Pokemonfans enjoy the franchise for a multitude of reasons. Some love to collect every Pokemon available in a given game, filling out their PC boxes and their Pokedex until every creature from their starter to the legendaries are in their collection. Others, simply love the lore andstorytelling provided in thePokemongames, especially when the series focuses on the narrative as a priority or incorporates the catching and collecting as part of the story, as seen in titles likePokemon Black & WhiteandPokemon Legends: Arceus.
However, something that the majority ofPokemonfans would not enjoy if taken away from the franchise is the battling. With the moral concerns around training two magical animals to fight each other until one of them is unconscious aside, creating a team of strong Pokemon and have them work all the way up to face the Champion of a region is one of the most fulfilling aspects of a mainlinePokemontitle. Something that can top that thrill, is when aPokemonplayer challenges their friends to a battle, to truly test their team against a non-AI opponent.
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According to a recently dug-up interview from the late 1990s, it seems thatPokemon RedandBluealmost didn’t allow for the ultimate test of player versus player battling. Game Freak Producer Shigeki Morimoto was concerned that battling with friends would be a difficult thing to program in the earlyPokemontitles, and “personally didn’t find the idea very interesting.” With interest low at Game Freak, Nintendo stepped in to ensure thatPokemonwould have multiplayer battles, as this was something the company wanted in the game. Considering how multiplayer andcompetitivePokemonhas evolvedsince the franchise first started, it seems a strange idea that multiplayer battles could have been removed entirely.
It is likely thatPokemonmultiplayer would have found its way into the games at some point, due to how bothPokemonand the games industry has changed since the late 1990s. However, it could have also been the case that battles between Pokemon could have been entirely different in a single player capacity too. Game Freak initially wantedPokemon RedandBlue’sbattles to consist of no player input, something else that Nintendo stepped in to change. While fans have always decided how their Pokemon battle, over the years there have been changes to the way the traditional battling formula works.Pokemon SunandMoonsaw no traditional gym battles, for instance. InScarletandVioletsome fans are hoping that this feature will return.
Even withPokemon RedandBlueincluding both battles and multiplayer, the original titles are still different in many ways from the games fans play today. WithNintendo Switch Online planning a Game Boy emulator, perhaps fans will soon be able to experience those originalPokemongames for themselves.
Pokemon ScarletandVioletare set to release on July 09, 2025 for Nintendo Switch.
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