'I developed Pokémon'

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On 27 February 1996, gamers were first introduced to characters Pikachu, Eevee, and Charmander when the first Pokémon games were released in Japan. Known as Pocket Monsters Red and Pocket Monsters Green, the games were released simultaneously on the Nintendo Game Boy hand-held console. In a matter of years the franchise would make the leap from an ageing games console to television animation and beyond, making it a worldwide pop culture powerhouse. Kurt Brookes speaks to game developer Akihito Tomisawa about the development, release, and success of the game series. A Made in Manchester production for BBC World Service. (Photo: Pikachu. Credit: Made in Manchester)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading the witness history podcast with me, Kurt Brooks.
0:10.0	Today I'm taking you back to 1996, when the release of a new video game would launch
0:15.0	one of the highest grossing media franchises of all time.
0:19.0	I've been speaking to developer Akehito Tomisawa about the release of Pokemon.
0:25.0	It was unpredictable.
0:29.0	It was unpredictable.
0:30.0	I never expected it to be so popular around the world.
0:33.0	I thought it might be released outside Japan, but I didn't expect it to be a worldwide hit.
0:41.0	On the 27th of February 1996, Pocket Monsters Red and Pocket Monsters Green were released in Japan
0:47.0	on Nintendo's Game Boy console.
0:50.0	Led by creators Satoshi Tejiri's childhood hobby of collecting insects, players were tasked
0:55.0	with collecting a variety of creatures, training them, and then do battle against other trainers.
1:00.0	These creatures were called Pocket Monsters.
1:03.0	Over time, the words Pocket and Monsters were combined to what we refer to them today as Pokemon.
1:10.0	But in those early days, the project went by a different name.
1:21.0	The first time I heard about Pokemon was when I was working for Game Freak.
1:28.0	The president of the company showed me a presentation that he made for the games.
1:32.0	At the time, it wasn't called Pocket Monsters. It was called Capture Monsters.
1:37.0	The first time I saw it, I thought, wow, this is going to sell a lot of copies.
1:41.0	I thought this because the players needed two Game Boy consoles and a link cable
1:46.0	to exchange the monsters with their friends. So I thought, it's going to make a lot of money.
1:53.0	The Game Boy had been out for a while by now though, haven't it?
	...

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