The Pokémon franchise has undergone so many transformations since Red and Green (Red and Blue here in the States) launched in 1996 that these inaugural Game Boy games now feel almost like a period piece. The 8-bit visuals and somewhat archaic mechanics date the original games, but what is most fascinating about revisiting them 30 years later is being reminded that the world of Pokémon has evolved just as much as any catchable critter does over the course of a playthrough.
Those original Game Boy games feel retro nowadays not just in their pixel art graphics and chiptune sounds, but in the way that the world within the games feels like it’s in a different, earlier era than it is in modern games like Legends: Z-A or Scarlet and Violet. As video games have become more advanced, the Pokémon universe has developed along with it. The Kanto region of Blue and Red is somewhat technologically advanced with its tiny Poké Ball gizmos capturing even massive monsters in machines, but by and large, this is the most grounded Pokémon has ever felt, and likely will ever feel again.
A simpler time with simpler struggles
The Pokédex you fill out with new data as you catch Pokémon hasn’t become a Rotom-possessed phone yet. The sluggish HM mechanic that requires you to teach Pokémon on your team traversal moves hasn’t been phased out in favor of simply riding monsters across large distances. And even the legendary creatures you find in the corners of its world don’t quite feel larger than life yet. It was a simpler time, one that was likely designed without any notion that it would persist for 30 years, expanding beyond a few freak experiments and urban legends into a world with a cosmic design at its center.
Playing Pokémon Red, or any variation of those first-generation games, feels like opening a history text book and learning about how rough it was in the old days for those who set out on their Pokémon journey in the backseat of their parents’ car with the overhead lights on trying to angle their Game Boy just right. For some of us who grew up in that era, it’s an unsettling reminder that our past has become history, and only with time and by experiencing change firsthand can we learn just how much better we’ve got it now. Yeah, you can remake these games multiple times and let players journey through Kanto with a run button and colorful sprites, but there is a history here that even FireRed and LeafGreen can’t capture by putting players back in Pallet Town on a Game Boy Advance.
Unchanged by the decades of Pokémania that would follow, Red and Blue’s unassuming nature means the world it offers up feels more mysterious, unknowable, and rewarding to uncover. In revisiting this game for the first time in over a decade, I decided to avoid checking databases like Serebii or Bulbapedia and just feel my way through it based on memory and vibes. I knew I needed to find a Pikachu in Viridian Forest before I headed out to win my eight gym badges, defeat the villainous Team Rocket, and become a regional champion, but beyond that, I tried to approach the game like I was playing it for the first time with no expectations or party-building goals, trying to recapture that same sense of discovery I felt in the ‘90s, though that’s easier said than done.
30 years later, Pokémon Red and Blue are immaculately designed games that are also burdened by years of iteration that make some of their more archaic parts insufferable to go back to. You can’t run through the small towns and metropolitan cities of Kanto like you can in Ruby and Sapphire, the party-wide experience shared across your whole team of six is divided into fractions rather than universally given to every monster on your belt, and HMs, while an interesting way to make Pokémon feel like they exist beyond the simple turn-based battles they partake in, weigh down a party with mostly junk attacks that can’t be replaced and that’ll only be used outside of fights to traverse the world.
As games have gotten better, so has the Pokémon world
Pokémon has a weird quirk where it likes to add quality-of-life updates diegetically, with new features or fixes like sprinting only arriving because your character is given Running Shoes in Ruby and Sapphire so they can do more than lightly jog through tall grass where wild Pokémon reside. The series isn’t merely building better games, it’s building a better, more efficient world with each new entry. The trade-off for these quality-of-life improvements is that some of the mystique has gone away as Game Freak has repeatedly pulled back the curtain and fans have made entire subcultures based around seeing what’s under the hood. Every mystery in the Pokémon universe has been documented in online databases, each attack interaction has been meticulously cataloged and rolled into the competitive meta, and there’s someone out there who’s learned how to manipulate stats and is ready to tell you why your favorite Pokémon isn’t viable in a hypothetical ranked match you’re not even signed up for.
To know Pokémon more deeply doesn’t mean to love it less, but I think most people who are nostalgic for old Pokémon games are less attached to the games themselves than the adventurous wonder they sparked inside of us at a younger age. Fairweather fans who stopped playing Pokémon decades ago beg for another Red and Blue remake like any adult pines for nostalgic media that beckons back to a time when the possibilities seemed endless. Even if Red and Blue are clunky by modern standards, its limitations gave you a lot of space to fill in as you journeyed through Kanto with your best friend by your side.
Over 30 years, Pokémon has gone from the adventures you share secrets about with your friends on the playground to a corporate multimedia juggernaut propping up major esports events worldwide, and people have made entire businesses out of selling (or stealing) merchandise and cards where that once sounded like a pipe dream, the kind of thing your parents might jokingly suggest when you got a holographic card. It’s a phenomenon that has spawned over a hundred games, plenty of copycats, and over one thousand monsters. And it all began with Red and Blue, games whose seemingly timeless longevity has led to decades of iteration that makes them pretty annoying to go back to.
Maybe you can’t go home again, but it’s important to remember where you came from. And even if there’s no turning back the clock, the foundations on which Game Freak and The Pokémon Company built an empire are still magical. Finding the Pokémon you’ve been looking for in random battles still feels special, and seeing them grow and overcome some of the toughest fights evokes feelings of pride in your furry friend and yourself for having overcome those challenges. As frustrating as HMs are, the mental image of my Raichu lighting up a dark cave with Flash as we try to find the exit makes him feel like more than just stats and a movepool for battles. Though future games would add more personalization, customization, and the ability to have your Pokémon follow you around the overworld, even in those original RPGs, Game Freak already understood that fostering connection between player and Pokémon was the secret sauce that made its games exceptional.
Pokémon Red and Blue are not the “peak” of the franchise as genwunners will have you believe, but they’re also not obsolete games only worth revisiting for the people who grew up with them. Every brick Game Freak and The Pokémon Company placed in building a decades-long legacy was on top of those first trips to Kanto. The franchise owes its longevity to the magic of Red and Blue, and even if parts of the Pokémon world look nothing like it anymore, there’s a reason its fundamentals are still the basis of even the series’ most experimental entries 30 years later.
