Pokemon Originally Had 65,535 Versions (Exclusive)
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Poke' Myths -➤ • Pokemon Myths DEBUNKED
Lockstin -➤ • A Lost Pokemon Lecture...
We delve into some exclusive secrets about Game Freak's original Game Boy Pokemon games, including how Pokemon Red and Blue were planned to have over 65,000 different versions.
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Special Thanks: SnorlaxMonster, HiResPokemon, Otto Sandshrew2, and Backlot52
Research/Writing by Dr Lava
Video Editing by TheCartoonGamer
Sources/Further Reading:
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#Pokemon #Pokémon #Nintendo #GameBoy
A lot of y'all like to read developers interviews in-full and in text form, and making them publicly available is also good for preservationist purposes. So here's links to three of our translations, totalling about 25 pages. These were originally posted on Dr Lava's Patreon, and have now been made public on his website. Dr Lava is a DYKG member, and he wrote this video. Links:
1. All nine Game Freak developers in 1996 Pokedex book: lavacutcontent.com/satoshi-tajiri-pokedex-interview
2. Satoshi Tajiri and Tsunekazu Ishihara in Nintendo Online Magazine, July 2000 issue: lavacutcontent.com/tajiri-tsunekazu-ishihara-interview/
3. Junichi Masuda in Famitsu Weekly, May 2019: lavacutcontent.com/masuda-game-freak-history/
4. Five Game Freak developers, Nintendo Online Magazine, July 2000 issue: lavacutcontent.com/sugimori-masuda-developer-interview/ (we already published this one last year, but we briefly mentioned it in today's video, so we're linking it here along with the others)
These interview translations add up to 25 pages, but there's still about 80 pages we mentioned in this video but haven't published yet. We're still holding them back to use as research for future videos, then we'll publish them in text form at a later date. Cheers.
Very much appreciative to have this information. Thank you 👏
Ok
7:58 i realised that type of gameplay was later used in megaman battle chip challenge
Y'all misspelled Lockstins name in description
It seems the file for the interview is password protected.
Also, will the Japanese originals be uploaded? Translation is never 1:1 and I'd like to be able to read the base text.
There's actually a lot of parallels between that concept and randomizers today, only that randomizers are almost entirely meant as a challenge and not nearly as casual as the games themselves
to be fair, randomizers dont take into account the map design which is where most of the challenge comes from, a proper randomizer with map tiles/generation that was made for it wouldnt run into that issue... not as often anyway, im sure some poor kid would still somehow luck out and land in an ultra hard mode version by happenstance either as a result of a bad combination of start/transition tiles or some bug wreaking havoc on their world
Not just that but the nuzlock concept too, sounds like they also had something akin to that planned. Makes me wonder, are the people that invented those concepts secretly gamefreak employees? lol.
@@nickolaswilcox425 That was my first thought. Even if they had made the tiniest hint of progress on that feature, it would have been scrapped immediately. Way too risky. Even if all you get is a randomized Viridian Forest, well great. The cartridge itself can be soft-locked an hour in (if that) because an 8 year old decided to give himself a crazy name.
@@Markworth it could certainly be done, putting checks in place to prevent a problematic outcome or certain details are hard set to provide a reliable framework to build on, but the tech at the time it would have been rather difficult to cover all contingencies, nowadays it could be done though, still possible for a rare few instances to slip through the cracks but accidentally unwinnable has been a thing for years and most of those games werent deemed trash for it, at least not that alone
sometimes i like to create randomizers just for fun without any hardcore nuzlock challenge added to them.
its fun trying to discover new pokémon that way and using pokémon you otherwise wouldn’t.
The early ideas about buying and selling pokemon make sense when you consider the inspiration the games took from capsule toys, especially in earlier iterations.
Gacha are such a cancer.
The Tomy Pokémon medal battling game in its first series had this mechanic as part of the instructions for how to play. If you lost the battle, your medal would go to your opponent. For series 2, which added 48 different Pokémon medals, they scrapped that idea in favor of a rock-paper-scissors game and everyone kept their medals at the end. It was kind of like a capsule toy in that they came in blind packs.
Also is based on bug catching where people catch and sell beetles for high prices.
This may explain why there's mention in the code of Yellow of an unused Pink version. Bumping up the gen 1 game count to four brings the total far closer to that original hope for 5-7 before it was compromised at two.
RIP Pokemon Pink.
Yeah just like Let's Go had Eevee version they originally wanted a Clefairy version for gen 1, but they ended up scraping it for being too cutesy.
It also explains all the other seemingly random trademarks for version names, they've held onto the idea for a while.
There are 4 Gen 1 games: Red, Green, Blue and Yellow.
5 if you count Japanese Blue as well (vastly different from the other Japanese and International versions).
