Who at Game Freak truly understood Pokemon the most? The man who invented it, or the man who made it more than just a passing fad?
>>58414225Tajiri was the single momMasuda was the dad that raised it
>>58414225creators can fuck up their own work, so masuda
>>58414265You joke but this is unironically the sad, bitter truth.
>>58414393That wasn't a joke though
>>58414225Pokemon peaked with its second duology, which was the creation of Junichi Masuda. Even contemporary IPC opinion reflects this notion.
>>58414848Daily reminder that Hoenn is larger than GSC Johto and Kanto combined, so all the "you can't go back" seethe is unfounded.
>>58414848take me back to hoenn bros
>>58414848The sales point is one of the most disingenuous arguments I've ever seen.
>>58414961sorry you were too retarded to know about emulation in 2000 zoomie
>>58414981It had NO competition. Most of the best GBA games sold around or under a million.>Pokemon>Pokemon>Pokemon>What's widely regarded as the least significant/worst Mario Kart>A SMW port with horrible screencrunch>A port of a remaster that was on cart with three other remasters>A port of a remaster that was on cart with three other remasters>A collection of 20 year old arcade games>More Pac-Man>A worse version of Yoshi's Island>A worse version of ALTTP (a ten year old game)>A Pokemon spin-off>An offensively bad port of Super Mario Bros>An actually good fucking exclusive, albeit in a niche series>Another quality exclusive>Remake of an NES game>A fucking licensed game>DKC1 with worse music
>>58414848>Pokemon peaked with its second duologyBased Johtochad
>>58414225Sugimori, but even he eventually lost the plot and became a soulless corporate manager.
>>58415051While the DS had...>The first 2D Mario in nearly 15 1/2 years>A cultural phenomenon >Possibly the best Mario Kart game ever while also being the first to have online>A cultural phenomenon>Pokemon>Pokemon>The sequel to a cultural phenomenon >Pokemon>Huge Nintendo IP>Remake of one of the most important games ever created>Mario Party (which didn't even make the Top 30 for GBA)>Pokemon>Pokemon>First year game>New Dragon Quest>What's widely regarded as the best Pokemon spin-off ever>Brand new Zelda>A massively successful licensed game
>>58414884this
>>58415067>johtod is an esl that doesn't know what words meanunsurprising
>>58414848One thing you’ll notice about the first games of a new handheld during the Masuda era was the huge, quite literal generational leaps.The leap from GSC to RSE was phenomenal both gameplay-wise and visually. While more muted in comparison, RSE to DPPt was also another big leap in both departments that significantly improved the experience of the games. DPPt to XY was also an insane leap and applauded at the time.Masuda is a lot of things, but he’s certainly an ambitious man who pushed the franchise to new heights during his reign.
>>58415122This really puts it into perspective how much the DS fucking mogs the GBA in terms of exclusives and success. It's really like Nintendo wasn't really trying with the GBA. The fact this is like the only handheld where Pokemon doesn't dominate the top 3 spots is genuinely impressive
>>58415507you're conflating a sales chart with a quality chart
>>58414225>masuda>made it more than a passing fadMasuda sunk the franchise. The relevance of Pokemon declined every year it was under his reign. It faded from cultural memory. No one cared about it. The DS was Nintendo's most popular console ever and a fraction of is normalfag users even played any Pokemon games on it.Some of you are too young to remember it, but Pokemon during its beginning was unbelievably huge, and then it fell off of a cliff in gen 3. It almost seemed overnight. No one cared about it. There was some decline even in gen 2, but gen 2 was still huge. People even talked about the anime back then. But following gen 3, Pokemon stopped being a cultural phenomenon. That's why "genwunners" were a thing back then, because no one had played beyond that. It was only after Masuda was kicked did Pokemon resurface again. Hell, people even started talking about the anime again, with XY finale. Pokemon is everpresent in the modern world, it's everywhere, but it wasn't everywhere during Masuda years. Masuda MADE it a passing fad. It's getting rid of Masuda that saved Pokemon.
>>58415522Pretending there's not a correlation at all is absurd
>>58415522I'm not even conflating sales with quality on Pokemon's case since Pokemon was very consistent back then. I'm just saying the install base of the GBA/DS is so vastly different despite their similarities. Early on the DS was being treated as a "new pillar" which as we know now is Nintendo's code for "if it flops we'll go back to the old stuff but it's actually meant to replace a system"There is a significant importance to the DS outselling the GBA and being extremely relevant to influencing the success of DS Pokemon over the GBA era. I'm sure if the DS wasn't the success Nintendo wanted, Pokemon would be in a MUCH worse position than it is now (likely wouldn't have even made a 3D leap in the first place)
>>58415558Masuda is a bad game designer but the main reason Pokemon stayed relevant at all was because it kept pumping out content, regardless of the quality. Because the games were cheap to produce and the anime kept going long after it stopped being relevant, it was able to attach itself to the kids of its generation who would grow up to become massive gigafans that you see posting on these boards still obsessed with their childhood series because they got the chance to experience it grow from its lowest point into nowIt's unironically the same case that happened to Sonic, while the games got worse they never stopped making them and kids grew up with those games to become this generation's staunch defenders introducing the games and characters to their children and causing a much stronger brand cycle than passing fads. Compare to say, Transformers where after Gen 1 happened there was no real content for a few years until Beast Wars. The lack of consistency despite the lowering sales is what kills these IPsIf a fad doesn't tough out its dark ages then that's how it becomes a fad. If Pokemon wanted to have creative integrity, Tajiri should've finished his "ultimate Pokemon game" and fucked off from working with Nintendo. Instead Masuda took the reigns and turned a passion project into a franchise. Then when the passion project didn't need him anymore, it chewed him up and spit him out so it can run on autopilot. It needed someone like Masuda to stay alive in the first place, but that time is gone and Pokemon is genuinely too big to fail now. If Sonic can survive Sonic 06, Pokemon is not going away until the developers completely break down and stop
>>58415564One of the best GBA games I've ever played is a game you have literally never even heard of, let alone shows up on the best-seller list.
