Pokémon Red & Blue – A Look Back At The 20-Year Journey To Catch ‘Em All

Between Go, Sun & Moon, and Pokkén, 2016 was a huge year for Pokémon. Some may have found the franchise for the first time this year, but Pokémon began with the Japanese release of Pokémon Red & Green in 1996. We're look back on the development and release of the original Pokémon for a better understanding of its continually growing legacy. This feature originally appeared in issue 276 of Game Informer magazine.

Pokémon is a massive franchise. The series is celebrating 20 years, and more than 200 million Pokémon games have been sold over the course of its two-decade tenure. The Pokémon Company has become one of Nintendo’s most important partners and the two are celebrating the Pocket Monster legacy in 2016 by finally, after years of fan demand, releasing the original Pokémon games, Red, Blue (and Yellow) on 3DS Virtual Console.

Originally released in Japan in 1996 as Pokémon Red and Green, the series took two years to make its way to North America. The game was developed by Game Freak and directed by Satoshi Tajiri, who is credited as the main inspiration, creator, and driving force behind the original games and the -Pokémon franchise.

Tajiri has cited a handful of important influences on the ideas that fostered the creation of Pokémon. As a child, Tajiri collected bugs and insects, a popular pastime for Japanese children. In a 1999 Time magazine interview, Tajiri’s father said his friends used to call him Dr. Bug. This is where the core idea of collecting Pokémon came from. The mechanic of collecting Pokémon in Pokéballs came from the popular Japanese television show, Ultraman, who kept creatures in small capsules to be produced for combat when he  needed them.

Junichi Masuda worked on the first Pokémon games as a composer and programmer, but today works as a producer and director on assorted core Pokémon entries. He spoke with Gamasutra in 2009 about another important aspect of Pokémon: the trading. “When Mr. Tajiri went to talk to [Nintendo], Mr. Miyamoto actually suggested, ‘How about creating different cartridges? There are different Pokémon on each cartridge, and people are willing to trade the Pokémon.’”

The original Pokémon games were in development for six years – an incredibly long development period even by today’s standards. In a recent Pokémon Company video discussing the development of those games, Masuda reminisced about the difficulty of the project. “I remember my computers always overheating and breaking down on me,” Masuda said, “I would work hard to fix them, and eventually we managed to complete the first Pokémon games, but I think I went through four computers by the end.”

For more on the legacy of the original Pokémon release, head to page two.

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