Pokémon Red and Blue Versions

Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Blue Version were the first Pokémon games to be released outside of Japan, becoming available in North America on September 28, 1998, in Australia and New Zealand on October 23, 1998 and in Europe on October 5, 1999. In North America, the pair closely followed the debut of the 's English dub, which began airing on September 8, 1998, and within a year, Pokémon was well known as a popular Nintendo franchise.

On November 12, 2015, a Nintendo Direct announced that the Red and Blue games will be released in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand on February 27, 2016, the Pokémon 20th Anniversary, for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console.

Unlike later generations, Red and Blue were not the same as their corresponding Japanese releases. Besides Pokémon distribution, the aspects of Red and Blue such as graphics, script, and sprite designs are instead based on.

Despite being released towards the end of Game Boy's lifespan, they quickly became the best-selling non-bundled games released for the Game Boy as well as being the best-selling s of all time.

Plot
Illustrating the original Pokémon gameplay concepts, the player begins his game in Pallet Town, a small town in the Kanto region, on the same day as his former best friend and now. Professor Oak calls the player to his laboratory, and allows the player to choose from the three Kanto starter Pokémon: the, the  , or the. After the rival displays jealously, he chooses the starter that has a type advantage against the player's chosen starter and challenges the player to a preliminary battle. Afterwards, the player leaves for his journey across the region, challenging 8 Gym Leaders and other s until he reaches the ultimate goal: the Pokémon League at the Indigo Plateau.

Along the way, the player will meet up with his rival several times and have multiple run-ins with the insidious Team Rocket, a criminal group that seeks to use Pokémon for their own gain. The player will ultimately find out that the boss of this evil group, Giovanni, is actually the final Gym Leader in the game.

At the end of the game, the player will have a battle against the Champion,, after beating the Elite Four.

After the credits, the player will gain access to Cerulean Cave in Cerulean City and be able to battle strong Pokémon. The player will be able to battle and capture the strong legendary Pokémon.

Blurb
You've finally been granted your Pokémon Trainer's license. Now, it's time to head out to become the world's greatest Pokémon Trainer. It's going to take all you've got to collect in this enormous world. Catch and train monsters like the shockingly-cute. Face off against 's torrential water cannons. Stand strong when facing 's stormy. Trade with friends and watch your Pokémon evolve. Important—no single Pokémon can win at all. Can you develop the ultimate Pokémon strategy to defeat the eight Gym Leaders and become the greatest Pokémon Master of all time?

Connectivity
Players may trade Pokémon between two cartridges or battle with another cartridge using a Game Boy Game Link Cable. To take full advantage of this feature, several Pokémon are exclusive to each game of the pair and others require trading to evolve, making trading necessary to complete the Pokédex. The games can trade and battle with Western versions of Red, Blue, and. They can also trade with Western versions of via the Time Capsule. Red and Blue are completely incompatible with games from Generation III onward.

Trades between Pokémon games in different languages are possible; however, a Japanese game cannot connect with a non-Japanese game without causing corruption. This is due to the fact that the games cannot automatically translate the Pokémon data from Japanese to a different language or vice versa, since neither game fully encodes both and the  (only encoding one fully and the other partially). If a battle between a Japanese game and a non-Japanese game is attempted, the battle simply does not work, with the save files left unharmed.

Red and Blue are compatible with 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 and. While link battles are not possible directly between Pokémon Red and Blue and the Generation II games, a player may challenge a Generation II game using Pokémon Stadium 2.

Virtual Console
The Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console releases use 3DS wireless communication as a substitute for the Game Link Cable. Japanese and non-Japanese Generation I core series games do not recognize each other when attempting to link them via 3DS wireless communication.

Using Poké Transporter, the entirety of Box 1 can be sent from the Generation I core series games to Pokémon Bank (regardless of language), from where they can be withdrawn in the Generation VII core series games.

Gyms
Players are introduced to the first eight Pokémon Gyms of the series, each with their own type affiliation, led by Brock (Rock), Misty (Water), Lt. Surge (Electric), Erika (Grass), Koga (Poison), Sabrina (Psychic), Blaine (Fire) and Giovanni (Ground).

Elite Four
The Elite Four of Kanto are a step above the rest, all located at Indigo Plateau and ready to take on all challengers. In order, they are Lorelei (Ice), Bruno (Fighting), Agatha (Ghost) and Lance (Dragon). The final battle is against the Pokémon Champion,, who does not have a type specialization.

Pokémon
Each game contains pre-recorded data on 151 different species of Pokémon, including, a Pokémon unavailable to players of either game under normal conditions. Despite this, not all Pokémon are available to the player, regardless of version; trades must occur between players in order to complete their Pokédex without the use of cheats or glitches. Mew is the only Pokémon in these games that must be acquired through attending either a Nintendo sponsored event, a glitch, or cheating.