>>58415598>Masuda is a bad game designerthanks for letting me know off the jump that your essay isn't worthwhile
>>58415051>>58415122So why’d the GBA bomb (relatively)? Like the DS moved something like twice as many consoles, right?
>>58414225The man who invented it! Who would ever pick the man who made it into a passing fad?
>>58415612no gimmickGameboy 3
>>58415618Masuda games are so iconic that millions of millennials and early zoomers across the world recognize what picrel means and laugh with it.
>>58415607Masuda never directed any of the franchise's top selling games. It's genuinely contrarian to prefer his games over the top ones. Maybe if you're generous and include GS as a franchise's top hit, but imagine Masuda's breakout games being the only ones worthwhile because they just happened to be the direct sequels to the biggest game in the franchise and him still being responsible for producing games that would continue a sales decline until the franchise's console leap
>>58415639More like laugh at it because he turned Pokemon from a game about catching Pokemon into a mid ass RPG where you experience an on rails story that happens to let you sometimes catch Pokemon if he felt like including them at all
>>58415644>Masuda never directed any of the franchise's top selling games.because tajiri's abortion tanked all the momentum
>>58415558It fell off a cliff before Gen 3 was released.
>>58415649ridiculous delusionI wonder if you're saying this because Kanto gatekeeps content behind forcing you to catch Pokemon
>>58415601>let alone shows up on the best-seller list.Which I acknowledged >>58415051Pokemon had NO competition on that console for being the best seller, unlike every other platform it's been on which had other system sellers
>>58415558>There was some decline even in gen 2, but gen 2 was still huge.The decline was massive during gen 2. Movie ticket sales were cratering to the point where they started only showing in select theaters. All of the toys in the stores were getting thrown out and big merchandise deals stopped happening. Even the sales of the games show it with how, despite having the same install base as gen 1, sales fell by almost 8 million. Extremely disingenuous to pretend like it's somehow Masuda's fault when his job was to come in and plug the hole into the sinking ship.
>>58414225Even in gen 1, if you read Tajiri's autobiographical manga, Masuda was the one doing the heavy lifting and saving Tajiri's ass with programming when that wasn't even what he was meant to do
>>58415680no, what you're saying then is the system had no other blockbusters, which again is a sales/popularity argument
>>58415745Capricorns usually have to be the adults in the room.
>>58415706turns out real Pokemon fans didn't want fisher price shit after all
>>58414225Masuda. Look no further than the compositions he made for all of the entries and you'll notice the music for Pokemon games falls off a cliff after gen 6.
>>58415650>Tajiri's abortionMasuda's first game!>>58415706The anime pacing went to utter dogshit by Gen II and they canned the GS Ball story arc for another movie which hurt the integrity of the story. That did a lot more damage than the game delay because they needed to prep time for Hoenn to be finished instead of just ending the anime like they should've by that point. Similarly, the only reason we got Orange Islands was to pad out the delay for Masuda to finish up Johto. Shudo leaving Pokemon dealt significant more damage to the brand than Tajiri quitting game dev or Masuda's mediocre games since he was clearly the core of what made 90s Pokemon popular and having to deal with Yuyama's autism for the next decade degraded the brand's quality significantly while Masuda was still trying to get good at game designing for the games to take over as the core identity of the Pokemon brand, something that didn't happen until DP (2006) at the earliest or BW (2010) at the latestThere was no saving Pokemon from fad status when things ended up a screeching halt in the 2000s. Especially when they had to make the first Dexit and crunch in the 386 Pokemon into the code despite over 180 of the current Pokemon being completely inaccessible, which is why they rushed Kanto remakes in the first place. Only reason Masuda took over at all was because Tajiri missed his 1997 deadline with an unfinished game and Masuda thought it would be better to lower the scope significantly and replace half of the implemented mons with more cutesy mascot-like mons
>>58415746>no other blockbustersCorrect, which is why the entire section regarding sales in this shitty meme >>58414848is entirely disingenuous.
>>58414225Tajiri is an autistic ideas guy. He clearly just wanted to make his own little fantasy world. And he never would've made it real if it weren't for the rest of GF.Pokémon isn't what Tajiri imagined it to be anymore. He may have understood the "original" idea of Pokémon better - it was mostly his, after all. But it changed after gen 1 released and kept changing in later gens. Tajiri clearly lost all interest - either cause it changed, or just cause he wasn't interested anymore.So yeah, I think Masuda is the one who made Pokémon into the success it is today cause he understood the appeal. Tajiri just wanted to do his own thing.
>>58415773DMC2 was Itsuno's first game.
