If you look at the Pokemon franchise and where it started on the original Game Boy, and then fast forward to where we are right now with Gen IX, you’ll see all sorts of differences and “evolutions” that the series has undergone over the years. Just starting with the graphics, the Pokemon themselves have never been more beautiful or more animated. They’ve even gone above and beyond with music to ensure that the themes ring out no matter what region you’re in or battle you’re doing. However, there have been times when The Pokemon Company accidentally had to think fast to cover some problems it didn’t think of.
This revelation comes from, Nob Ogasawara, who was a translator on the franchise for The Pokemon Company for several of the RPGs generations. On Twitter, he made a post that noted that when Gen II came around, and specifically Pokemon Crystal, a key question posed a key problem for the game’s text. That question was: Are you a boy? Or are you a girl?” Nob noted that the question was important at the time because it was the first generation to allow the player to use and control a male or female trainer. Furthermore, it highlighted Nintendo’s desire to push for the female gamer market, which is a huge part of today’s gaming space.
However, for Nob, the problem was that if the player had a gender, that meant that certain conversations had to reflect that gender. Thus, he had to get clever:
Yep, but not using gender-stating terms, he could get around trying to program conversations to reference the male or female character the player chose specifically. It’s a clever workaround, and Nob himself admitted it’s not likely something that people ever thought of, given that it doesn’t present itself as an issue.
One can only wonder how many other issues like this happened within The Pokemon Company as they tried to grow the games even further. Of course, for Gen IX, we know all about the issues that they had when expanding the title to a fully open world space. The titles for that generation are heavily hampered with bugs that continue to this day, and even through the DLC!
Many hope that the publisher gets its act together for Gen X, which is all but guaranteed at this point. There’s a difference between having an “issue with an easy fix” and “launching games with issues that won’t be fixed anytime soon.”