Pink would make them 6 in total.
Clefairy WAS the original mascot, after all.
@@Super_Top_Secret_Area
If you count J Blue as a separate one, why would you count Green and International Blue as two games when they're basically the same thing? May as well count J Red separately at that point.
@@pkmntrainermark8881 the only one that's actually different is Japanese blue, (it has a different catch list than both red and green), and the American red and blue are just red and green with Japanese blue'e Sprite work
Considering how bugged the original games were, this would probably have been a nightmare to actually play. I can imagine the randomizer putting a gym entrance behind a rock, just completely ruining that entire save file.
They are too ambitious for the first installment of the game and people at the time aren't used to random procedural generated world and their platform is just a gameboy which completely limits their capabilities on what they can implement.
I commend Iwata for saving the 2nd installment of the game since the original developers didn't bother to document their work.
Remember Psychic types are weak against Ghost types.
In normal play you would never notice any bugs, you have to go out of your way to find them. The games are fine
It would work with modern procedural generation systems, but there's not much purpose to randomizing the world itself. Randomizing Pokemon encountered between players would have worked fine.
@@Blernster my friend would disagree with you. He got softlocked while doing nothing particularly weird
Thanks for having me on! I love learning and explaining things like this. :)
And I was wondering why the narrator sounded like you
Hello
Can you explore the Gen 9 legendaries?
@@akumaking1 he'll get to it. I bet he's in the process of making the video right now.
@@necrozma4029 he's used the time machine from gen2 and is making a video on generation 0 legendaries!
did you notice that in the vid description, your name is misspelled? they forgot the S lol
That moment when you realize Game Freak came up with the idea of randomizers and Nuzlockes over a decade before anyone else.
I certainly would've abandoned the series long ago if they had.
Yet Pokémon fans always are acting like they could do it better and complaining about just about anything.
Eh, randomizers and Nuzlockes were a part of gaming since the early 80's.
How in God's name could you know they came up with it before anyone else if it was 'just an idea'?? Thousands of gamers or developers might have had the idea but just never implemented it.
@@UnseenEternalStudios some actually prove it by ether hacking the game to fix it, or by making an actual game or rom hack (wether or not their game or rom hack is better than the original is up for debate, one I’m not willing to have as I’ve never played a Pokémon clone (other than digimon) or Pokémon rom hack in my life)
A procedurally generated world based on your trainer ID sounds incredible, ngl
Someone should make a Pokémon-inspired game like that.
I think there’s a fangame kind of like that called Pokémon Wilds. It’s PC-only, though.
Look at the other side of the coin though, you could play 10 games and still be nowhere close to catching all the pokemon.
Until it generates a map that is impossible to complete that is lol, the elder scrolls daggerfall was newer than Pokemon and on pc and it still does that sometimes. Honestly the amount of work they'd have had to do to make sure that every version of the game was completable would be so vast that would probably be the only Pokemon game to ever be made
@@masync183 More like Buggerfall :P
The more I hear about Gen 1's development, the more I realize its success was lightning in a bottle.
Vanishingly few universes where Pokémon ended up the multimedia monstrosity it is today.
It just happends to made the right choices to become what it is today.
The franchise's success is truly baffling when you consider all of the circumstances that could've acted against it. Gen 1 ended up a buggy mess that would hardly hold up to reasonable standards on a technical level, and made by a development team that seems like they have no idea what they're doing half the time.
@@wesnohathas1993 Not to mention how late it came out into the Gameboy's lifespan. The fact it escaped being a niche title is astounding.
@@wesnohathas1993 The Mew word of mouth hype like that, its appealing manga inspired art that already made it stand out in a lot of foreign countries and the supplementary marketing after definitely helped a lot. I think the developers never anticipated how much of a chain reaction the ideas for making people interact more with eachother through the game would be.
Imagine being the strategy guide companies of the time and the sense of existential dread when they would have begun to realize that each game was slightly different and they slowly meltdown. That would have been a nightmare.
Would've just been general tips about battling at that point.
The strategy guides for red and blue were pretty bad. I doubt they would’ve cared there were so many versions. They’d just copy paste
Random world generation is usually done via seeds and those seeds generally have predictable variations. So while you couldn't have a strategy guide with in-depth maps, I imagine it'd still be possible to develop one that helps plays predict what might be where based on how their seed generated.
Imagine making 65535 strategy guides from the same game
Prima Strategy guide Pokemon: Red, ID. 58365
If he had just scaled the idea down to the trainer ID changing the availability of certain Pokémon in a given route and weighing the encounter rates. That would have been neat.
Say, across three games. One guy can barely find Seel in Seafoam, one finds them all the time, and another finds Shellder at Seafoam rarely but finds lots of Seel while surfing the ocean!
