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1st Gen Lack of a female protagonist

Altairis

Altairis

take me ☆ take you
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    I never played RBGY as a kid, so by the time I picked up Yellow I already knew that I would have to play as a boy since there wasn't a female protagonist. However, I know that many of you picked up RBGY as your first Pokemon games! Did you notice that there wasn't a female protag? Did you care that much? How did you react? I'm personally very curious, and quite baffled honestly. Did they think girls would just.. not play Pokemon at all? :o
     
    When I first played Blue, I had already played Crystal, so I was like, "whaaa?? Why can't I be a girl??" I thought maybe it was some kind of secret character or something xD I never really thought anything else of it, though... Perhaps there were no young girls in Pallet Town? Or maybe none of them were old enough, or liked Pokemon (impossible).
     
    I played the Gen 1 games a lot later than usual, so I didn't pay much mind. It was just odd, seeing no female character that can be played as. Maybe they didn't have the time to code a female protagonist in, since if I remember correctly, there were time constraints or something. Either that, or they just didn't bother with a female character, as Pokemon was marketed to young boys.
     
    When you're a 7 year old little boy (which was what I was when I first played Red/Blue/Yellow), that kind of thing doesn't register in your mind at all. You're just like "ERMAHGERD POKEMANZ THIS IS SO COOL! adfsfdasfasgfsgs".

    Altairis said:
    Did they think girls would just.. not play Pokemon at all? :o
    Click to expand...
    Like Luso Trainer said, it may have been a technical limitation of the cartridges that they didn't have enough coding space for a female option. It also could've been that Pokemon started during the latter half of the days when video games were still seen as a thing only for (young) boys, and the population of female gamers was much smaller, so they didn't see the need to put in the ability to play as a female.
     
    That's odd i vaguely remembered designs of a female protag in the earliest sketches of pokemon designs in bulbapedia..

    I also remember that the reason was that gamefreak was having time and financial constraints that made it hard for them to code it in..

    I played red as a kid and on my mind I never really bothered with gender and stuff I even fought my way through half the game with a raticate.. Good times.. Good times..
     
    There's an official statement that goes that Mew happened to be squeezed into a tiny amount of free space in the original run of Red/Green cartridges after they finished removing debug code. That would imply there was almost no space left to include graphics and scripting / dialogues to allow for the player to choose their gender, if it's true.
     
    Yellow was my first ever video game, so I didn't care at all. Even now, I still don't care even if I know there were plans to implement a female into the games because the games are still enjoyable and playable. Plus, every main Pokemon game since Crystal has remedied being able to choose one's gender, so unless they revert back to only letting people pick one gender, I don't see it as such a big deal.
     
    I did find that a little odd when first playing Red, but it was probably the last thing on the developers minds. They had to also create the first installment to the Pokemon franchise, a building block and model for future generations. There was probably a lot to do in making the rest of Kanto, which didn't allow much room for other features.
     
    Wow, I honestly didn't connect the idea of no space to no protagonist. Glad I made this thread then, haha. I was just wondering if any of you as a kid were confused, and I think it's quite interesting that none of you really noticed. Probably for reasons Salt&PepperDiner said, because you were too excited to play Pokemon anyway haha.
     
    Even though I love the option today, I didn't think much of it back when there was only Gen I. Many games have a set protagonist of one gender or another so why would it be weird if the protagonist of pokémon was a boy?

    I admit though that when Crystal came, I went like "wow they should have done this from the start" ^^
     
    I actually started with Crystal so when I finally got to play Blue, I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a female protagonist. Even so, it was a fun game, although I do particularly enjoy playing as the females.
     
    I didn't really care too much; I doubt most girls that played the game early on really cared when they noticed the lack of a female character to play as. Although i'm not very fond of FRLG's female character, personally.
     
    It didn't really bother me, personally. All I cared about back then was playing and enjoying my time, and nothing else, which is exactly what I did. n__n" Though, I did like this feature when they'd introduced it in GSC, and started playing (mostly) as a girl from that point forward.
     
    I always thought that when the first generation games came out, that Pokémon was mainly being targeted towards boys, and that most girls wouldn't be interested in it at the time-hence no female player character was included in R/G/B/Y (or G/S.)
    Needless to say though, when Pokémon first hit our shores, it was mostly boys that were interested in it an talking about it the most. I didn't hear too much about it from girls at the time, so there's that.
     
    ... I honestly did not notice at all. >>;

    Because as a kid I was more concerned with the game itself than what gender I'd get to play as. So it didn't occur to me that there was no female character, since I would have chosen the male character anyway... err, probably.

    I'd also be very surprised if anyone passed up playing Pokemon just because they couldn't play as a girl. I find that to be a very silly reason to not play, since the games themselves are too amazing to pass up because of such a trivial thing. Makes me wonder if anyone passed up XD or Colosseum just because they couldn't play as a girl...

    When I played Crystal for the first time I was completely amazed that there was a girl protagonist. To me it just felt so revolutionary and awesome! I think I even played as the girl just because she looked cool to me and the idea itself was fairly new.
     
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