkai Watch is a Japanese game and anime franchise. Level 5, a video game company, wanted to make a Pokemon-like game. They had an idea since Pokemon wasn’t doing well in 2012-2013. They wanted to rival it in some way, so they had an E3 trailer come out earlier that same year.
Some people thought the game would be bad, others said the trailer and the game would look and be astonishing. Later that same year, in Japan on July 11, 2013, the Yo-kai Watch video game hit the shelves of all GameStop, BlockBuster, and more stores.
The game is about Nate Adams, an 11 year old boy who then turns 12 in the 4th game. It’s also about Whisper Nates Yo-kai Butler, who is a no-nothing, and Jibanyan. They are going on a wacky adventure in their town of Springdale and trying to make everything go back to normal at the end of the day.
The first game was a success in Japan, so Level 5 released the game in the West and it did okay. When Level 5 was making Yo-Kai Watch 2, the people that are making the anime wanted to make a movie adaptation of the second game. It worked, and the game/movie are about Nate losing the Yo-Kai Watch and having to time travel and meet his grandpa because he made the Yo-Kai Watch. Both the movie and the game did fairly well.
YKW 3 is the next game, but after this game everything went downhill from there. A new character was created named Hailey Anne, and she and Nate in this game go through the same adventure, but it’s a little changed. In the anime, Hailey helps Nate in his adventures. YKW 3 is the last game of the Yo-Kai Watch series to get a Western release. In October 2020, it was reported that the company’s North American operations were shutting down due to low sales. YKW 4 was the last game in the series but it only came out in Japan, so the game sold 291,878 copies in Japan in the year 2019. The ++ version of the game did even worse, selling only 10,333 copies in its first week at retail.
Yo-Kai Watch is still present in the US though because of the mod YWK 4 in English and many YouTubers remembering the fateful series.
