Original “Pokemon” Games Were Almost Lost

Development Was Plagued By Computer Problems

By Bryan Smith on February 4, 2016 at 1:13pm

Taking to the Official Pokemon Channel on YouTube, Junichi Masuda of Game Freak discussed how the team almost lost all the data and game content for "Pokemon Red and Green" years ago when they first debuted.

To be clear, "Pokemon Red/Green" were the original original (as in the Japanese versions). The West got "Pokemon Red/Blue" instead. Masuda had worked as a programmer when the first games were being worked on. He would also fix the computers, as they would overheat and breakdown. If it wasn't for Masuda and the others working to fix the computers, the games would have been lost.

"Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow" are being re-released on the Virtual Console for the Nintendo 3DS on February 27, 2016 in celebration of twenty years of "Pokemon."