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The original Pokémon games, Red and Green, were released for the Game Boy in Japan well ahead of ever coming to the West. By the time they did, reaching the US in 1998 and Europe the year after, Green had been swapped for Blue, issued in Japan in October '96. While they were almost identical, the differences between Green and Blue were mainly based around the Pokémon creatures exclusive to each version. Players would need to trade each other, using the Game Boy's Game Link Cable, in order to complete the Pokédex, an in-game encyclopedia of all 151 of the critters.The charming tale behind the Pokémon concept stems from game director Tajiri's childhood, which he spent collecting bugs in the woods. When arcades began to surround his bucolic hiding spots, he aimed to reconcile his love of nature with his love of gaming, and that's when his then-fanzine, Game Freak, would start its Pokémon journey.Offering personalized, collaborative gaming and a sense of friendship, Pokémon was social media before social media.
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That said, Pokémon's attractive sharing side, its sunny everyman charm, only holds up if you don't buy into the unsettling urban legends attached to the game. If there's one thing a fanbase loves, it's fiction and theories, and Pokémon has been subject to countless amounts of speculation over the years. Grown-up fans try to find grown-up themes in their childhood games, and, boy, do they find them. It's been speculated that the game subtly takes place in a post-war setting, and there's the much-repeated myth that the infamous Lavender Town music has driven Japanese children to suicide.
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But even as far back as the original lifespan of Red and Blue, fans' excitability expanded the boundaries of the humble, monochrome, 8bit land into vast realms of feverous legend, far beyond the fabled grass at the side of Pallet Town. Childlike wonderment also created tales of hidden "PokéGods" like Mewthree and Pikablu, and these were largely circulated by amateur Web 1.0 sites, the glittery animated .gif backgrounds of which will forever remain burned into the retinas of early players.However, the real glitches and Easter eggs certainly helped perpetuate these playground stories. A mysterious truck parked by the SS Anne—which took some effort to reach—was the only sprite of its kind in the game and led to whispers of the elusive Mew hiding underneath, as though living up to its feline appearance. Then there was MissingNo., a jumbled mess of pixels that was created to serve as an error handler but would appear as a wild Pokémon when exploiting the games' mechanics. The effect of this anthropomorphized piece of coding's effect on the fertile, suggestible minds of fans was so profound that its alien presence was accepted in the canon, and it subsequently found itself the subject of academic studies.But on that note of nostalgic fascination comes a harsh reality. Hype and sales of the recent 20th anniversary eShop ports will almost exclusively come from rose-tinted, decades-old fondness. Looking back, Red and Blue are clunky anachronisms riddled with broken mechanics and dodgy sprite artwork—Pidgeot was a winged head, and what the fuck was up with Moltres? They might serve as a sobering history lesson in the eyes of today's young players who have come to expect the comparative glitz of the DS family, but the dated aesthetics could render them unplayable in the eyes of a new generation.Looking back, Red and Blue are clunky anachronisms. Their dated aesthetics could render them unplayable in the eyes of a new generation.
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Pokémon Red, Blue, and the Pikachu-starring Yellow are available now for the 3DS, via the Nintendo eShop.Follow Andy on Twitter.