>>58415785there's nothing misleading about that sectionit would still have been #1 even with "competition" by your definition
>>58415887Which was also Itsuno trying to salvage a dumpster fire and the actual original director who did most of the game became a legitimate ghost. The difference is we have documents that show what Tajiri's Gen II looks like and more blatant wips for Masuda's Gen II. They're nothing alike in the slightest and Masuda's Gen II is infinitely closer to Hoenn/Sinnoh/Unova than what Tajiri was working on
>>58415904That shows you how terrible and unsalvageable Tajiri's Johto was. Was way too late to scrap everything and just design a good region (Hoenn) from the start though, so Johturd we got—could have been worse though, as shown by the Tajiri dev content.Even in GameFreak, nobody's favorite is Gen II / GSC. They'd all rather let it lay dormant and focus on other gens.
>>58414848I kneel hoenn, as always
>>58415936That's what they did though. Almost none of the maps from Tajiri's Gen II were carried over into Masuda's. The entirety Kanto was also recreated from scratch because the original Kanto in Tajiri's Gen II was just a city. The damn region wasn't even really called Johto, that was the name Masuda's team came up with to represent "Pokemon World" Kansai, which was designed the way it was after going on various trips researching Kansai for reference material and only was the chosen setting because it was a lower scope take of Tajiri's game and the closest region to irl KantoTajiri's content was all mostly unfinished it wasn't really irredeemable. Trying to gas up Hoenn is really sad when the only reason it exists at all was because Masuda used GSC as a reference. Hoenn shares so much DNA with Johto, just combined with Masuda's own nostalgia for Kyuushuu. Stop talking like a child
>>58415936Even with JOHTURD being a turd, it still ended being liked by a lot of people, so I'd say Masuda did a good job salvaging what could be salvaged.
>>58414225Who cares? Tajiri was a deadbeat who fucked off half way through Gen 2, and Masuda was a pedo who bailed out other pedos .
>>58415972>Hoenn shares so much DNA with Joht—
>>58415993Using a Sugimori quote is hilarious given how he actually thinks Masuda handled the franchise
>>58415998hating Masuda for BW/Unova is understandable
>>58415991Masuda sounds based, no wonder he could make so much good music with so many hookers and coke around him
>>58416008>90% of the dex is just 10-8/10 designsHow so? And to begin with he wasn't even the art director
>>58415991Stop peddling your fanfic, schizo
>>58414225Tajiri gave the template, Masuda fleshed it out.
It's always amusing how people act like this generation or that generation or the anime killed Pokemania, like Pokemania would've lasted forever otherwise or was ever going to survive Pokemon's target audience reaching the "ew kiddy stuff" stage of their lives. Not to mention that the Star Wars prequels started coming out and eating Pokemon's lunch in the cultural zeitgeist amongst kids. The anime could've become Shakespearian and Gen 2 could've sucked players' cocks clean off and it wouldn't have mattered because Pokemania's death was inevitable due to external circumstances no one behind Pokemon could've controlled.And besides, Pokemon kept being a great success after the fad ended, it just didn't dominate the culture to the total and utter extent it had before. Game Freak pretty clearly stuck the landing after Pokemania ended, but people act like since they never again reached the peak of a unique cultural phenonemon nobody's ever seen before or since that everything afterwards must be a failure. It's insane. It's the same kind of bizzare and utterly disconnected from reality mindset that leads to executives firing game devs for making a wildly successful game because it didn't make literally all the money, and I'll never understand it. Though, we know most people here talking about how a generation killed Pokemania are just shitposters using whatever they can for their incessant genwarring.
>>58415998Pretty ironic considering Sugimori is a slave to corporate PR concerns now.
>saving your own posts that pathetically got 1 replyYawnie isnt the smartest dog.
>>58416034Notably the fact we're even using the games as a reference point for what "killed" Pokemania is already a misnomer. Pokemania was helmed first and foremost by the anime. The games were an afterthought in the West, the anime did its job as a commercial to get people to buy the games and the feedback loop caused the significant power vacuum left by "what next?" to grow even larger once it was doneThe anime stuck the landing far worse than the games did, but Masuda making content at all was the real reason the franchise never truly went away. Again, Shudo leaving the anime staff did far more damage to Pokemon's brand than anything Game Freak did wrong. TPC forming was the first rift that rocked the boatIf say>Orange Islands didn't need to happen because Gen II came out in 1997>They ended the anime in Gen II and Ash got to catch Ho-Oh and retire an actual hero and not the zero he became by 2022>They could do a filler season of the new Gen II protag while Masuda still gets to make his Kyuushuu game set in 1989 to kickstart a "new generation" for the GBAThis still wouldn't really change much about Pokemon's current success, it just would mean people might look more fondly back on this era instead of this zoomer speak of "it killeded the Pokemania"
>posted it again award
>>58416034>It's always amusing how people act like this generation or that generation or the anime killed Pokemania, like Pokemania would've lasted forever otherwise or was ever going to survive Pokemon's target audience reaching the "ew kiddy stuff" stage of their lives.People also forget about the Nintendo VS Sony consolewars of the time, and when the PS2 released to huge fanfare, Nintendo was being railed HARD by teens (the ones who impressionable little shits look up to the most, and will therefore emulate in order to be seen as "cool") for being faggot baby shit, especially when their retort, the Gamecube, had such titles as Wind Waker (remember how awesome OoT and MM on N64 were? lol fuck those, Zelda is moeshit now) and Luigi's Mansion (Resident Evil for babies).It literally didn't matter if Gameboy was the only mainstream handheld on the market, you were a fucking LOSER if you still played that shit after the teens decreed and the kids chose to heed (and frankly, parents and teachers were relieved for it because it meant those little fuckers would be paying attention in class instead of sneaking in game minutes).
