News: Original Pokémon games initially planned with 65,535 versions, buying Pokémon, no multiplayer battles

Lots of interesting details learnt today about the gen 1 games' development! The article summarises it + has a video, and there are further links to follow with more details.

Would have liked all the minor differences between versions. Understands the difficulty in implementing it, though, between a small team and possibly programming limitations.

May not have been as massive of a feature as imagined, also. Mentioned the shape of forests and such. Think about the differences between Red and Blue, though. Changed some available Pokemon and Game Corner prizes. Amounted to very little.

Might store some of this information for future challenge ideas. Already created one with money as a central feature. Enjoyed that. Revolved around a gacha mechanic and shop combination, however, rather than a shop alone. Envisions variations between challenge participants based on trainer ID too. Seems difficult to differentiate from a standard randomizer, though. Cannot alter landscapes. Views "'Broken' Pokemon Center at [City]" as boring. Definitely demands more thought before attempting anything.

I'm fine with pokemon not ending up like this. As cool as randomness is, I just can't imagine a randomly generated Kanto.

No multiplayer is hard to imagine and no hp system would have been weird.

But what Tajiri says in this interview is particularly interesting — that every Pokemon was originally planned to have a pre-determined monetary value assigned by Game Freak, and if you traded two Pokemon, one player would have to whip out their in-game wallet to pay the difference in value. That would also signal to players which Pokemon are better than others based on their price — essentially ranking Pokemon with an official tier list. It's also interesting this idea wasn't scrapped voluntarily, but because Game Freak's amateur programmers lacked the ability to code the feature into the game. Just think how that could've evolved into players hunting for wild Pokemon, then selling them to the shop for cash — kinda like a bounty system. With lots of Pokemon to buy and sell, cash could've been a lot more valuable in the Pokemon world. Pretty fun to think about.

Click to expand...

Luckily 1st gen pokémon games were developed in the 90's when there wasn't technology for digital purchases. Today that plan is fully possible and not even hard to do.

Sounds like hubris on the part of creators- basically like look at us we were so creative. The actual statement is 65,000 permutations not versions and that was only something they were going to to try not concretely described permutations. No evidence much was even done- no way with their decimated staff ability could they possibly even try that. The actual number of versions is 20 maybe. The article details 5 versions.

Honestly, I find the idea of things being randomly generated like this fun - as a kid who knew a bunch of others that played, it would have been fun to see how our copies differentiated. But that plan does seem massively complex and something I'm not sure would work for Pokémon games in the modern day haha.