Game Freak devs

This page documents various interesting facts about the Game Freak dev process.

• Red and Blue were developed on a SPARCstation 1 running Unix, with "four or five" developers working together on a LAN. (Source: HIDDEN POWER of masuda)

• The original games were Red and Green in Japan, but Red and Blue in America. This is because "red and blue are the colors of the US flag (Stars and Stripes) and therefore are popular with Americans." (Source: Pokémon Journal)

• Most of Gold and Silver's music was created on an Amiga, converted to MIDI, and reconverted to the GSC music format. Some songs, though, like the Unown radio music, were created by hand directly in the GSC music format. (Source: HIDDEN POWER of masuda)

• During Red and Green's development, Satoru Iwata wrote the tools for graphics compression. Later, he converted the battle engine to Pokémon Stadium. (Source: Iwata Asks interview)

• On the origins of Pikachu:

When the Red & Green team were designing that first batch of pokemon, they came up with a lot of "rugged" creatures (Ken Sugimori designed Mewtwo, Gyarados, Kabigon [Snorlax], and Laplace [Lapras], for example) but decided that they also needed some cute ones to help balance things out.

At the time, the pokemon design team was made up of only three men and so Ms. Atsuko Nishida was hired to help the team come up with cute pokemon. Like Pikachu.

Her orders were simple: make an Electric-Type pokemon who evolves two times. She wasn't told what animal to base it off of or given any other guidelines, really. Just 1) electric pokemon, 2) evolves two times.

Evolve two times? Originally, the evolution was going to be Pikachu, Raichu, and an unreleased creature named "Gorochu" (ゴロチュウ). Gorochu would have had fangs that stick out and also two horns but was eventually removed from the game to help balance things out.

When it comes to the name, Ms. Nishida says that she chose "Pika" because it was going to be an Electric-Type. She also says she doesn't know why she added the "chu" there but is certain that she hadn't settled on making it a mouse at that stage.

It wasn't until after they came up with the name that Game Freak decided to make Pikachu a mouse. The whole team gave their input into its design which basically boiled down to "make it cuter."

The staff says that Pikachu's first design looked like a "daifuku," a type of round Japanese cake. Ms. Nishida says that this first draft design is so different that fans wouldn't recognize it as Pikachu.

During this "daifuku" stage, Pikachu didn't have its red cheeks. Ms. Nishida modeled Pikachu's cheeks, which are used to store electricity, after chipmunks storing food in their cheeks. The black bits at the end of its ears are left over from this "daifuku" design.

Ken Sugimori decided to color Pikachu yellow to help make it clear that it's an Electric-Type. The stripes on its back were added to give players something to look while its back is facing the camera during battles.

Kouji Nishino admits that he really loved the Pikachu design and so he made its spawn rate really low in an effort to kind of "hide" the pokemon and keep it all to himself. But in the end its rarity helped make it popular and so everyone ending up having to catch one.

The rest of the interview covers Pikachu's popularity and doesn't reveal any new information other than the fact that Ken Sugimori designed Pippi [Clefairy] as an attempt to make his own "cute" pokemon. But obviously Pikachu's more popular.

(Source: Yomiuri Online via @DogasusBackpack)