>>58414225Tajirino contest
>>58416060>>58416081KWAB
>>58414225Tajiri had a dream, and Masuda helped make sense of that dream, eventually, his dream became his, and in turn he molded that dream into many others. Eventually, Pokemon became everyone's dream, and satisfying that dream became a monumental task.
>>58416104Because Hoenn was a significant drop off point for the franchise's success. Back then it was to blame because it was just more of the same at the end of the day with nothing to really instigate or reignite the passion the first few years hadBut the truth is it's anime's fault. Yuyama keeping Ash passed his expiration date did more damage than Masuda's bad games
sad to see all these effortposts floating in a sea of low effort sharty trolling and samefagging
>>58415558>>58415558>if you add Yellow to RGB it becomes 45 million for Gen 1Jesus fuck, it truly was a phenomenon. When something blows up that huge to the point where normalfags are getting into it like Labubus, I just don't think it's ever realistic to think those numbers are sustainable barring a parallel increase in interest to the entire industry. It's even more notable since back then gaming was still a nerdy and niche hobby while now gaming is just a canon experience to growing up for most kids and no on would bat at eye at you in high school now if you mentioned your hobby is gaming.
>>58415773>replace half of the implemented mons with more cutesy mascot-like monsWas that the right move?Also didn't he cut most of the babies from Tajiri's Gen 2? Including some of the cuter more mascot-capable mons like Kotora who would've been very popular and if Mimikyu's success was an indication, so would Wolfman.
>>58415706>sales fell by almost 8 millionThere are simply more games in Gen 1 tier being compared to Gen 2. Look at it like this. Four titles in Gen 1, Red/Green/Blue/Yellow, and total combined sales are 46.02 million. That's about 11.5m per title. Gen 2 had 3 titles, Gold, Silver and Crystal, total sales are 30. That's 10m per title.Gen 3 had 5 titles, combined sales are 35.28. That's 7m per title. No one is going to sit here and deny that Pokemon was fading in gen 2. But it hadn't faded yet. Pokemania was at its peak in 1999. Gen 2 games released a year after that, in October 2000. There was a significant decline by then, but it wasn't a complete wash. There was still interest in gen 2. It's easier to understand it if you simply look at a single, smaller nation like Japan. Red and Green in Japan sold 8.2m titles. Gold and Silver sold 7.1m. Ruby and Sapphire sold 5.4m. The very first game Masuda directed, Crystal, is the lowest selling game in the franchise to this day, in both Japan and globally. That's Masuda in a nutshell.Pokemon series hovered at 5m sales per title in Japan for decades. Do you know what made it escape that? The post-Masuda era, starting with SM, and peaking at SV. SV in Japan was 8.6m. It surpassed the original Red/Green in sales. This is how you get out of the fad phase.
>>58416146Hell, most of them would probably look at you funny if you said you like gaming, but have no interest in becoming a gaming-centric content creator, and a content creator is what 95% of kids these days want to be when they grow up.
>>58415558Thats true but it was not games fault. It was lack of propper goods distribution.
>>58416165>Was that the right move?nope
>>58416165I figure it was since the cutesy mascot pivot was already done as early as Gen I. Getting Nishida on the team in the first place was their chance to diversify the design potential with cutemons which are a significant factor to Pokemon's success as a whole since merch sales are the big cornerstone of what make Pokemon a success in the first place. Every region has a handful of cutemons and they've been emphasizing them even more as of the 3D games. Trying to say cool mons are what sell Pokemon is blatantly false (other monster tamer series mog Pokemon in this regard). But at the same time they shit they've done to Pikachu lately has made it less appealing as a mascotAnd yeah a lot of Tajiri babies got cut too. Many got redesigned. That's just part of why it felt extremely arbitrary to completely redo shit from scratch. Even weirder was the anime debut mons like Togepi, Marill and Snubull were at the back of the dex meaning they were designed much later than many of the Tajiri era Gen II designs
>>58416195>We decided to make "cooler mons" again!>Gen III's stand out shillmon is a cutemon (Gardevoir)
>muh PokemaniaIs this autism? what propels someone to dictate the worth of a franchise purely on fad? Pokemon was the FOTY and that's what made Pokemania, Pokemon is no longer a FOTY, it's a permanent root on gaming, merchandise and even the world as a whole. Pokemania was ran by bandwagoners and Genwunners who never truly cared for Pokemon and ditched this fad when it was no longer the hip and cool thing of the time. Johto nor Hoenn are to blame for this fading with time.
>>58416195>>58416211No one would remember Groudon if it wasn't so cracked for competitive. No one would use it or think about it or buy its merch. I like coolmons and all, but let's not pretend they are somehow more popular.
>>58416167You're ignoring how much gaming has grown in just the past 5 years and how just how many more potential paying customer with an already vested interest in games there are now than there was pre-Switch. Playing video games is mainstream now and considering that "inflation" of potential playerbase, the Switch era games aren't anything special. Hell, Animal Crossing sold 48 million units due to the pandemic and it still doesn't have the more cultural relevance in America than Sonic the Hedgehog. If anything Pokemon should be selling gangbusters with their mainline games both on the main Nintendo console and in 3D. A shit game like BDSP where there aren't even defenders for it still sold 15 million because it was released in the Switch era, imagine how an actually competently made SWSH or SV would have sold.
