Game Freak Had Plans For 65,535 Versions Of The Original Pokémon Game

May have been interesting, but would have driven some collectors absolutely insane if there were that many cart variants; can’t tell from details if it was a unique cartridge software code or same software on all carts and it effectively “rolled a dice” to decide your experience.

Well, they’re 37 versions in - only 65,498 left to go!

Miyamoto loves killing interesting ideas and characters

This sounds like a Hard Drive article lol

Terrible idea, good thing they axed it.
I wish it was only one version, but hey, it is what it is.

@MatoFilipovic With just one version there would be no need for trading, which is a big part of the series. In the end, I'm happy they did make seperate versions of the games. Though I would love for the games to actually have a bit more difference between the versions.

65535 was sound like number 2 with the power of 16.
That was a huge number.

@Anti-Matter
Exactly what it is! It's the largest unsigned, 16-bit integer.

65535 = 0xFFFF = 1111111111111111

As binary can be 1 or 0, 16 places gives you 2^16 possible values.

Shigeru Miyamoto: destroying dreams since 1985

@sanderev I understand this back when link cables were a thing but just feels outdated as a concept with the ease of trading over internet. Just feels pointless. Also those pokemon that you need to trade to evolve just drives me nuts. The reason why I could never use Scizor despite loving the Pokemon, cause I have no one to trade with.

@Pungu Honestly I am happy Arceus fixed the trading evolution issues. (link cable item). But even today I like the choice between versions, and it looks like Scarlet and Violet actually have some decent story differences between the versions (if you go by the latest trailer)

❗️The versions I preferred are:

🔸️Red
🔸️Gold
🔸️Sapphire
🔸️Fire Red
🔸️Platinum
🔸️Black 1/2
🔸️Y
🔸️Ultra/Sun
🔸️Sword
🔸️LG Eevee
🔸️Violet

Are there that many colours/letters of the alphabet/ precious stones/weapons?

@Mattock1987 There are millions of colours

So we could have actually gotten something similar to the "Every copy of Mario 64 is personalized" joke, but with Pokemon instead? That's interesting. I do wonder how procedural generation would have worked on the gameboy, though. At least we got somewhat close with the Mystery Dungeon series, though.

Here's a question. Why doesn't Nintendo release a Pokemon collection? There have been collections of Mario, Sonic, Kirby, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Wonderboy, Uncharted, Grand Theft Auto etc but we have yet to get a single collection of Pokemon despite it being one of the most popular video game franchises of all time. A lot of Pokemon fans I know would love a collection of the classic games.

@sanderev good point, and I’d love Nintendo to attempt to market Pokémon Feldgrau, Pokémon Mountbatten Pink, and Pokémon Burlywood.

Seems weird they considered it that hard to explain.
Like... at the end what they wanted to do was to make a single version with a line on the back of the box saying "Not all trainers meets the same Pokémon, trade with your friends to find all of them!".

I don't know, maybe we are just way more used to games with random generated worlds nowaday, but I don't think that was too hard to explain.... on the other hand that would have meant that even between 3, 4 or even 10 players a mon may be missing, so...the two versions approch is probably better at the end.

Reminds me of what Square did with the Chocobo World PocketStation game for Final Fantasy 8.
Depending on the serial of the device, you had better or worse luck.
The best luck only being in 1/1000 cards, and the worst luck in 880/1000.
Worst luck meant none of the rarest rank of items, best luck meant high chances for them, and you had higher stats.
You could theoretically 'trade' the serials, if you could find anyone else who had a PocketStation.

Well if its just tied to the save file then that could've been very cool idea to have slight variation on each playthrough.

Though honestly as much as I do love the Gen 1 games they're clearly already just barely holding on as is, I do have to wonder if that feature would've been a bit too ambitious for that.

Having random seeds generate the world and villagers never hurt Animal Crossing.
.. and let's be honest, every ounce of randomness would be a breath of fresh air, each time you replay the game.

@sanderev @FX102A There was probably only going to be one version, and each time you'd make a new save file, it would create a new, "version," of the game, where'd you have to trade with friends to catch 'em all because the RNG would give different outputs for which Pokemon appeared for each player.

@Clyde_Radcliffe I think it's for the best. I think it's part of the charm of Pokemon that you can talk about secrets and locations of certain Pokemon with your friends. If the game was even partly randomly generated, it would lose that charm.

Besides, even modern roguelikes face challenges with randomly generated content (how to make it interesting and varied without being completely broken). I don't think it would've worked well in 1996 on GameBoy, even if it only changed small stuff like item/trainer locations or starting Pokemon etc.