It would have given a good incentive for trading
While neat, I feel like just having two (three if your count Yellow) versions was plenty. It's already a pain in the ass to fill a Pokedex with just two versions, having to play through both, or at least reply on a friend to play through theirs and catch what you need. Imagine that, times 50, where now you gotta find 50 other people to trade with simply because everyone's game has different Pokemon.
It'd be a neat idea, and would definitely have incentivise trading even moreso than it already did. But I'd imagine it would have been more annoying than fun.
Can you imagine the rerolling players would be engaging in with this system, though? Especially these days, people would know exactly what the ID numbers mean for specific Pokemon in specific places, or they'd be able to determine rapidly the likelihood of finding things like Pikachu in the Forest early on
If they had just dropped the randomized landscapes bit, I feel like the trainer ID based randomization of possible Pokemon could've worked. All they would've needed to do is set larger pools of Pokemon for each area, and a set of predefined appearance rates to be randomly applied (Think having 10 potential Pokemon per area, but the developers only want 4 to appear, so the game randomly applies appearance rates of 40%, 25%, 20%, 15%, and six instances of 0% to the set of potential Pokemon based on your ID number).
To determine the same number of Pokemon are unobtainable per game, you'd need to ensure two things. First, you'd need to determine a random set of Pokemon to be purposely excluded, with consistent rules on the size of evolutionary lines so some poor kid doesn't end up missing out on 15 Pokemon, while another ends up missing 5. Ideally they'd set it so a defacto "ban list" of Pokemon is generated on start, picked from sets defined by the size of their evolutionary lines (something like one Pokemon that doesn't evolve, two evolutionary lines with only one evolution, and two evolutionary line with two evolutions). Pokemon on this "ban list" would always be given one of the 0% chance slots before the rest are randomly distributed.
Second, they'd need to implement a system so the base form of each non-banned evolutionary line appears at least once. My preferred solution to this problem is giving each non-evolved Pokemon a value during the intialization process based on how many pools they have left to appear in. The easiest way to do that is hardcode the amount of pools they are in, and have the game decrease that value by one every time they receive an appearance rate of 0%. If that value reaches 1, they're guaranteed to recieve the highest value available in a pre-randomization step similar to the banlist check. During that pre-randomization step, it would also determine if the amount of Pokemon designated 1 pool remaining is higher than the total number of non-zero appearance rates in the pool. If that ends up being the case then the game repeatedly divides the largest appearance rate by two until all of the Pokemon can receive appearance values.
Another solution involves using Cerulean Cave as an overflow pool, where a similar tally system keeps track if base evolutions aren't included in any pool, but instead of forcing them to be in their last possible opportunity, it just adds them to the otherwise nearly empty set that is Cerulean Cave. Spawn rates would be determined by dividing 100% by the total number of Pokemon in the pool. I personally dislike this solution because I feel like it would be less satisfying to players if all the Pokemon they couldn't find showed up in the post game, but it would trim down the algorithm to determine pool contents.
As for how you handle the game calculating all that on startup, you hide it behind the intro with Professor Oak. Remove the player's ability to mash through the intro, giving the cartridge time and computational power to intialize all of the game settings as otherwise the game is just retrieving and rendering text information.
They lack the technology of the time and no time left to implement the features since they are already working the game for 6 years which is a very long time for development. They didn't even bother to document their work properly.
As another programmer, I commend you for your problem solving ingenuity. If it was not for the dreaded, almighty deadline this would have been the greatest implementation for the system. It also would have helped the game's replay value in later generations once they refined the system, as they could program it with better technology and less limitations making it different player ID on every New Game startup.
Heck, they could even implement New Game + where internal data can be saved that the cartridge has already been beaten once, and you can randomly generate the game with harder Pokemon levels and challenges.
Messing with just the encounter tables shouldn't be nearly that bad. If the game did, let's say, one route's table per frame, it would still easily finish before the player is done mashing through Professor Oak's introduction.
In short the reason there scrapped the idea is it was too hard to make it work back in the day. Even in games like Minecraft the procedural generation can sometimes screw up, so imagine for a Game Boy game with little memory and written in a code language wellknown to create many glitches.
To be honest I think this should be something to be implemented in the future of the series, replacing the two-versions system.
This way they can stop with selling the same thing over and over while still having trading incentives.
replayability would be greater, and 30 years later when streaming became a thing it would have been better.
but at the time, the playground talk of how to get past a cave or navigate safari zone, or where zapdos was, or the hidden area behind bills house, or the ss Anne truck.. those things would have never been.
We may never have realized about things like "Gen 1 miss" or type wonkiness, since there would have been no stable base to start from
I think it could be bad seeing how hardcore some fans are they would be buying 1000s of copies of the game.
