Celebrating Pokémon’s 20th anniversary, Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda looks back on the early days of developing Red and Green. It sounds like a tough time!
Masuda notes that his computers would always overheat and break down during Pokémon Red and Green’s development, and that he personally went through four computers in six years.
“I sure am glad I fixed those computers back then,” Masuda said. “If I hadn’t, the original Red and Green games might never have come out! That’s a scary thought!”
Dang. Masuda also shares some other strong memories from when the original Pokémon games were being developed, and it’s well-worth a watch.
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10 responses to “We’re Lucky The Original Pokémon Games Got Made At All”
Wait… We had Red and Blue, yeah? Was it different in Japan?
yes, they had green instead of blue. I’ve never heard a solid reason why, but they are the same game, just was green packaging and venusaur instead of blastoise.
They’re not quite the same game. The international Red/Blue versions are based on the Japanese Blue game, which was a revision of the original Japanese Red/Green. It had better sprites and sounds, and bugfixes.
But the exclusive pokémon lists are the same, so it’s weird that they didn’t just stick with Red/Green. Maybe they thought Americans would prefer Blastoise with its giant cannons on the box?
Incorrect. Red/Blue (western) was an updated version of Red/Green (Japan). Updated character sprites (because they looked even more ridiculous) and sounds, along with a few tweaks in maps, and a bunch of bug fixes.
There was a bit of rebalancing too, I had a green version bootleg. It was a straight rip from a legit cartridge, but was obviously not a legit copy.
So it was a patched version of the same game. Same thing.
Don’t quote me on this but I read that blue and green were considered the same colour in Japan before the world wars. Just different shades. Probably nothing to do with it. Might not even be true.
Man, I’m kinda grateful now. Just bought a Pokemon plush. GLACEON MADATRUCKER
We’re lucky?
No. NINTENDO is lucky.
True that without Pokemon games they would of only had Mario to survive