Definitely a good idea not doing this. Would've made trading and looking things up an absolute nightmare.

@Clyde_Radcliffe No one wanted to fund Pokemon. Not even Nintendo boss. It's Miyamoto who supported the idea against his hierarchy (which is a huge deal in Japan).

This sounds like a bit of a disaster, and because most of the games would have been unique, the cost of these games would be stupid today.

They would turn into some annoying collection thing, with the cost of some cartridges probably costing as much as a Shiny Charizard.

It's better they didn't.

@Debbiee There ya go, you can choose to buy em separate or together. Nintendo is now bundling all versions of these games together for those who want both.

What an interesting idea. I don't think there were enough Pokemon in gen 1 to really make it worthwhile. Especially considering it makes good sense to find water pokemon in water and rocky pokemon in caves (for example), which would really cut down on the variation. But still, the idea that most players have a somewhat unique experience from one another would have been interesting. And it really would have forced you to find friends who play to trade with to complete the pokedex - can't just buy both and do it yourself.

This would definitely be interesting to see now. Wouldn't be hard to tell people now. Ya know... with the power of the internet...

I do think they'd have to go back to pixel art to be able to do this.

“And that's how Pokémon Red and Blue (or Red and Green in Japan) came to be. One other version was eventually released - Pokémon Yellow, starring Pikachu.”

Japan actually got Red, Green, Blue & Yellow. Japanese Blue is still the only main series game that was never released in the West.

It's actually quite a good idea when it comes to replaying the games as it would be a great randomiser. However, from a marketing point of view for the time it wouldn't have been great as catching them all may have been very difficult even trading with others as you could have potential went forever without ever seeing or knowing someone that has caught certain pokemon in person.

@Markiemania95 actually Blue was what the Western releases were based on the original Red and Green in Japan are the versions we never got.

If Game Freak wants 65,536 or more versions of Pokemon, they can already do it now… by making the game rougelike (with randomly generated dungeons and characters).

@Zenszulu You wouldn’t really say that if you’d played them all. Sure, Western Red & Blue were based on Japanese Blue’s build, thus have the same sprites and are (slightly) less buggy, but in terms of the version exclusives, the Game Corner prices, the in-game trades etc, Western Red & Blue is identical gameplay-wise to Japanese Red & Green. Japanese Blue is completely unique in those aspects.

@Debbiee because every game is largely the exact same, and so they wouldn’t want you just buying the collection

An interesting idea, one that might have worked if these released today. Back in the 90s, probably not so much. I could see it causing confusion, not to mention collectors would be going insane.

would they really have to market this feature though? it seems like a very back-of-house concern. there are RNGs happening all over those games but no mention of it in ad copy, as it is.

also the idea of two different versions with different colors doesnt seem mutually exclusive to me.

Haha. Possibly the biggest piece of haggling in history there, getting it all the way down to just 2 primary colours .

"65,535 different versions you say? Yes, that is wholly unique, but perhaps a little too time consuming and complex. If we could maybe do a few less?"
"Ok. How many do you think?"
"2"
"..."

@Markiemania95 I have played the Japanese versions and the gameplay in the blue one is the same as the Western releases since those fixes carried over. While the red and green have the same pokemon exclusives ad the Western releases it doesn't change my statement we didn't get those original versions we essentially got enhanced versions because of that later release of Blue.

booo! i've thought that's the way they should've done it so people would actually trade instead of double dipping and turns that was the original idea and miyamoto squashed it?!

I sometimes wondered why they never did this, and perhaps randomised each save file so that legendaries would spawn in unique locations, and maybe have only a small chance of mythical Pokémon spawn in a save file at all (though this of course would enrage many).

That would be an amazing idea but only if you could catch every Pokemon in every seed, but their locations and levels were changed. Maybe since Kanto was so open they would've had a way to navigate to different orders of gyms too like making a boat to Cinnabar for it to become the first gym in some seeds.

@Clyde_Radcliffe
How about some examples to back up that statement?

@Zenszulu Literally the only difference are the sprites and the bug fixes lol, the latter of which is extremely common in the localisation process of any game. It’s akin to saying that the Japanese and Western versions of Super Mario 64 or Super Smash Bros. Melee are completely different games because some bugs were fixed and the Topis look different on the latter’s Infinite Glacier stage. Nobody is going to play both Japanese and Western Red and think “ah yes, these are two completely different games”. Most people that have played Western Blue would play the Japanese release and realise that some of the Pokémon that could only be obtained by trading with NPCs, such as Lickitung & Jynx, are now catchable, multiple Pokémon are encountered in different locations, & there are Pokémon from both Red & Green/Western Blue that are missing. JP Blue is and always was intended to be Japan’s ‘3rd Version’ of Gen I; Yellow is just an addition to that.