>>58416165Most of the babies and pre-evos were axed, yes.Spaceworld '97 showed us that there was an absolutely fucking insane EIGHTEEN BABIES/PRE-EVOS in consideration at the time, ten more than the final number we received in reality.
>>58416211Beauty and Cuteness are two different conditions, toddy
>>58414225Ohmori. There, I've said it.
>>58416167>There are simply more games in Gen 1 tier being compared to Gen 2lmfao sure in Japan only. Counting their Blue version as a whole game just to make things look more proportionally even for gen 2 is pathetic.>Pokemon series hovered at 5m sales per title in Japan for decades. Do you know what made it escape that? The post-Masuda era, starting with SM, and peaking at SV. SV in Japan was 8.6m. It surpassed the original Red/Green in sales. This is how you get out of the fad phase.So 5 million is a fad but 8 million isn't?Explain what your metric for fad sales is here, because even 5 million is still enormous by Japanese standards. Is 6 million not a fad? How about 7? What are you basing this off of? Pokemon sales relative to each other, or to anything else in the Japanese market? Think about what you're saying for even a second and you'll realize that arguing that the series was ever a fad in Japan of all countries is the most idiotic argument you could make.
>>58416237DS is the console with the highest number of Pokemon game releases. I don't think potential customer base is that much larger now for Nintendo specifically. In general, there might be more gamers now(though I have my doubts about that premise), but that's just in general, mostly with PC gaming.Animal Crossing can't have much of a cultural relevance because it's just a single game that got popular and hasn't done anything to sustain it. Sonic was going all in, it was Saga's THE cash cow, yearly game releases, comics, cartoons, everything. Animal Crossing isn't a franchise suited for that.>A shit game like BDSP where there aren't even defenders for it still sold 15 million because it was released in the Switch eraThis is true but isn't that just further proof of Pokemon's growing popularity? That shitstain would not sell that much on DS. With a higher or at least comparable customer base. Pokemon is growing again.
>>58416232except Kantykes still love Kantooo, coper
>>58416233Groudon and Kyogre are phenomenal cover legends though. Picking Aztec culture to make gods out of them was a great idea and way better than whatever came from Lugia and Ho-oh.
>>58415773>>58416165Didn't Tyranitar only get included in Gen 2 after Masuda took over? Same with Typhlosion and Feraligatr lines replacing the less cool Tajiri starters. If anything, didn't Gen 2 get more coolmons after Masuda took over?
>>58416279>Explain what your metric for fad sales is here, because even 5 million is still enormous by Japanese standards.Well, yeah. This is still one of the best releases ever in gaming history. We're only talking in relative terms here, compared to the original games and their current point. Like at no point was Pokemon so bad that it would be considered anything close to a failure. At all points in its history it's been a massive success. No one would call it a fad, it's only being called that because that's OP's premise. The relatively less popular era is the "fad." It's not a good label.
>>58416282Despite being the most scalped set in Pokemon TCGs history there are still niggers like this that don't know how many Kanto Pokemon exist
>>58416297>Didn't Tyranitar only get included in Gen 2 after Masuda took over?No. Masuda took over with Crystal. He had nothing to do with Tyranitar.You're being a bit autistic if you think Tajiri hates coolmons or something. Gen 1, Tajiri's generation, is the single most monstrous looking one to this day.
>>58414225Taijiri laid the strong foundation. Foundation which was slowly eroded over time by Masuda, but endured long enough to still make great games. Anyone can make a pokemon game, what matter is who best captures the original vision.
>>58416306People are looking at the whole situation all too wrong. It's not Tajiri who despises coolmons, it's the rest of GameFreak, who were in pure corporate greed mode during the development of Pokemon Gold due to the breakout success of the franchise in Japan after kids proved they were extremely receptive to it turning into a multimedia machine and saw the commonality of Japanese girls being enamored with the likes of Pikachu, Clefairy and Jigglypuff.The news of Pokemania and the idea of American coolness were probably the only reason they scrapped some of the moeturds and brought in some attempts at actual monsters, because they wanted to have their cake and eat it too regarding both big markets that were enraptured by Pokemon.
>>58416306Wrong. Masuda took over GS in mid-1998 after Tajiri crashed out when he missed the March 1998 release date. Everything from mid-1998 onward is under Masuda's directorship, including scrapping the Tajiri's Japan region and creating the Johto region in its place, the scrapping of most babymons, the replacement of the Fire and Water starters, and Tyranitar's addition to the roster.>You're being a bit autistic if you think Tajiri hates coolmons or somethingBitch I did not even imply that. Just that Masuda's Gen 2 dex has more coolmons than Tajiri's Gen 2 dex as a result of cutting most of the babies from Tajiri's Gen 2 dex.
>>58416393>Wrong. Masuda took over GS in mid-1998 after Tajiri crashed out when he missed the March 1998 release dateAccording to what? The leaks made it very clear that this wasn't the case. >Red/Green to Gold Silver era>A time of utter chaos.>No matter who I ask or what I ask about, I still can't figure out who created what.>But to summarize what little I can piece together:>Ultimately, it was the president making the games.>Morimoto, Oota(Karate King), Nishino and Watanabe were the main contributors.>Masuda and Sugimori were mainly working on side projects(Pulseman).>Masuda only started working as a director with Crystal.
