The original Pokemon games started a worldwide franchise, but there are neat little facts you may not know about them

1. 15 Things You Might Not
Know About Pokemon
Red, Blue, and Yellow

2. The Developer Originally Made Magazines
Game Freak (the creators of the now worldwide franchise) was
founded in the 1980s by Satoshi Tajiri, who originally started
making arcade gaming magazines. The magazines were hand-
written and even stapled together by Tajiri himself.
This idea was born of his obsession with Space Invaders after
he realised there was no documentation of gaming
information, so he solved this problem by creating his own
repository of knowledge.

3. Pokémon was born from Entomology
As a child, Satoshi Tajiri was an avid collector and student of
insects (like many Japanese children were at the time) and
was known to his school friends as “Dr. Bug”.
Growing up, Tajiri’s surrounding area was subject to
deforestation, and subsequently, the insect population
suffered and declined because of this.
He worried that as certain species of insects became rarer and
even endangered, children would lose out on being able to see
them. Pokémon was the digitalisation of this idea.

4. Communication, Not Competition
The Game Boy’s link cable was one of the main reasons Tajiri
wanted to make the game specifically for this platform. He
saw the link cable as a way for players to communicate with
one another, rather than play against each other.
He explained how he saw this concept similar to Karate; two
players meet, bow before initiating combat, then proceeding
to dual.

5. Trading Came from a Magic Hat
The idea of being able to trade Pokémon between players
actually came from the NES title Dragon Quest. In this game,
there is an item known as the “magic hat” that Tajiri yearned
for but didn’t have the mastery of the game to be able to
obtain himself.
The aforementioned artist Ken Sugimori had two of these
enchanted headpieces, but they were naturally locked onto his
copy of the game cartridge. It was from this that Tajiri yearned
for the idea of being to transfer items or content from one
game to another.

6. Poliwag is the Real Favourite
The number of Pokémon that exist is now in the multiple
hundreds, and may even breach the thousands with Pokémon
Sword and Shield on the horizon. Gen 1 had a total of 151
entries, but initial plans and designs were made for just fifty of
the pocket monsters.
The father of Pokémon has stated the Poliwag is his favourite,
as tadpoles were one of his favourite creatures to study
growing up and the Pokémon’s belly swirl representing the
wonder and fascination he had when finding new frogs and
amphibians.

7. Meowth is a Japanese Proverb
Just by looking at them, it’s obvious that not all Pokémon
designs were derived from tadpoles, insects, or molluscs.
While some like Ekans and Seel clearly weren’t ground-
breaking in both their inspiration others had a more interesting
backstory.
Meowth (the smartest member of Team Rocket) is actually
based on a Japanese proverb about a cat who has money on
its head but does not know that it’s there.

8. The Whole Process Took 6 Years
When you actually stop and think about it, Pokémon has a lot
going on for a Game Boy game. Not only are there one
hundred and fifty creatures to collect and battle with, but
there’s also unique music, moves, a type system, a story,
items, there’s a lot crammed into that relatively small
cartridge.
Junichi Masuda, one of the game’s original coders, has said
that the making of the game took roughly six years, with the
move designs taking up almost half of this time.

9. Trainer is Tajiri and Rival is Miyamoto
Way back when the game was first released alongside the
anime series, 99% of us would have assumed that the
“Trainer” was meant to be Ash Ketchum. Upon the release of
Pokémon Gold/Silver he came to be known as “Red”, but the
character’s true identity is meant to be that of Tajiri as a child.
Your rival in the game is based on someone in the vein of the
legendary Shigeru Miyamoto. The basis of this comparison is
that Tajiri always looked up to Miyamoto as a mentor, and one
day, someone he could eventually emulate.

10. Catching Pokémon is like Riding a Horse
Pokémon has a unique trait among RPGs in that it’s not just
your team versus the world. The fact that Pokémon can be
turned from enemy to friend, means that there is no inherent
“good” or “bad” Pokémon, no enemies or villains (bar Team
Rocket).
To clarify, Tajiri explains it as: “If a horse runs over you and
you get hurt, the horse is bad. If you’re riding the horse, it’s
your ally. So if you have a monster in your collection it’s
considered good, but if not, it’s still not considered bad
because it could be your friend one day”.

11. Pokemon Faint Out of “Respect”
I must admit that 6-year-old me thought that it was odd that
these creatures only fainted when they ran out of health, but
Tajiri explains his reasoning for why the creatures merely pass
out rather than meeting a more gruesome end.
He believed that as the game was for children and younger
audiences, the concept of death would be alien to them and
they would have a somewhat warped perception of what it
was and wouldn’t treat it with the appropriate respect and
sensitivity.

12. You Never Actually Move
The heart of the original Pokémon design was based around
the idea of trading with other players. Communication and
bringing people together was the main goal that Tajiri wanted
to achieve with his project. However, the Game Boy’s storage
limitations meant that his scope had to significantly decrease.
Owing to these hardware and memory limitations, inventive
tricks were employed such as moving the map around the
player rather than the player moving around in order to
conserve having to load and unload areas.

13. Two Games Was Miyamoto’s Idea
While now a truly defining feature of the series, having two
versions of the same game was an unorthodox idea back in
the infancy years of the 1990s. Another idea born from Tajiri’s
wanting to get players and children to interact with one
another, two games were made so that no one player could
complete a Pokedex by themselves.
It was actually Miyamoto himself that said about creating
unique cartridges. Speaking in a Gamasutra interview, Masuda
tells of Miyamoto saying "How about creating different
cartridges? There are different Pokémon on each cartridge,
and people are willing to trade the Pokémon."

14. US Pokémon Were Going to Be “Muscle Men”
Even in 2019, very “Japanese” titles have a hard time
succeeding in front of a Western audience. Their range has
certainly widened and the Western demographic has certainly
increased, but back in the late 90s, there was trepidation
about how Pokémon and its RPG mechanics would translate to
non-Japanese gamers.
Pokémon’s immense success in Japan meant Nintendo was
keen to transplant the franchise, but then Nintendo president
Hiroshi Yamauchi was pitched the idea of Pokémon being
“muscle men” instead of monsters.
He thankfully denied this change.

15. English is Bigger than Japanese
As Japan’s Red and Green dichotomy was not shared by the
West, Red and Blue also shared differences when it came
down to the actual data stored on the cartridge.
English text is much bigger than Japanese when committing it
to a game’s memory, and the cartridge is operating at more or
less maximum capacity.
The dev team had to work around these memory issues by
altering Pokémon names and cutting back on various words.
Issues like this meant the localisation process took over two
years to complete.

16. Pokémon Blue in Japan was Mail Order
Many of us know that while Western audiences were
bestowed the first two Pokémon instalments of Red and Blue
and then eventually the upgraded Yellow version, the two
colours chosen for the games in Japan were Red and Green
(two colours considered to juxtaposed in Japanese culture).
Thanks to Pokémon’s extensive Westernization project, the
game was updated and eventually became the newer
Pokémon Blue that had revised Pokémon artwork, sound, had
several glitches and bugs removed, and was only available to
the subscribers of CoroCoro Comic in Japan.