30 years after Pokémon streaming became a thing? Streaming has been around for over a decade and Pokémon isn't even 30 years old.
the ways to catch Missingno would also change if we imagine there'd be different glitches per map
I don't think replaybility would be that common since people get too attached to their Pokémon and completing the Pokedex was already a nightmare with 151, so the last thing they want is lose all that progress at once.
Ok the fact that they scrapped blue version because venusaur has a super cool design is awesome to me, giving that family some love
These videos are getting better and better. A lot of channels give pokemon facts but these deeper dive videos are so much more interesting! Another great one guys 👍
I love it how many of the features game freak worked on the hardest were probably ditched out from the final release or overlooked by most players, whereas features they probably didn’t focus on as much like multiplayer battling were crucial for the health of the future series. I would love to know how developers envisioned player experience of the Pokémon world.
It probably differed a lot from ours
It's like how multiplayer in "Goldeneye" on N64 was an afterthought that barely made it in the game.
It happends quite often when brain storming, there started with many ideas that ended being scrapped because it wasn't worth it or lack the resources. Also tunnel vision can have a play too, many games flopped because there didn't realise what ever they where doing it wouldn't work at the end, like not knowing your audience.
Can you imagine the amount of replay-ability! Gosh, I'm so sad they couldn't figure out the recursive nature of random world building. It could have even been built while you were talking to Prof. Oak, so it wouldn't feel like you were waiting for it to load.
One-time procedurally generated worlds would have been awesome. That would promote trading so much more than it does now, especially since they jumped ten different sharks to include alternate dimensions and timelines into the franchise. I really want that in a game now.
Btc
Yes and no. If for some children was already hard to find someone who had a different version to trade Pokémon with imagine 65,000 something versions where you don't even know what Pokémon can or cannot be caught on your save file.
So, initially I thought that it was to make more money by making two separate versions of the games- but this has made me realize that the concept started from a lot more of a passionate place. It's literally changed my concept on that. Maybe the means have changed and now it IS for money- but I like the idea where it came from initially.
Pretty wild that they started with concepts that would later become rather popular and standard for a lot of indie games like Procedural Generation and losing your progress or party members if they were knocked out (Permadeath). I really want to know if they are aware of "Nuzlockes" because that's basically what Tajiri almost made but officially lol.
permadeath in videogames predates pokemon by at least 16 years.
Not wild in the least. The 1980 game Rogue popularized permadeath and procedural generation. Roguelikes are so-named for being like Rogue.
Its pretty fascinating that this totally different design direction that so many custom mods have gone down existed from before the first game was released. And then the later games went in the complete opposite direction, with extremely linear design and hand crafted content
@@SnakebitSTI is the latter-most bit really true? that genre name comes from Rogue? im a massive fan of roguelikes and i had no idea.
@@zekerdeath Yep. "Roguelike" was used a lot like the later term "Doom clone".
A Pokémon style rouge-like with randomly generated monsters sounds like a modern indie game concept. I'd play it
Maybe not for the main games, cus nuzlockes are ready exist but for something like the mystery dungeon series with different randomly generated runs including your team would be cool
a pokemon Rogue like? That's Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. There's also a randomizer for mystery dungeon explorers of sky
@@JojoTheVulture There actually is randomizer for Explorers of Sky called Sky Temple randomizer.
Honestly they should try this again. With god knows how many Pokémon out there now each game could be so unique. It may not work but would be one hell of an experiment
It actually wouldn't have been that hard to set things up to have 2^16 different versions simply by having two different version for each zone. You basically make two Kantos that have all their 'doors' in the same places, and then each zone picks which version to use based on your trainer ID. Hell, for up to 16 zones you can just do it by checking a bit (and then check odd/even for pairs of bits after that.
Now I kinda want to see if that can be done in a romhack.
@らてちゃん Yeah, space was likely a major reason that a pseudo-random map wasn't implemented. Fitting a "random red" into a crystal hack (replacing Johto) would probably work.
Add checks for IDs in several locations.
Each check would be like "if digit X is set to Y, then"...
Therefore, you'd have to do WAY less checks than 65535.
@@flint8291 Yep, that's exactly what I meant.
Route 1 could just check if the 1s bit was 1 or 0 to pick which of two areas to load. Route 2 checks the 2s bit, route 3 checks the 4s bit, etc. for the first 16 routes. That makes them entirely independent with a single check (basically just TID AND 0...001, which sets your zero flag if the last bit is 0).