Game exclusives
The following Pokémon are only obtainable in one game of this pair. In order to obtain Pokémon exclusive to the other game of this pair, they must be traded either from that game or from another compatible game of Generation I or Generation II which has that Pokémon available. {| style="margin:auto" {| class="roundy" style="background:#; border:5px solid #" ! Blue


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Differences in the Virtual Console release
The Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console releases can link with other Virtual Console Generation I and II core series games via Nintendo 3DS wireless communication, simulating the Game Link Cable. When initiating a link, the Virtual Console menu on the touch screen replaces the Cable Club attendant's dialogue.

Using Poké Transporter, Pokémon can be sent from the Generation I core series games to Pokémon Bank, from which they can be withdrawn in the Generation VII core series games.

The moves, , , , , , , , , , , , , , and had their animations changed slightly to tone down the flashing.

Development

 * ''This section is about general development info. For development leftovers and unused content, see Pokémon Red and Green beta.

Female player character
There were originally plans for a female protagonist as suggested by the artwork on the cover of the official guidebook for and. from Pokémon Adventures seems to be based on her. The was redesigned and included in the  of the games, to continue the standard of including a female protagonist.

No Mew present
According to the interview by Satoru Iwata with Tsunekazu Ishihara and Shigeki Morimoto about the release of, localized as Iwata Asks, they admitted that after the tools were removed, they added  in the remaining space on the. Nintendo thought that this would have been risky because altering the internal data after completing the testing period meant that any new and/or es created by adding data without referring to debugging tools would have been much harder to fix. Standard practices usually discourage altering the  and not testing it just before releasing the  to the customer.

Poké Balls
Some concept art depicts Poké Balls on the ground, in two pieces. This is most likely just a carryover from when Pokémon was still the concept of Capsule Monsters. Strangely, the original Poké Ball sprites from lack the button in the center of the Poké Ball.

Rebattling Trainers
In an interview with Shōko Nakagawa in her book Shōko Nakagawa: Pokémon Taught Me The Meaning of Life, Tsunekazu Ishihara revealed that originally, the game was programmed to trigger a battle with each Trainer any time the player walked by them, even if the player had already defeated them in battle previously. The wild Pokémon encounter rate was also significantly higher originally. The Trainer rebattling was omitted from the final release and the wild Pokémon encounter rate was significantly reduced.

Concept art
During a gaming exhibition called , early concept art of by Ken Sugimori was featured, along with pre-release material from. The concept art depicts rough versions of various concepts that made it into the final releases of the Generation I games. They seem to include various s, the, riding on a , a , Celadon City, Silph Co., and a town with a fountain which could have been reworked into Celadon City. Some other are identifiable in a raw or semi-normal form, such as, and others are prototypical of an entire class of Pokémon, such as a basic.

GameCenter CX
A Japan-exclusive special Pokémon episode of , known as Retro Game Master outside of Japan, included an interview with Satoshi Tajiri, where he revealed early character profiles of,  and. Notably, they are given a National Pokédex number which matches their internal index number, rather than their final Kanto Pokédex number. Nidoking, for instance, is noted as being #007, rather than #034, either suggesting that there was another method of ordering the Pokémon proposed, or that they reflect their ordering in the internal data. The latter is supported by interviews with Ken Sugimori, which verify that, which has an index number of 001, was the first Pokémon ever created, and early sketches from Capsule Monsters featuring Rhydon. Nidoking is also referred to as 「マイコー♂」 Maikō♂, indicating that there were either placeholders or alternate names for Pokémon before the development of had finished.

In addition to this, it was confirmed in an interview with Shigeki Morimoto that there were originally going to be 190 Pokémon in Generation I, indicating that the 39 MissingNo. found in the internal index are formatted Pokémon.

Sprites
Different front sprites of were planned for, notably the ones for , , ,  and. These were featured in the November 1996 issue of CoroCoro, which published general information about the game.

Pokémon names
During the promotional period that preceded the English release of both the and Pokémon Red and Blue, a large amount of  were shown with different names from those they had in the final releases. Some of these names were similar to their final names, but some were quite close to their Japanese names, and others were completely different from any current Pokémon name.