>>58416120That is true but it applies to Johto, the Johto anime is where most people's interest in it started to wane as most of the episodes were just boring samey "filler" and the "special" episodes (gym matches etc) weren't anything special at all.
>>58416404>According to what?the old leaks
>>58416436I'm sure you can quote them, then.
>>58416034Don't bother, I said something similar in another thread. There will always be people who don't understand that no matter what, Pokemania was going to die.It's like saying the movie that came out after Endgame sealed Marvel's fate. Or like the movie that came out after Frozen spelled Disney's downfall.Yet there are people who continue to believe that declining sales mean the franchise's decline in quality
>>58415612It didn’t bomb per se but the DS was a massive fad in comparison because it was marketed as both higher end gaming handheld (remember it came out in 04 and ran concurrently with the GBA) and also a virtual ‘accessory’ for people who didn’t normally buy games that we saw the wii later lean into (think series like nintendogs and brain age - fun fact the Professor Layton series was developed to capture this demographic). It was very much ahead of its time and captured 2 separate demographics, the GBA was just what it purported itself to be - newer gameboy.
>>58415896If it had to compete with with that DS had in its library? Absolutely not lmao
>>58417638
>>58416393>crashed outKill yourself holy fuck
>>58417732You sound mad.
>>58414225I don't think anyone at Game Freak truly understands Pokemon. They pretty much just won the lottery instead of earning their success and it shows.Masuda was probably the closest to getting it, but he was too egotistical and became too obsessed with trying to appease critics instead ot just making the games (the same trap that Sega and Sonic Team have fallen into with Sonic).
>>58416034>a unique cultural phenonemon nobody's ever seen before or sinceHarry Potter was comparable and pretty much was the new Pokemania that replaced the actual one. Dragon Ball was up there too. So was Yu-Gi-Oh, which is where most of the Pokemon fans that were put off by Johto moved to.It just doesn't happen anymore in today's world because social media broke down the monoculture and fucked society's attention span beyond repair.
>>58416120>Because Hoenn was a significant drop off point for the franchise's success.Only as a direct result of everything Johto did to lose fans. Yes, Pokemania was never going to last forever, but Johto made the fallout so much worse than it could have been with its rehashed games, boring anime and flop movies.>it was just more of the same at the end of the dayThat applies way more to Johto than it does to Hoenn. Trying to shove Kanto into gen 2 was the dumbest thing they ever did, not only because of how badly it fucked the development process, but also because it made the new region and Pokemon feel like afterthoughts and gave the impression that the franchise was resting on its laurels and selling the same old shit instead of doing anything new.Remember when they tried to do a Johto-inspired town in USUM and it ended up with a Kantonian gym and a copy-paste of Nugget Bridge from Kanto? That's Johto's only legacy: existing next to Kanto.
>>58418855My post wasn't even talking about the fucking games. In fact you trying to separate the movies from the anime to make Johto look worse is pointless. It's obvious you're working from your conclusion backwards so I don't know why you think arguing the way you do is going to work
>>58416034>But people act like since they never again reached the peak of a unique cultural phenonemonLiterally Pokemon GOI was a kid for the heart of Pokemania, it left a permanent rewiring of brain neurons in its wake, and even I can admit GO's launch got right up there with it.
>>58415472Really when you get down to it, the meaningful multiplayer/social aspects of the games have been lessened so much in the past few generations. The only real things we've gotten that still have semblance of that old design philosophy are the trainer cards in gen 8, the profile pictures in gen 9 and competitive rankings in the Switch mainline games. Even fucking Battle Competitions, which were introduced in gen 5, are pretty much on the way out and dead (and only served to be VGC events in gen 9 with few counterexamples).Global Link as a concept is dead because nothing needed to be used with it, despite Global Link being completely possible via Pokemon HOME since it reads save data.I think that while Masuda had faults if the documents are to be believed, he still at the very least was interested in how players immersed themselves as players, making sure that it felt like you were a trainer that would have all of these tasks when training and getting stronger. I like to think about how Pokeblocks/Poffins/Berry Powder/the Dream World used to work in relation to some of the side content we got later. Ohmori games haven't really landed this immersion and intention. It feels like everything is highly accessible, but there's nothing to show for it or even do as a result. Does that make sense at all? I feel it's a gamefeel thing that makes more sense after all of my hours in pretty much all of the games.
>>58416341I've always had a hunch that the shift towards cuter Pokemon in gen 2 was actually their response to Tamagotchi. It lines up with how those games were supposed to come out in 1997-98, which was the peak of the Tamagotchi fad. It's also like when Yo-kai Watch came along and made GF shit their pants and plagiarize everything they possibly could from it in gen 7.
>>58418959It was a response to what was popular and liked about the first game
>>58414225>The man who invented itof courseimagine thinking that someone else can understand what you came up with from your head better than yourselfit's one think to like masuda's fanfic, it's another to pretend that it's evidence of "better understanding". it's not
>>58418959>>58418976This, they specifically brought Atsuko Nishida on to make Pokemon less just weird fucking monsters, and two of her designs were so popular we're fucking sick of them at this point (Pikachu and Charizard). She dramatically changed the design direction from kaijus and biology nerd shit to something more varied. It's not like those former designs went away either, the last two sets of Pokemon added to the game as filler at the end are the up there as the most biology nerd shit lines they've probably ever designed.
