A closer look
When video games meet unregulated broadcast standards, medical emergencies ensue. In 1997, the episode "Electric Soldier Porygon" aired in Japan, featuring a sequence with intense red and blue flashing strobe lights. Within hours, nearly seven hundred children were rushed to hospitals suffering from photosensitive epileptic seizures. It became a national scandal, almost ending the franchise entirely. Nintendo shoved the episode into a dark vault, blamed the digital duck Porygon, and successfully memory-holed the fact that Pikachu caused it.
