Pokémon’s Creators Look Back On The Series As It Turns 20

The Pokémon Company continues to celebrate the 20th-anniversary of the franchise, releasing two videos with developers who’ve been there since its inception.

In the first video game director Junichi Masuda, who initially worked as a sound designer and programmer, discusses his time with the pocket monsters. He reveals that the original games – Blue and Red – took around six years to develop and he broke several computers during that time.

The second video features Tsunekazu Ishihara, The Pokémon Company’s president and CEO, who acted as a producer on the original games. You can watch both below.

As part of the 20th-anniversary celebrations, The Pokémon Company is currently offering a free Mew download at GameStop stores and will be releasing Virtual Console versions of Pokémon Blue, Red, and Yellow on February 27th. Pokémon Green will also be released in Japan, where physical copies of the games will be available in addition to digital versions. In North America, a New 3DS bundle containing Red and Blue will launch while European players can choose from three themed 2DS systems based on Blue, Red, and Yellow.

The first ever Pokémon Super Bowl commercial will also air on February 7th but you can watch it online right now.

While nothing has been announced as of yet but hopefully GameFreak and The Pokémon Company will announce new major installments in the game for release on 3DS in 2016. Pokken Tournament has been confirmed for Wii U this year while mobile spin-off Pokémon Go will also be released.

It was recently revealed that the late Satoru Iwata, the former Nintendo CEO and president, was instrumental in ensuring the release of the original Pokémon games in the West. Iwata also made it possible to double the space available on Pokémon Gold and Silver cartridges to include the Kanto region from Blue, Red, Yellow, and Green.