>>58418943>Ohmori games haven't really landed this immersion and intention. It feels like everything is highly accessible, but there's nothing to show for it or even do as a result. Does that make sense at all? I feel it's a gamefeel thing that makes more sense after all of my hours in pretty much all of the games.Loads of Ohmori's decisions behind game design have been actively trying to erode and destroy things Masuda forced the franchise into for so many years that casual players objectively just do not like dealing with. Tons of mechanics introduced to offset IVs, EVs, Natures, the Move Relearner, permanent HMs needing the Move Deleter to remove, HMs in general being gone now. That should really go to show a lot of the technical nuance in the games was actively unappealing to a wider demographic only interested in catching the Pokemon in the first place, or whatever theme park story they wanted to tellHis problem is his side content is unfulfilling and uninteresting. Just more battle sim shit. Whoopie. Same shit is happening to fighting games though, it's all focus on battles now with little way to experience fun down time that would make the world feel developed outside just being a simulator. Pokemon is luckier it's an RPG and actually has a story, but the variety of the newer games have gone down with the sharpened focus on pvp
>>58418976To an extent, yes, but the introduction of babies and breeding mechanics feel like a very obvious attempt to draw in the Tamagotchi audience with something vaguely v-pet like.
>>58414225Is Tajiri a vampire why does he look so young
>>58419170That pic is old as fuck anon. We haven't had a picture of him in years. He's a recluse.
>>58415639This is why I breed Kanto/Johoto/Hoenn starters and transfer them from Home to my new save. This doesn't really fix the issue of Staraptor and the others but I can at least pick something other than Chimchar and still have a non Ponyta fire type
>>58414225Really hard question because they really needed each other. Pokémon wouldn't exist without the beautiful and autistic idea that Tajiri put together but it was fully realized and juiced into the worldwide phenomenon it is/was by other people. Arguably Pokémon is where it's at because of the anime and merchandise, not because the games themselves were that objectively good.On the other hand, I think most of us who really appreciate this franchise and who lurk shitholes like /vp/ are people whose favorite mainline titles were directed (or co-directed) by Masuda. He took the main idea and really polished it into what we enjoy today. Also, he's a really great musician.
tajiri eveything past gen 2 is utter dogshit
Going by a few interviews, Tajiri was more grounded than memes suggest. Also I believe he might have overestimated the audience more than the hardware.
>>58414225I'd like to see Tajiri do a Pokémon project someday, like a short manga. There's so much talk about Tajiri's original vision, but we don't have much information about what that world looks like. The little we do have is a rumor about him saying the Adventures manga is the closest thing to his vision, and him overseeing the Detective Pikachu movie
>>58419563>the Adventures manga is the closest thing to his visionI hope it's Hoenn related
>>58414225Atsuko Nishida.
>>58419643Tajiri said that during the RGB run of Adventures, shit went off the rails by the Yellow and GSC arcs which came later
>>58416008How is Masuda's fault the designers went full retard? Blame Sugimori
>>58415564so then that must mean that s/v actually WASNT dogshit, because it's second best selling game in the series
>>58415564So McDonald's is among the highest quality food in the entire world? Because it's the best selling food in the entire world, so that must mean it's unmatched in taste, right?
>>58418920As someone who was also around for Pokemania, absolutely fucking not. GO was definitely a big thing, but Pokemania was a tidal wave that consumed the entire entertainment industry and turned nearly every kid with access to a TV and toys into a Pokemon kid back then.
>>58420196>Your game took features away, prevented trades from previous games and broke the tradition of going back to the previous regionWhich prior game could I trade with and which region could I go back to in Red and Green?>Your game started the shit tradition of 'Gen 1 reboot'But GS did this too? Why should I have to use these new Grass/Fire/Water shitters when I should be allowed to use the OG starters again?>Your game is the first official dexcutHow do I get Charizard in GSC without glitches, trading or FOMO events?>Your game never wins 'which games are the best' pollsOh wow, opinions! I sure am glad I'm allowed to have my own opinions and don't need to follow the sheep hordes to feel validated in what I like and dislike.
>>58420196ThisAnd my first game was Ruby btw
>>58414225Everyone except for Gamefreak.
>>58415612pre-Iphone hype
>>58420235>How do I get Charizard in GSC without glitches, trading or FOMO events?The same way you get her in Hoenn. You trade with Kanto
>>58416120>last imageMe
>>58416134>tfw P******* is above 35 million
>>58420814You also had to wait 1 year for frlg to exists
>>58416301Rhydon doesn't exist
>>58416341Did any of the graffiti artist work on anything similar after that? Maybe Digimon or Telefang?
>>58420833FRLG released so late in 2004 that it might as well have been 2 years here too. Even then it still wasn't even all the Pokemon because Masuda thought they were going to make the rest into events only to never release the events for the remaining Johtomons, so Game Freak had to scrap together to make Emerald so you could come even close to catching them allTruly set the standard going forward for the franchise needing to wait years just to hope maybe, just maybe, you get to use your favorites
>>58419904Too bad she didn't put enough care to save the Pure Dragon project
>>58420952She truly loves Koji Nishino, doesn't sheDo you think they were fucking on the side?
>>58414225The guy who invented it was the only one who made it right. The other guy went in another direction but didnt 100% get it.