Then you start checking *two* bits; route 17 checks if 1 and 2 'match' (11 and 00 get one version, 10 and 01 get the other), then you check the 1 and 4 bit, the 1 and 8 bit, etc. (and then 2 and 4, 2 and 8, 2 and 16). Just checking two bits at a time like that can cover a huge number of areas (I think it's 15+14+...+2+1 = 120, plus the first 16), and while there will be patters (if route 1 and 2 both get the 1s pattern, you know that the route 17 will get the 11/00 pattern), you'll never be able to predict one area *solely* based on one other area. Also relatively cheap to calculuate; AND it with the appropriate mask (so checking 1s and 2s would be AND 0...011) to isolate the bits you care about, then figure out if they match (I'm pretty sure you can do it in two operations, can't figure out a way to do it in one off the top of my head). ETA figured it out: the AND 11 mask will set the zero flag if you have 00 in the checked bits, then if that fails you XOR 11 and it'll set the zero flag if they're 11; if both operations don't set the zero flag then you have 10 or 01). Two bitwise ops and two flag checks.
Even better, with 136 yes/nos possible, you could use separate ones for each route's encounter table (one check for route layout, one for encounter table), and that further increases variety (and helps you hide patterns; if a route 'matches' a pair of encounter tables on the other side of the map, or vice versa, it's harder to notice).
Well good for you, you must be smarter than all the people who actually worked on the original games! What do they know right?
@@Savannah_Simpson I'm not insulting them, they had good reasons to decide not to do it. Pre-internet people relied upon physical guidebooks often enough; a 'random' map in a non dungeon-crawler would have been obnoxious, and trying to 'catch-em-all' when you don't even know what you can catch, or where, would have sucked.
I'm sure their idea for a "2^16 versions" was similarly 'simple'; they pared things down to the Red and Green we eventually got for reasons besides it being complicated (as mentioned in this thread, space would have been a major concern; Gen 1 games barely fit on their carts).
Sounds like randomizers and nuzlockes were the fan-created spiritual successors to ideas early in Pokémon's development
Wow, I can't believe they actually considered a "Pokemultiverse" of sorts back then! 🤯
11:02 the damage status mechanic kind of came back in the games that had bonding like Sun and Moon where there would be text like “Pokémon looks like it’s about to cry.”
The first scrapped feature sounds like they wanted to make randomizers canon almost. Which makes sense as whenever I go to replay a Pokemon game I always randomize it.
Same here. Although, the only change I do is eliminate trade evolutions and maybe held items.
11:00
Madou Monogatari (predecessor of the Puyo Puyo series) did this several years in advance. It's an interesting enough concept, but I could see this being absolutely heartbreaking if players also had to surrender their 'mons when losing battles.
I really like the idea of a Pokemon having more RNG content.
But instead of the whole game being different, it's just specific locations. Something similar to version exclusive stuff.
Like one place could be a swamp, small town, dry rock desert/valley. Town gym being a different type or player starts in a different home town. Even Pokemon having alternate places to be found.
The idea of permanently loosing your Pokémon is……yeah….I’m glad they took that out. Like….yikes!
to be fair, that tactic works fine on other games and the fans of those series either like or tolerate it, pokemon launched without it so we never had to adjust to it and the existence of nuzlock implies it would have still had an audience
@@nickolaswilcox425 I'm more talking about the core game itself. The problem is that there's people like me that cannot STAND IT! It's especially when you're trying to market the game to kids. Like it or not, kids ARE, and still is the target audience for this series! Having a mechanic like that completely ruins the experience. It's why I couldn't get into the earlier Fire Emblem games. If you have to completely reset your game because of one death, then that's just bad game design.
@@atre5763 i dont disagree with you, i refuse to touch games with that mechanic, but i do see why it has an appeal and the games with it dont fail badly enough to be scrapped, but for sure pokemon wouldnt have gained nearly as much traction so quickly if they had done it
@@atre5763 relax dude, it’s just a video game. And you’re freaking out about something that doesn’t exist.
Really? Dang so a nuzlock almost actually happened in game before nuzlock was a thing
Having randomized maps based on player ID sounds rad! Super ambitious so I see why they didn’t do it, but man that sounds really fun!
Dude, even just having what pokemon appear be randomized would've given so much more life to the trading feature. Imagine if you could only come across a third or even a fourth of all pokemon in any save file, and maybe only one of the legendary birds.
DYKG puts an insane amount of effort into these videos, and it really shows!
The idea of not seeing HP numbers for opposing Pokemon reminds me of how it's done in D&D: _"He's looking pretty rough"_ and _"He looks hurt, but he's still standing and angry",_ etc
Oh man, Pokémon almost had Nuzlockes built into it
I’m impressed how you guys are still able to dig up new info on these extremely popular games. Props to you all, it’s been a great 10 years
65,000 versions would have been insane. But I think old Pokémon games are usually replayable alone with the different amount of teams you can have.
Like, I had teams that were different from each other.
