Pokémonis a cultural juggernaut, so it’s almost hard to imagine thatPokémon Red and Bluewere almost drastically changed for their U.S. release. I’m also a little surprised that the benefits of a franchise about collecting cute creatures wouldn’t have been readily apparent so close to the Beanie Baby craze of the 1990s. However, when the firstPokémongames were being brought to the United States, there was apparently a plan to make some major changes to the franchise due to fears that its original form wouldn’t resonate outside of Japan.
In the alternate reality where this plan was followed, I doubt we’d be gearing up forPokémon’s 30th anniversary or having annualPokémon Day announcementsand celebrations. Still, I can’t help but wonder what the final product would have looked like hadPokémon RedandBluebeen irreparably changed when they were brought over to the United States. While I wouldn’t give up thePokémonfranchise for it, I’m very curious to know how it would have turned out.
Pokémon Was Almost A Baseball Game
A Former Marketing Manager From Nintendo Revealed The Major Change Almost Made To The Games
In an interview with theVideo Game History Foundation, Gail Tilden (former Nintendo of America marketing manager, and founder ofNintendo Power) discussed the process of bringingPokémonfrom Japan to the United States. Tilden mentioned that, although Nintendo of America eventually followed the Japanese model to a T, there was initially an idea to changePokémonto a baseball game. Though the interview was light on the details of what this would have looked like, Tilden said thatthe idea was to change the “Pokémon league” to a “baseball league.”
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Although I can kind of see the idea here - traveling between cities and playing baseball games instead of battling gyms makes sense - I can’t help but wonder if this means the American versions would have abandoned the franchise’s main appeal: the Pokémon themselves. A baseball RPG may be a somewhat novel concept, butI don’t see it gaining anything close to the widespread appeal that Pokémon has. And ditching the series' cute creatures wasn’t the only potential change that we would have seen from this new version of the games.
Nintendo Of America Wanted To Make Pokémon Gritty
The Idea Was To Add Things Like Graffiti To Make The World Grittier
Another idea that Tilden mentioned in the interview was to change the game’s art assets to make it more “gritty,” mentioning adding graffiti as one example of how this could have been done. Tilden credited this idea to an ad agency, and I have no trouble believing advertisers in the ’90s thought the solution to any campaign was to make it grungier. And yes,makingPokémongritty does sound like it would sacrifice a major appealof the franchise, but I also can’t help but think it would have made looking back at the games now pretty funny.
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As they stand,thePokémongames are pretty timeless, except for whatever Nintendo system happens to be set up in the protagonist’s bedroom.Pokémon RedandBluebeing as much of a throwback as something like the rollerblading/graffitiJet Set Radiogamesis fun to imagine. Think about cute little 8-bit Red walking around a gritty, graffiti-filled Kanto region as he travels between what I presume would have been little league games. Now that’s the nextPokémonROM hack that I want to see.
This Version Of Pokémon Is So Weird I Kind Of Wish I Could Have Played It
A Gritty Baseball Version Of Pokémon Sounds Like A Fun Oddity
I am in no way saying that the gritty baseball version ofPokémonwould have been better than what we ended up getting, far from it. However, the more I think about it, the moreI wish I could have played it. Just the idea of trying to changePokémon RedandBlueinto a baseball game opens up a lot of interesting questions that I would love answered.
First and foremost,I really want to know if there would still have been Pokémonin the games. Were the Pokémon going to help in the baseball games, like supernatural versions ofAir Bud? For that matter, I can’t even figure out how the baseball aspect would have worked without completely retooling the entire game’s code.
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Then there’severything that happens in between gym battles inPokémon RedandBlue. Would you still explore cruise ships and haunted towers between games? Perhaps we would have been tasked with taking down Team Rocket by pitching fast balls at Giovanni, or simply introducing him to the business end of our baseball bats.
While I’m being intentionally absurd here, I hope you see what I’m getting at. The throwaway idea of makingPokémona baseball game means thatalmost every aspect of the game would have to be reconsidered. It’s no wonder that, according to Tilden, these discussions took months. I think Nintendo of America was smart to realize that changingPokémon’s core concept was the wrong move, and the billions of dollars the franchise has made backs me up on that. Still, I can’t help but wish this weird version ofPokémonbaseball existed, so I could give it a try.
Pokémon Changing Could Have Ruined The Franchise
Pokémon Missing Out On A Wider Market Could Have Prevented It Getting As Big As It Is Now
Even ifPokémonhad simply remained in Japan, it would still have been a huge success. According to an article from theBBC,combined sales ofPokémon RedandGreenand thePokémon Trading Card Gameexceeded four billion dollars. Even if the U.S. versions of the original games turned out to be a weird graffiti-filled baseball mess, it probably wouldn’t have sunk the entire franchise. However, things may have looked very different today ifPokémonhadn’t become an international phenomemon.
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HadPokémonnot successfully crossed over to the U.S. we might not have gotten collaborations between The Pokémon Company and companies like Legendary Entertainment, who producedDetective Pikachu, orPokémon GOdeveloper Niantic.ThePokémonfranchise may also not have been able to continue growing and taking risksif it hadn’t been pulling in even more money from overseas.
Of course, it is also possible thatPokémoncould have continued going strong in Japan, and eventually made it over to the U.S. in its original form after it was clear how much of a success it was. A billion-dollar franchise is hard to ignore, and I’m sure Nintendo of America would have tried again even if they had initially released a drastically different version of the original games. As much as I’d love to try out this weird alternate version ofPokémon, I’m ultimately glad that it became an interesting bit of trivia and not a reality.
