This podcast focuses on how the creator created Pokemon
Pokemon has been my most played game since 2020. Researching how the the concept, and games of Pokemon were made was fun.
Image credit: Wikipedia
Script: Hi there, my name is Hangal Balt. Here, we will be discussing how pokemon was created. I'm not talking about the lore, I'm talking about how the game itself was made. Who was the creator? What was the inspiration?
Satoshi Taijiri was a curious boy. When he was young he would always go to the woods near his village. He would always collect insects that’d he add to a collection of his. His teacher would let him share his collection to his class and they were quite impressed by what he could get. However, as Japan began to advance in technology, so did his village, and a lot of the wildlife was drawn away from this modernization. Later though, Taijiri would find a new passion in the arcades, which was video games.
He spent much of his time in the arcades, breaking record after record in every video game. He loved video games, he played every single game he could find. So much so that he began to write guides about how to get new high scores or if you’re stuck, how to beat the game, and strats and tips. He would call them Gamefreak. He sold them for 200 yen, which is about $2.00 today. It was successful enough for him to pitch his own game to Sega. They applied it, and was successful enough for Gamefreak to be established as an official company.
Nintendo then released the game boy which was able to interact with another gameboy via link cable. This interested Tajiri because he always wanted to have a game trade a rare item with another that lacked it. He looked back at his childhood and thought of an idea for a game about catching insects and trading them with another person who lacked that insect species. He thought of it as capsule monsters as you could catch these insects with some sort of capsule. He pitched it to Nintendo because Nintendo made the Gameboy. Nintendo was a bit skeptical at first for approving this idea, but it was too interesting for the use of the Gameboy link cable, so they approved.
This game was no joke however. On average, a Gameboy game takes around 6-8 months to complete due to how simple the tech was. This game took 6 years of development. The reason for this was because there was a lot they wanted you to do in this game. For example they created an entire map or world region for you to explore, go to different areas to catch certain species. It was also due to the fact that they added an entire new battle system, making a full on RPG. Creating the match took a long time, as making math in an RPG is one of the hardest things to do in video game history. It also didn’t help that they had to make 150 species of creatures. Having to make their sprites, stats, and pokedex entries took forever. The game would later be titled as “Pokemon”. Short for “Poke Monsters”. Finally, after development was done, Pokemon “Red” and “Green” were released in Japan. Many Gameboy users loved this game. Many even bought both versions just to catch all the Pokemon.
After the success of “Red” and “Green” an upgraded version of those games was released as “Pokemon Blue”. An anime was also created, and it was a pretty big hit. One that continues to air to this day. A trading card game was released, and it was a pretty big hit. Many schools actually had to ban it because they were big distractions, and causing fights. Taijiri would then go on to direct Pokemon “Gold” and “Silver” which were direct sequels from “Red, Blue,Green”. But when gen 3 came out “Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire”, he was credited in the credits as “Executive director” . He decided to give up his director role, and continue to be executive director instead. He’s been credited as “Executive director” in every single Pokemon game, even the spin offs.
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