Text
Before the English releases of, screenshots were released of a with the  where the text string "The Blue wants to fight!" was used. While this text would work with a typical, such as "The Lass wants to fight!" or "The Hiker wants to fight!", as they were not given personal names until Generation II, it would cause problems with Gym Leader, Elite Four, rival, and link battles, causing them to read "The Misty wants to fight!" or "The Lance wants to fight!", as these Trainers did not at the time have titles, only their names. Because of this, the The was dropped in the final releases, leading to the somewhat odd sentence style in Generations I and  of:
 * "{Trainer's class or name} wants to fight!"
 * "{Trainer's class and name} wants to battle!"

A screenshot in the instruction manual and player's guide of English Red and Blue still contains the text "The Brock wants to fight!", possibly suggesting a late removal. The instruction manual also mentions Pokémon Leaders instead of Gym Leaders.

A slightly different grammar was also going to be used for other text strings.


 * "{Player} sent {Pokémon} out!" instead of "{Player} sent out {Pokémon}!"
 * "A wild {Pokémon} appeared!" became just "Wild {Pokémon} appeared!" (this change would be reverted in, where it has been kept since then)
 * Similarly, "The enemy {Pokémon} fainted!" became simply "Enemy {Pokémon} fainted!" (also reverted in Diamond and Pearl as the The was reinstated)

On page 31 of  for, a different text string for using on a tree in the overworld was used. It reads "Oddish Cut down a bush!", being used in a screenshot when cutting down the tree next to the Vermilion City Gym. The fact that Cut can also be used to destroy areas of tall grass may have been the reason for the change to "{Pokémon} hacked away with Cut!" in the final releases.

has tileset data for Green</sc>. lacks any equivalent data for Red</sc>, however.

Reception
The games received positive reviews from the press, receiving a perfect 10/10 "Masterful" rating from IGN. The games received an average score of about 89% on GameRankings, the second highest on the site for a core series Pokémon game, and the 3rd and 4th best score for a Game Boy title.

Criticism
While bringing Pokémon to international fame and continuing the legacy of the Japanese Red and Green, Pokémon Red and Blue have been met with much criticism, especially compared to more recent releases in the series. Aside from the number of glitches present in the games, many Pokémon look very little like their appearance in the, which premiered nearly simultaneous with the games' North American release, or later games, which improved on several other aspects as well as the graphics.

The two games are also notorious for their several drastic glitches, among them the fabled MissingNo., Glitch City, and the Mew glitch. Despite this, the glitches are arguably minimal points of criticism due to the reward value that comes from their activation, such as the multiplication of a player's sixth item that happens when MissingNo. is encountered.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack release for also applies to Pokémon Red and Blue.

Trivia

 * The American staff in charge of localizing the games tried to change the designs; however, Tsunekazu Ishihara refused the proposal.
 * The blurb on the back of the boxes states that 139 different can be obtained in each game without trading. This, however, includes all Pokémon that the player must choose between (i.e., both the  and  families are counted). Therefore, the true total of different Pokémon obtainable in one adventure without trading is 124, which excludes the two unchosen starter families, one Fossil family, two Eeveelutions, one of Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan, and the four Pokémon that only evolve when traded.
 * This obtainable is based on the Caught status in the Pokédex. However, if one of each Pokémon is counted to be on your Box, this will further go down to 120. This excludes the first two stages of the starter Pokémon you chose, the first stage of the Fossil family, and Eevee.
 * According to the Pokémon Pokédex Collector's Edition (Prima's Official Pokémon Guide), Red and Blue were developed by a team of nine members.
 * Prior to the Virtual Console release announcement, Pokémon.com listed Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow with a PEGI rating of 3.
 * Because Pokémon Red and Blue use a translation of the script of but use the in-game trades from, two translation errors related to these trades occur.
 * The man who trades the undefined an on Cinnabar Island claims that the  he received "went and evolved". As Raichu does not have an evolved form, this is not possible. In the context of Japanese Pokémon Blue, it makes sense as the player trades away a, which evolves through trade, for a.
 * The old man who trades the player a in Cerulean City claims that the  he received "went and evolved". As Poliwhirl cannot evolve via trade in Generation I, this is not possible. In the context of Japanese Pokémon Blue, the old man trades away a  for a, which does evolve through trade.
 * An error made during development causes the depicted during Professor Oak's introductory lecture to be a  but with the cry of a . This error was inherited from the Japanese Red, Green, and Blue games.
 * The boxarts for Pokémon Red, and Pokémon Silver are the only three instances where the English Pokémon logo is shown partially covered by some element (in this case, Charizard's head).
 * In the Canadian French manual for Pokémon Blue, Pokémon is often misspelled as "Pokémons".
 * Several official sources, such as Pokémon.com and Iwata Asks interview, incorrectly state that these games were released in Europe on June 10, 1999. This error appears to have come from the confusion of American and European date formats (the game was released in different parts of Europe on different days from October 5 to 8).