>>58420833>>58420862You could trade gsc with the original gen 1 games retards
>>58421138That's what I already said >>58420814The difference is RS needed to will FRLG into existence because it would've been missing about 180 Pokemon without it
>>58421093They are a couple in Fuchsia City, they're definitely banging
>>58420196>prevented trades from previous games That was Nintendo's fault, not GF's. They had no choice in the matter, unlike SWSH, so it's unfair to hold it against the games.>broke the tradition of going back to the previous regionOne generation doing that is not a "tradition," and they wisely avoided repeating how much of a disaster that was for gen 2's development. Hoenn is an actual region, Johto is a boring suburb of Kanto.
>>58414225The guy who created it or the guy who iterated on it.Gee I dunno OP
>>58414225It's weird how people treat Masuda like he was some intruding outsider who came in for Gen 2 when he was literally one of the OG 3 of Game Freak.
>>58416404In an extensive Game Informer feature on Game Freak and Pokémon from 2017 before USUM, Masuda talks about how he joined the Gold and Silver team in 1998 after finishing his work on a side project (music for Bushi Seiryūden) and how everything was in total disarray. We can see from the Spaceworld 97 demos from November 1997 that there was no new music or even new cries/SFX in the ROM, stuff Masuda was entirely responsible for in Gen I. He clearly wasn't on the team at the time, and we know not long after Spaceworld, Nintendo and Game Freak went radio silent for over a year, and that's because the entire project as it was got scrapped and they used what pieces they could for the version we got. Masuda is listed as sub-director in GS in Japanese (and the possibly more accurate co-director in the localization), and Tajiri just took a backseat role from then on while Masuda immediately took over as director of the following three mainline releases.>Gold and Silver (sub-DIRECTOR)>Crystal (DIRECTOR)>Ruby and Sapphire (DIRECTOR)>FireRed and LeafGreen (DIRECTOR)>Emerald>Diamond and Pearl (DIRECTOR)I like imagining him as Leto, this tyrannical despot who's iron grip on everything is seen as suffocating, but his actions are ultimately best and he knows this. Where it falls apart is that what Leto did was best for humanity countless eons from now, while Masuda's micromanagement ultimately doomed Game Freak to not being able to manage themselves.
>>58422331I also want to add that Gen II's music wasn't like Gen I's which was composed entirely by Masuda. Gold and Silver split the music and SFX between Masuda, Go Ichinose, and Morikazu Aoki. Not only that, Masuda cribbed some of his own music from Bushi Seiryūden for GS, RS, and even DP.
Masuda hard carried it. Tajiri was about to give up when employees quit and the work station PC broke but Masuda offered to learn Unix to fix it and offered to learn programming to pick up the quitters slack. Pokémon would not have existed at all without Masuda.
>>58422898sure, but Tajiri's still the one that came up with the concept and implemented most of the ideas
>>58414225Sugimori's character designs are the only reason why we aren't playing Beyblade or something instead.
>>58422415>Masuda cribbed some of his own music from Bushi Seiryūden for GS, RS, and even DPmore on that please
>>58419363sorry meant gen 1
Was the file path for that Masuda and Sugimori fight in Gen 6 ever given out or is it just another “everyone trust the random shit Centro takes as a leak in /vp/“ like that one fake document that said mega evolutions were suppose to be in gen 5.
>>58414848What can I say? Sceptile is COOL AS FUCK. Hoenn wins again!
>>58423842look in the archive for "confluence"
>>58415612The GBA only had a ~4 year lifespan and like >>58415051 shows, its frankly incredible library (in my opinion one of the best any console has ever had) was overshadowed by literally nonstop ports and Pokemon
>>58423708https://youtu.be/wPTV1zXvD2QThere are others, like the Rocket Hideout theme, and I know Barry's battle theme comes from Pulseman
Ching chong came across the seaHe put those bugsInto the anus
>>58416120May >>>>>>>> Misty
>>58423122Any hack can be an ideas guy. Making the ideas work like Masuda did is more important.
>>58423568No, that was all Nishida. Pokemon would have flopped if all it had to offer were fat dinosaurs and basic shapes with Toriyama eyes.
>>58415660>game about catching creatures makes you catch creatureswow
>>58428204b-b-b-but all the anons want kaijumons and say the cutemons and waifumons and furrybaits pandering to females and gooners are the reason why the franchise lost sight of itself!!!!
>>58415558I actually miss when Pokèmon was more niche in the 2000s compared to the mainstream slop we have been getting since Pokémon Go relaunched the series.
>>58428204Nishida's most popular mon is a fat dinosaur with basic shapes. All Sugimori had to do was add the Toriyama eyes
>>58418780Harry Potter was more of a girl thing while Star Wars got the boys. Pokemon's popularity also suffered due to 9/11 and a lot of people becoming anxious and jaded about the world in general. Also the Playstation 2 was already out by that time, which made anything related to Nintendo seem extremely trite and primitive. RS on GBA didn't come out until two years after the PS2.
>>58415598>Because the games were cheap to produce and the anime kept going long after it stopped being relevant, it was able to attach itself to the kids of its generation who would grow up to become massive gigafans that you see posting on these boards still obsessed with their childhood series because they got the chance to experience it grow from its lowest point into nowHoly fuark THIS. I know kids who don't even like the games but have 10+ pokemon dolls. The games are only a small part of the appeal now.
>>58429868>basic shapeLiterally no dragon in fiction had the same shape as Charizard
