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The True History of Pokemon Generation 1

Warrior of Fire

The Hero of Time
Joined
Mar 23, 2012
Location
Riverside, CA
As everyone knows, the original release for the Pokemon series in the US had two versions, Red and Blue. However, with the remakes of these games for the GBA, you would expect them to be, based on what they were actually titled, FireRed and WaterBlue/AquaBlue, but instead we got FireRed and LeafGreen. Have you ever wondered why this is? Well, here's a little story. In Japan, the original release had three versions: Red, Green, and Blue. In the trip overseas, only two arrived, but only Red made it completely intact. The Japanese Blue failed to make it completely, and Green became the American Blue. As for why they were those three colors could have been any reason, like a possible reference to Ocarina of Time's three tunics being green, red, and blue, and why, when the special Yellow Pikachu version we got later, which was due to be more like the anime by having Pikachu follow you around when active and in your party as well as several other major changes, we didn't also get the missing piece of the original Japanese trio? These are some very important questions we should all ask ourselves, and something that doesn't seem to be all that well known. I wouldn't even know about it if I didn't have a book that has a lot of information about Pokemon at that time, including complete walkthroughs for the US trio (denotations for when the story deviates from the basic story in all three to the Yellow exclusive story parts and even some parts that are different between Red and Blue(Green)) and the N64's Pokemon Snap. That was very interesting to me, and it did answer some of those questions for me.
 
While I already knew this information, it's great to disseminate it to more users. Personally, it's interesting that technically Western gamers can own all three versions as well as Yellow just on two different systems. It was very nice of the Pokemon Company to be so thoughtful.

Also, there is no correlation between Link's three tunic colors and those Pokemon versions. We could stretch this argument to Mario then as well and we all know how that would end. tan 90. Yep. That's the answer.
 

Warrior of Fire

The Hero of Time
Joined
Mar 23, 2012
Location
Riverside, CA
This is really nice! Have you considered being an article writer? Something like this but expanded would be great on Pokemon Dungeon.

I'm saving my article writing for on my Zelda site. I've already got one on there. Once I get my sig set up here, the site's logo will be linked to the site so you can read the article if you want to.
 

cozylamps

H2Awesome
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Location
United States
I believe that the western release chose Blue over Green was mainly due to the time the games were released. By Red and Blue's release in the West, Japan had already had released Blue and an addition with better graphics and a few minor programming issues were taken care of. Of course when translating the games, Red was brought up to Blue's changes.

As for LeafGreen being chosen over AquaBlue, Bulbapedia explained this:
According to Junichi Masuda, the reason why LeafGreen did not become WaterBlue outside of Japan was for the following reasons: A leaf is a symbol of peace, while fire and water are opposing concepts and thus would seem more like a conflict. A leaf is also an easier concept to grasp and translate into other languages, and in this world of conflicts, the creators wanted to give a name suggestive of a peaceful world. Game Freak also wanted a colorful drawing of a Bulbasaur family member on the boxart. Masuda explains that, as with legendary Pokémon, creating a title for each Pokémon game that can be used and easily understood in all countries is not an easy task.

:D
 

Kevin

Original PD
Site Staff
Joined
Oct 2, 2011
Location
NY
As everyone knows, the original release for the Pokemon series in the US had two versions, Red and Blue. However, with the remakes of these games for the GBA, you would expect them to be, based on what they were actually titled, FireRed and WaterBlue/AquaBlue, but instead we got FireRed and LeafGreen. Have you ever wondered why this is? Well, here's a little story. In Japan, the original release had three versions: Red, Green, and Blue. In the trip overseas, only two arrived, but only Red made it completely intact. The Japanese Blue failed to make it completely, and Green became the American Blue. As for why they were those three colors could have been any reason, like a possible reference to Ocarina of Time's three tunics being green, red, and blue, and why, when the special Yellow Pikachu version we got later, which was due to be more like the anime by having Pikachu follow you around when active and in your party as well as several other major changes, we didn't also get the missing piece of the original Japanese trio? These are some very important questions we should all ask ourselves, and something that doesn't seem to be all that well known. I wouldn't even know about it if I didn't have a book that has a lot of information about Pokemon at that time, including complete walkthroughs for the US trio (denotations for when the story deviates from the basic story in all three to the Yellow exclusive story parts and even some parts that are different between Red and Blue(Green)) and the N64's Pokemon Snap. That was very interesting to me, and it did answer some of those questions for me.


The original code for the Pokemon Red and Blue games for North America were based off of Japan's Pokemon Blue which was released after their Red and Green titles were made. The fact that we got Red and Blue over in the US created a lot of issues with translations in Pokemon Special/Pokemon Adventures because of the naming. The main character Red, and his rival Green were referred to as such in the Japanese version of the manga. But in the US we called Green, Blue and had Japans Blue as our Green which didn't make too much sense. The way it was intended to go was Red chose Bulbasaur, Green chose Charmander which was how the games went with your rival picking the type stronger than you. This left Blue with Squirtle, but in the English rewrite it was rewritten to create less confusion with the titles that were released here.

So to get back to the point, the reason we have FireRed and LeafGreen is because Japan had Red and Green to start with. Both games featured different sprites than the US releases. So the original point you made here is missing a few key things. Yellow did come out because of Pikachu's popularity in the anime, and the reasoning for having a Blue and Red version in the US is not entirely known. Originally the developers of Pokemon didn't know if the US market would like the idea of Pocket Monsters because of the cuteness of the Japanese monsters that battled each other. The titles were portrayed towards kids so they preserved some cuteness, but also had a 'cooler' edge to them in the sprite styles.

The relation to the tunics is a common thing with Japanese culture as well with three elements and balance with nature. The general flow of Pokemon was having the trinity of Grass vs Water vs Fire with a Ro Sham Bo feel to the gameplay. This is similar to the three goddesses from the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time who created the land, sky and flora/fauna. It's similar to the balance of the four elements Fire, Water, Air, and Land/Earth as well where balance between the elements was a highly regarded idea/philosophy.
 

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