One play through was Venusaur, Mew, Golem, Dragonite, Vaporeon, and Electabuzz. And another was Blastoise, Jolteon, Aerodactyl, Exeggutor, Arcanine, and Mewtwo.
imagine how big of a pain in the ass it would be to preserve 65,000 versions of a game in ROM form
I bet. Definitely a unique idea though.
@@internetguy7319 i suspect the cartridge would have been the same but either with a random generated number at the beginning deciding what world you get or only a small section of permanent memory for the id separate from the rom, in short it would just be one version but with a fill in the blank for the world generation
@@internetguy7319 Or you just add checks that alter some stuff based on the digit, which would result in.... Less than 100 checks for changes in total.
So many cool facts here! It's interesting to think of how many of the ideas they threw out would go on to become core features / mechanics for other games. Their original idea of representing incoming damage with text like "That hurt!" or "That really hurt!" that they scrapped....that sounds a lot like how they keep teams updated on score during a Pokémon Unite match now. :D
Thanks so much for all your efforts in uncovering Pokémon history!!
No wonder Nuzlockes fit Pokémon like a glove, the games were meant to be that way.
Considering they have a (small?) solid following, I'm surprised that Nintendo/Gamefreak hasn't gone ahead and made it a difficulty you could choose. (Or have they? I've only surface-level followed the series since B/W.) A "Champion" difficulty with "permafaint", maybe a few other changes to make the game more challenging like items costing more without increasing the amount won from battles.
(Maybe hide it behind a setting or button combo found in the manual so that little kids playing don't accidentally pick it.)
@@Tukaro I'd honestly consider buying a pokemon game again if that was the case. The games have gotten far too easy and juvenile as they got released.
@@viedralavinova8266 literally just do a nuzlocke yourself then. When you lose a Pokémon release it immediately
Just remember that 16 pairs of differences allow for 65536 different version of the game altough most of it is still similar, it would ork way better than randomly generated land for a game like pokemon
This is honestly amazing. I kinda wish/hope they would revive some of these monumentally different ideas for how the games function, considering how stale the games have been mechanically lately. Like even just buying and selling Pokémon sounds like it could be a really neat gimmick
The Menko Card, play-for-keeps idea reminds of Magic's early Ante system. It's funny how that was considered a fun way to elevate the stakes in what is now considered almost entirely archaic game design
This was fascinating. Just thinking about how different the franchise would've been if some of these concepts would've stuck around is wild. Also wondering if the "Buying Pokemon" mechanic would've ended up being closely inspired by the Capsule Monsters concept and ended up being a Gacha game. Ngl I think it would be cool if they revisited these ideas, would be cool
I love the idea that if you lose a battle you could lose Pokémon in your party. Maybe make it so you could protect 1 or 2, but the rest are up for grabs if you lost
This would have turned the strategy guides into phone books...
Been a long time viewer. Really cool to see how you guys pivoted to exclusive stuff.
Well, this certainly has me brimming with curiosity as to what a randomly generated Pokemon game would be... a Rougemon...?
Should get to work before someone takes the idea
Why always rouge and never another color?
@@GabePuratekuta Because people constantly typo the word rogue
@@GabePuratekuta They really like the colour red and rouge sounds dangerous.
To me, there's no other game that's as technically unique as pokemon; each game having their own unique ID's that determine wild encounters, being able to battle and trade with other people, and being able to transfer pokemon from previous generation consoles.
This is incredible. I would love to see this happen.
Funnily enough, I had an idea a few months ago where all Regional Dex Pokemon could be found normally in the wild, and the remaining National Dex Pokemon would appear in the postgame but the only ones you can get under normal circumstances are randomly decided based off of your Trainer ID.
I love how deep you guys dig to uncover interesting and new facts of our favorite games for your videos ♥️♥️♥️
Great job!!!
Semi-random Pokemon appearances based on location, swapping town locations, item location, and "dungeon" location, with a final touch of swapping who are gym leaders, elite four, rival, and so on!
Wow, this is fascinating! i LOVE all the love you've been giving Pokemon and it's so much fun as a fan since the Gen 1 era to be learning so much new and interesting history about the series' start! Also, THANK YOU for providing links to those translations!! I'm so excited to read those!
One of my favorite thing about the Pokémon games I really like is how you find NPCs in-game that talk to you about how important not just looking at a Pokémon’s strength is, instead of getting hung up on the competitive stats. They know that most people that play these games focus most on doing the most effective, speedy moves, but the casual part of Pokémon is just as interesting.
I think they should try the every copy is personalized thing sometime maybe for either Gen 10 or the Gen 5 remakes / B3W3 and see how it goes
So Nuzlocks were essentially the first concept for Pokemon? That may also explain why certain themes seem to play out more heavily in gen 1 that lead to fan theories such as "Gary's Raticate". There may have been concepts that subconsciously made their way into the games based on that original thought process.
