Prerelease:Pokémon Red and Blue

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Pokémon Red and Blue.

Pokémon Red and Green is how it all began, with what started out as one man's passion project later becoming the incredibly loved and renowned franchise that Pokémon is today. As such, the development phase of these games has a certain mythical quality to it, with some of its fabled conceptual material still shrouded in mystery to this very day.

To do: Lots. Some obscure info from this Denfaminicogamer article where Masanobu Endo, Satoshi Tajiri, and Ken Sugimori focus on Xevious but later cover Pokémon (5 pages long). Interview about the development of Gold and Silver which features some tidbits about Gen I. Translate info from old Game Freak books.

Development Timeline

1990

• July 5th - Development of the games officially begins.

1995

• December 21 - Initial Japanese release date for Pocket Monsters Red and Green, as seen in a promotional flyer and a Famitsu advert. This release date would ultimately be pushed back for unknown reasons.

1996

• February 27 - Pocket Monsters Red and Green are released in Japan.
• October 15 - Pocket Monsters Blue is released in Japan exclusively to subscribers of CoroCoro Comic.

1998

• May 28-30 - Pokémon Red and Blue are showcased at E3 1998.
• September 28 - Pokémon Red and Blue are released in North America.
• October 23 - Pokémon Red and Blue are released in Australia.

1999

• October 5 - Pokémon Red and Blue are released in Europe.
• October 10 - Red, Green, and Blue are re-released in Japan with some minor bug fixes. This is the first public release of Blue in Japan.

Sub-Pages

Early Development 1989-1991. Of Kaijus and JRPGs.

Mid Development 1992-1994. Development truly begins.

Late Development 1995-1996. The revelation of the decade.

International Localization 1996-1998. The overseas journey.

Concepts

Pikachu

On May 2, 2018, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri held an interview with senior Pokémon illustrators Ken Sugimori, Atsuko Nishida, and Koji Nishino. In said interview, Atsuko Nishida, the illustrator who designed Pikachu, revealed that the iconic Pokémon started out as a completely different creature more akin to a "Yuki Usagi" (a daifuku baked in the shape of a rabbit). Indeed, Nishida had been simply been tasked with creating "an electric-type [Pokémon]", and as such she basically came up with a design, then the name "Pikachu", and once that was done she worked on refining the design until it became the one we all know and own merchandise of today. While most of Pikachu's trademark traits like its cheeks and yellow fur were only added in the redesign phase, according to Nishida, Pikachu's black-tipped ears were already part of the original Daifuku design.

Pikachu would also get a minor design change regarding its original redesign, with early artwork from 1995 and 1996 depicting Pikachu with a white belly, something which was only ever seen in-game with Pikachu's Red and Green and Blue front sprites, and was then promptly ditched in favor of a smooth yellow belly.

Also worth noting is Pichu's early design from the Spaceworld 1997 demo of Gold and Silver, which could possibly have been an attempt at reworking Pikachu's original design. A scrapped Yuki Usagi-like Pokémon found in a leaked Pokémon sprite archive dating from May 1998 may have also been yet another possible attempt at a revival.

Gorochu

Also revealed in the aforementioned Yomimuri interview was the existence of an evolution for Raichu called ゴロチュウ (Gorochū) after the Japanese onomatopoeia for rumbling thunder ("goro-goro") and the suffix "-chu" used for all the members of Pikachu's evolutionary line. This cut evolution was to feature "fangs and even had a pair of horns", and according to Ken Sugimori was apparently cut due to game balancing issues.

While not much was revealed about Gorochu's design, its backsprite was found among the leaked Pokémon Blue source code files, alongside other cut Pokémon. Here we can confirm that it indeed had at least one horn, as well as other traits not mentioned in the interview, such a diamond pattern on its torso, as well as what are either spiky ears or spiky cheeks.

Mew

Conception

According to Satoshi Tajiri in a May 2000 interview at Game Freak's headquarters (republished in the Japan-exclusive book Pokémon Story), he conceived Mew as a hidden Pokémon inspired by a hidden/unused F4 phantom fighter ship in Xevious (which coincidentally lead to rumors about encountering the phantom fighter otherwise, alongside other Xevious rumors with no apparent factual basis, such as one where a dog could be seen running across the screen).

In the world of arcade machines in general, "facts" like these were sometimes reported as misinformation in related print media, similar to those that would later dominate the Gen I Pokémon games like the "Pokégod" rumors which emerged on old Geocities sites). Mew's elusive existence is also what inspired its status as the first Mythical Pokémon, given how at that time there were less resources available for datamining video games (such as the previous Xevious and F4 phantom fighter example) to confirm their veracity, as opposed to a regular Legendary Pokémon. Furthermore adding to the complexity, various glitches (which were neither rumors or secrets, but may have been misinterpreted to have been so) were discovered in the games to actually obtain Mew without external modifications or an event distribution (such as the Trainer-Fly glitch and the Select glitches).

Note that Satoshi Tajiri was a huge arcade machine fan (and had also produced the originally-handwritten Game Freak magazine starting in 1983 under the Tajiri Corporation name; before the actual Game Freak company was founded itself). In the interview, he described how players were starting to become not just interested in the games themselves, but how they internally functioned.

(Source: Dr.Lava, DidYouKnowGaming)

Implementation

Other than its initial conception by Satoshi Tajiri, Morimoto created everything there is about Mew, writing its Pokédex entry, choosing its cry, and even drawing its sprite. When the game was just about to officially finish development, once the debug features were removed, he used what little space had been freed up to insert Mew.

The design of Mew itself is also elaborated in at least two video interviews with Shigeki Morimoto and Satoshi Tajiri on Game Freak's official Japanese YouTube channel.

Ken Sugimori was originally asked to make Mew, but he believed that since the development of the games were so close to completion, there was no time left to design it, leaving Shigeki Morimoto to do it himself. Mew's sprite is also only 40×40 pixels because this was ideal for saving space.

Game Freak wanted a Pokémon that would serve as the origin of Mewtwo other than the indirect references in the Pokémon Mansion (in fact, Mewtwo was actually programmed and designed into the game first). Satoshi Tajiri also adds the debugging process of Red and Green was the most expensive in Nintendo's history, and despite strict orders for Red and Green not to be edited after the debugging features were removed, Shigeki Morimoto did it anyway.

To do so, he namely overwrote the first empty index slot he found, resulting in Mew being found rather early in the internal index. It was only later that Mew was discovered, and Morimoto was quite surprised to find out that this was the case, with Mew instantly becoming the source for a great many playground rumors.

All of this reveals that, in a rather ironic way, Mewtwo was originally conceived without Mew, with the latter actually being designed after the former. It then becomes clear that Mew was originally just a being that was never to be seen, its name only mentioned in the Pokémon Mansion journals. When it comes to the canon, the two were later reworked into a "perfect original being and imperfect clone" duo.