Game News 28 years later, this player discovers why the creators of Pokémon changed the name of one of the versions of the first game, and he can’t believe it

Game news 28 years later, this player discovers why the creators of Pokémon changed the name of one of the versions of the first game, and he can’t believe it

The Star Spangled Banner

It’s in a article published in 1999 on the official Game Freak website that the studio explained the choice to rename Pokémon Red & Green in Rouge & Bleu outside Japanese borders. The company explains that, in order to best localize the title for the West, various approaches had been proposed by the developers in order to best correspond to the American market. So much so that the green opus – putting Florizarre in the spotlight – was replaced by the blue opus with Tortank at the head of the poster, in order to correspond to the flag of the USA!

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Red and blue are the colors of the American flag (the Star-Spangled Banner), so they are popular colors among Americans. Therefore, for the Western version, we created the blue version instead of green to appeal to this audience. Is this what we call national character? – Game Freak (Pokémon News)

The article is published as an interview conducted by Lisa Hatfield, the star presenter of the JT in Pulseman, having also made a few cameos during the Japanese promotion of the first Pokémon games. He then lets various developers answer different questions from the Japanese public regarding the foreign versions of the game.whether it be translations of the names of different creatures and their etymology, or discussing the graphic differences between Japanese and Western opuses.

“Pikachu but as a humanoid cat with big breasts”

But while this color change may appear significant to some, it is completely insignificant compared to some ideas proposed by the American location service. In fact, in an interview with Nintendo JapanSatoshi Tajiri – creator of Pokémon and president of Game Freak – accompanied by Tsunekazu Ishihara – president of The Pokémon Company – revealed that, for the American teams, the creatures in the game were “too cute for western consumers”. In response to this, a complete overhaul of pocket monsters was planned, including “a humanized Pikachu, resembling a tabby cat with big breasts, like in Cats”.

So fortunately all this did not happen, preferring simply an update of the original graphics of Red & Greenthe first Western installments of the series could have been radically different and not been successful. Now definitely an essential part of world culture, the franchise continues to establish itselfand the latest installment – Pokémon Scarlet and Purple – is still one of the best-selling titles on the Nintendo Switch.