It's so interesting to think about this game's development. Six years, "twists and turns", based on a bug collector's dream, and they might have known they had a good idea, but I don't think they realized that one day "Pocket Monsters" would morph into the largest multimedia company on the planet. They sure knew they had something, though. And you have to give credit to Nintendo themselves, for funding and helping cultivate a masterpiece of a game.
I think a way they could have done it without actually fully randomising it would be to divide the routes and dungeons into 16 different areas (e.g. route 3/mt moon/route 4 could be one block), and then have two variations of each, with each bit of the trainer ID corresponding to which variant is selected for each of the areas.
A personalized Pokémon Red and Blue map would of took ages to make, They probably were right to change that through it would of being cool when it was released by fans.
Lovely video! I really like to see how dedicated you guys are to investigate and compile this info in an entertaining video.
If the game was going to have the "you lose i take away one of your pokemons" idea, AND make you able to take from others, this means that Nuzlockes would've gotten easier as you could've simply grabbed the best pokemons from the enemy team, losing to the enemies wouldn't change anything since you'd get a game over anyways
Kind of amazing to hear about a concept of every game being different based on the Trainer ID, since in the modern day, the series gets a ton of flak for having two different versions with next to no differences. With the sheer number of Pokemon available now, players could have gotten a lot of mileage out of games that swapped out many different Mons - for example, your game's typical Bird type changing between Pidgey, Spearow, Hoothoot, Natu, Taillow, Wingull, Starly, Pidove, Rufflet, Fletchling, Pikipek, or Rookidee. And after beating the Elite 4 or post-game, have certain regions change up what's available where, reshuffling them once a day after speaking to a certain character or something.
Alas, that was not to be.
I would love to see someone make a romhack where if you lose the opponent takes one of your Pokemon (and you have to rematch against them with it)
hm in retrospect the other way around is kind of like the system in Pokemon Colosseum?
"We used texts to represent different statuses."
*getting hit by a Gen 1 freeze*
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!
So ...The concept of randomizer was already in mind before the randomizer community did their own? Wow
Honestly these ideas are all absolutely amazing. Minus watching fights instead of controlling the fight.
As a developer myself, all I can say is that this would have been a QA nightmare, and a ton of pressure on devs to think through so many possible scenarios, landscapes, and other unintended bugs that could possibly happen.
A gameworld that acted like a Roguelike based on the ID number you were assigned is an interesting concept. Sort of like how depending on your seed in Minecraft you can get a vastly different world to play in. The drawback to this of course is how progression would be handled. If everything is randomized right from the start and is kept like that at least until you make a new file, it would be quite difficult trying to balance things so you don't get screwed over due to an unforeseen mismatch of frustrating areas because of your assigned ID number. If there was a dev who could take this idea and actually make it work, that would be an impressive feat all by itself regardless of how the rest of the game is.
They settled on a winning formula, but I wish they took more risks and explored different ideas and game directions, a lot of these concepts sound neat
They take plenty of risks and explore different ideas in the spinoff games, but they can't significantly modify the proven core formula in the main series games, or they'll alienate too much of the core fan base, myself included. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
(Game Freak may claim that "Legends Arceus" is a main series game, but everything about it in practice indicates that it's actually a spinoff game, and those like me who don't care for its altered gameplay and mechanics just ignore it save for the possibility of a few things like access to the new Pokémon and the Frost status possibly carrying over to Gen 9.)
I kinda realise that Dragon Quest 9 of all things did something like this
In the game, you get harvesting spots that let you collect amounts of certain items, and the amount of items each spot can max out at varies from playthrough to playthrough.
But the game has a feature where you can join the party of another player through DS link play, and in their worlds, you get a different amount of items that you can collect.
The whole concept of a unique, randomised map for almost every copy of the game sounds awfully similar to the ‘every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalised’ legend.
Red and Green originally released in Japan in 1996.
Guess which other game also first released in 1996?
The Missingno Apparition
WARIO WILL SHOW YOU FUN!
Mario 64!1!1!!1
not legend, creepypasta.
That intro souded like Fantasy Life, and now, I'm begging the stars to give us a sequel and/or a port someday soon! 😭
Damn. Whole game was almost a nuzlocke.
with all the crazy ideas they had floating around during development its nothing short of a miracle these games came out as focused as they did
"every copy of pokemon is personalized" doesnt exist, it cant hurt you
"every copy of pokemon is personalized" :
And then, the Wartortle apparition appeared in my personalized copy, and came out of the game, and KILLED ME, with HYPERREALISTIC BLOOD!!!!!1
This was really interesting! Thanks for being a real one dykg!
This is incredible info. Good work!
