Catch 'em all: Pokemon hooks kids, parents and investors at world event

Dressed up and ready for battle, around 10,000 Pokemon fans have descended on Yokohama in Japan this weekend, looking for fun but also collector's item cards potentially worth serious money.

YOKOHAMA - Since the launch of Pokemon cards in 1996 following the hit computer game of the same name - meaning pocket monsters - an astounding 53 billion cards have been printed.

Almost 30 years on, the card game remains hugely popular as contestants take each other on with cards representing the monsters and their different attributes.

The Pokemon World Championships, being held in Japan for the first time ever, will see the world's best players of the video and the card game battle it out for cash prizes at an event attended by thousands.

"I have been playing since I was a kid," Mr Ajay Sridhar, 33, who travelled halfway around the world from New York to attend with his cards, told AFP as he explained why he was hooked.

"It's just the competition, it's the community... A lot of my oldest friends I've met through Pokemon," he said.

"It's kind of like chess, where if you didn't play chess and you were watching a high-level chess match, you wouldn't know what was going on," said Mr Gilbert McLaughlin, 27, from Scotland.

"But once you get to a certain skill level, there is a lot of depth and complexity to it."