That would have been a terrible idea. I get the concept, but it would have been almost impossible to complete the Pokedex that way, especially back in the day before online trading.

The cartridges wouldn't be different. Just sounds like the game will randomize stuff when it boots up for the first time.

So basically, a randomizer hack before Pokémon randomizer hacks became common? Would've been terrible but cool ngl

Seems unfair that some people would get stronger natural options than others.

@Clyde_Radcliffe On this case, this was an awful idea.

If their two versions (three or four versions in some cases) strategy resulted in this many bad games I shudder to think of what garbage they would have put out with this many differences.

Did someone tell him what it costs to fire up the cart manufacturing machines for 65,535 different versions of the ROM?

@Markiemania95 I have played JP Blue and it is JUST another species availability swap.
The only thing notable is that it is the origin of the "My Raichu evolved!" error in the west.
It swapped the Cerulean and Cinnabar NPC trades to teach the player trade evolutions. The trades were swapped back for the west but they forgot to account for that when they used the Blue script as the basis for the EN script.

Oh, and the SS Anne chef had a different meal in JP Red and Green. I played all the Gen 1 games a few years ago in both languages and that was literally the only story text change.

@KingMike Yeah. So we’re in agreement? Unless you’re stating that the Cerulean & Cinnabar are the only in-game trades that were changed, I’m not disputing any of that haha. I own and have completed English Red, Blue & Yellow, and JP Green & Blue. I’m stating that it’s as different to Red & Green as those two are to each other, and of the 4 Gen I versions available in Japan, it’s JP Blue that we didn’t get, because Western Blue is effectively the same as Green, aside from bug fixes and different sprites.

Umm… three other Gen I versions were made, not one.

In Japan, you have Red, Green, Blue, and Pikachu versions.
In America, you have Red, Blue, and Yellow (Special Pikachu Edition) versions.

Blue was a late 1996 revamp of Red & Green with new battle and overworld sprites, fixed bugs, inclusion of Mew, new layout of Hanada Cave, new in-game trades, and new Pokémon encounters (such as being able to find wild Rougela whereas in Red & Green, you can only find those by an in-game trade). It also had a new script written to reflect some of these changes, like how one new in-game trade reflects a trade evolution by saying that their new Pokémon went and evolved!

Yellow or Pikachu Version followed the anime's plot a bit more, included Pikachu as a starter that follows you around, has in-game gifts of the original three starters, had the rival using Eievui and its evolutions, had new anime-inspired teams for all the Gym Leaders and some random trainers, and again new in-game trades, Pokémon availabilities (inspired by the anime), and a new layout to Hanada Cave.

Red & Blue in America used the Red & Green encounter rates and in-game trades, but the Blue level maps (such as for Cerulean Cave) and script. Hence why an in-game trader makes an illogical statement about how their Pokémon went and evolved.

Yellow in America used the Pikachu version changes from Japan, but colorized everything as with the later Gold & Silver - it was compatible with Game Boy Color in such a way similar to various DX titles.

So Red & Green, Blue, Red & Blue, Pikachu, and Yellow are all different games. They share the same basic premise but are distinct enough that if you're going to distinguish between any of them you should distinguish between all of them.

TL;DR: 7 titles in Gen I main series.

@Arzewn

Too bad it weren't ...65536.. 64K.

I always wondered about this, that's pretty cool. Because there are essentially different versions of ACNH but it's all sold as just one game. I guess tradition and money keeps them from doing that with Pokémon

If you use the Missigno Trick, there will also appear two other Pokemon, depending on your Name.

For me it was Mewtwo and Snorlax... I was pretty Lucky.
My Name starts with an A.

So maybe this is also some Kind of different Experience

There would have been a lot of people driving themselves up the wall trying to save scum (restart scum) their way to the best setup.

Seems like Miyamoto made the right call there. Having said that I don't really like the two version gig that much anymore. It feels a bit outdated at this point.

Everyone is talking about how it would be hell for teb consumer, but what about the man hours required to program it in to begin with?

@Pillowpants Yeah we all know the only reason why there are two versions to begin with is that the Game Boy limited cartridge memory is too small so they had to divide the roster between Red and Blue and had the players try to collect em all by getting both. Nowadays it's pointless to keep the concept since these are becoming console titles anyways and with larger space there's no reason to purposely left out Pokemon from one game for another.

every copy of pokemon is personalized