I think this idea survived well beyond Gen1 if you think of events in-game that depend on your ID number or other hidden values which are different for every new save file, such as Feebas' location in Hoenn and Sinnoh, or the fact that it is highly unlikely for two Spinda to share the same dots pattern.
Even Vivillon's patterns based on geographical location was probably also inspired by Tajiri's wish of making the game experience at least a little different for everyone.
DYKG went from stating facts from obscure to common knowledge, to uncovering the long lost past and solving myths.
It still would've been fun to at least sell Pokémon though, like the values would depend on stuff like level, EVs earned, rarity, etc. like a lv.3 Rattata could be $210 (barely covering the cost of a pokeball), while a lv. 100 Mewtwo could be $999999 or something
This channel is a gift we do not deserve. Thank you.
Huge fun and really appreciate the work money and time that goes into these History videos! Thank you for preserving Pokemon History
I'm not gonna lie when I heard Lockstin say GameGreak originally planned for every copy of Pokémon Red, Blue and Green to be unique to each player I thought it was a joke and a nod to the "Every copy of Mario 64 is personalized" Iceberg meme.
Its crazy to see old ideas actually get reused nowadays in modding. The feature of losing your pokemon is nuzlock playthoughs and personalized versions are now randomized mods. Its so surreal to see these ideas where considered to be in a normal game but they are challenge runs nowadays. Even if most ideas that get scrapped, we only speculative the 'what if' scenario on how it would do but no, we acutally get to PLAY those lost concept even though we didnt know these ideas WHERE lost to begin with!
Man, it came full circle.
Ya really had to do the "every copy is personalized" shtick, even if it was real huh?
Great video, the research and work that went into this has paid off, love it!
They made nuzlocks before it was cool lol
This channel has hours of obscure gen 1/gen 2 pokemon facts, but it some how also never runs out of facts to present. Pretty soon the facts will be so obscure they'll cease to exist the moment you turn away.
The next Gen 1 video on this channel will be exactly that
Can you imagine having to buy 7 different versions of Pokémon instead of 2? Parents would've been mortgaging their home just to catch 'em all.😱
Just imagine playing your copy of pokemon back in the day and everyone had different random encounters and someone found a random mew in the wild before the day of randomizers that would be cool
Wow there at the end, sounds like they had nuzlock like mechanics planned, and can't believe battling in general wasn't intended at all, I don't like the competitive scene, but to imagine Pokemon without battles in genral seems odd, I wonder what that would look like, is that what would inspire the features like Pokemon Amie later on?
Man I was just thinking the other day how cool it would be if there was *official* variation on randomizers. My idea is that the game can draw from a pool of all available Pokemon, but only 150 would show up, and always in certain parameters. The basic idea is that, for instance, if the official game was just FireRed, one of the possibilities would be that Mareep takes the place of Pidgey and, idk, Munchlax takes the place of Rattata. So on route 1 where's the 50% chance of running into Pidgey or Rattata, now there's a 50% chance of either Mareep or Munchlax, and on every following instance where there was originally a Pidgey or Rattata, now there's Mareep or Munchlax. But in all possible randomized versions of the game, there's only a set of like 8 Pokemon that could replace Pidgey, and a different set of 8 that would replace Rattata, so it's not like the randomizer you can find online where you can have literally anything replace them.
I just really want a Mareep from the beginning of the game.
They should have done this with 2 different kantos for the 2 versions sothat red and green would be different, red has our kanto, green has a different kanto with the Pokemon you can’t find in red. This would make the games infinitely more replay able.
I'm just saying 2 different regions would've been fine enough.
have Kanto in one and Johto in another.
Was wondering what happened to Dr Lava. Glad I found you again! 😁
Hey thanks Tscape, yep, I'm over here writing DYKG videos :)
They originally intended for you to loose your Pokemon once you lost? Little did they know fans would eventually come up with Nuzlocke challenges to do exactly that xD
Plus, the fact that they originally basically wanted the game to work in a way similar to what the Randomizers do now is also pretty interesting.
I like how they took the procedurally generated idea and used it for the Mystery Dungeon Series.
apparently there's 10 million different colours so 65000 verisons of Pokemon should be easy
I'm pretty sure that a human is not able to distinguish 10 million colors though ;)
It would be really cool if they brought this sort of idea back for a spinoff or something. A truly random and personalized region to explore. I think the tech is there now
It would be insane to have a gen1 remake that is exactly like the og were planned (and better graphics, at least gen3 level of graphics)
As long as the game isn't horribly unbalanced to increase the "difficulty" like so many hacks are made to be nowadays.
@@generallyunimportant Because those aren't Pokemon.
I don't know if I'd like the idea of the whole world being different... but the idea of starting in a different place based on your game would be very cool, as would Pokémon available by ID number.