For those who were old enough to remember, was there a lot of hype for Red and Blue?
I got blue + a game boy as a christmas gift from my grandma before I knew what pokemon or video games even were. So I don't know if there was any hype before it came out but at some point after everyone had the game, watched the anime or at least had some cards. Makes me wonder how it exploded like it did.
>>58502708Couldn't say, I was a literal child (like 6 or 7) but I'll tell you this: Advertising was everywhere. The game only succeeded because Nintendo poured their budget into shilling it so hard. The actual games, with the benefit of hindsight, are buggy, unfinished trash.
Nintendo power sent me a VHS with commercials for Pokemon showing off trading and battling and catching and I was so unbelievably hyped I couldn't wait.
>>58502708Yes. There was hype for their release because they were the best rpg’s for the gameboy at the time, hands down. Their popularity grew because they were so engaging.
I think it'd vary from area to area but for me Pokemon was like a zombie outbreak where each day more kids would come in having been exposed to it until finally everyone loved it (except some of the girls) First kids started talking about the anime airing early in the morning before school, then the game came out, and finally the cards came out sometime after Christmas.I remember watching the anime after some friends had told me about it and then I noticed all the ads and saw a commercial for the game. I went out and bought my game on release day and I remember the seller already knew what I wanted and just asked "Does he want Red or Blue?" I picked Blue. I got Red for Christmas. I was 8 so I was still kind of young and oblivious to things so I had not noticed it until my friends had noticed it but I'm sure older kids noticed it in NIntendo Power and all that shit months before release.
>>58502708The anime is what sold the game/cards
>>58502753>unfinished trashGen 1 isn't without its bugs but how are they unfinished?
>>58502708Yes, as the anime came out beforehand.
Yes. The anime was really popular. You have to remmeber that the 90s was an era where TV shows had eras of dominance and merchandising to go with it. Transformers, TMNT, Power Rangers, all had their time in the light. 98-00 was Pokémon's.Then came toys, and ultimately, the games. They were, bar none, the best games on the Game Boy at the time and every kid who had a GB, got Pokémon, and every kid who didn't wanted one. In a matter of weeks/months, it's all there was to your childhood. You watched the anime, you went to school and played the games with your friends and traded the cards with others.And it just kept coming,Looking back at some of my magazines back then, they were talking about Pokemon Gold and Silver's popularity in Japan before it was even released in the UKThat said, it didn't last anywhere near as long in the UK as it did in the US. From speaking to people on the old fforums and IRC at the time, Pokémania in the US didn't really start slowing down till the end of Gen 2, whereas it was pretty much dead here by 01. I remember knowing hundreds of kids who played RBY and collected the cards. By the time GSC came out, only three or four kids I knew had stuck with it. By the time of RSE, it was only me.Thank fuck I had other hobbies and was good at sports though, otherwise my ass would have been bullied hard.
>>58502792>I think it'd vary from area to area but for me Pokemon was like a zombie outbreak where each day more kids would come in having been exposed to it until finally everyone loved itPretty much explains it perfectly for me but a girl in my class in 1st grade is the one who told me about it and drew some pictures of the pokemon
>>58502708Yes, they were absurdly popular in Japan, so video game magazines were basically shitting themselves with hype over how amazing these games were going to be.
>>58502708Not really. Not until kids started buying and playing the games.
idk man, first game was shield
>>58503494Ew.
>>58502708Yes. Pokemon was shoved so far down our throats that there is a manchild epidemic today. Pokefags are the Disney adults of gaming.
>>58502753early Final Fantasy games were just as bugged, why is it that Gen 1 Pokemon in particular gets so much shit for its bugs?
>>58503663Probably because there's not (or was not) as big of a gen 1 fanbase for Final Fantasy as there was for Pokemon. Gen 1 Pokemon had so many people insisting that it was the peak of the series and that anything after wasn't as good that others started to pick the games apart to prove them wrong. If there were more FF1-3 fans and they were more vocal then they'd get shit on more, but as it is no one really bothers thinking about them much.
>>58503663Because MissingNo. is the best known glitch of all time and is easily exploitable, even for kids so everyone did it. But that said it really is overblown. Red and Blue are perfectly functional games that blew most of the Gameboy's library out of the water.
>>58502802>isn't without its bugsCouldn't be more true. without its bugs there is no Gen 1.>1-in-256>missingno and all the many, many glitches associated with it>The type chart literally does not work as intended, the OFFICIAL NINTENDO POWER PLAYER'S GUIDE has a type chart, that matches how it works in gens 2-5 btw, and THE ACTUAL GAME'S TYPE CHART DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. Psychic is immune to ghost, the only type that is super-effective to psychic is Bug, it's a fucking shitshow.>Badge Boost glitch makes the game easy to exploit>The game itself is so fucking buggy and unfinished that it can be beaten in 1 minute with glitchesIt's more buggy than the average Bethesda release at launch.
>>58503974Bugs don't equate to unfinished. How is gen 1 unfinished? You completely deflected the question. I admitted the game had bugs so you're just arguing something I already agreed with.
>>58502708In my country this was around 1998-1999the hype was in the Cards and Animethe videogame came after The Lugia 2000 movie was when it went overdrive private schools were making it a short of school trip to watch that movie I remember there was a milk company that has a promo to exchange their milk tint cans for a ticket to that movie
>>58502708the cards were the number 1 source of hype followed by the anime followed by the games.
>>58502708Yes, there was hype.Watch the television commercial.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-Bc3XBC3c
To truly understand how big Pokemon Red/Blue were when they came out you need to understand what a Monoculture is, and I only say this because we no longer live in a monoculture (not saying this in a good or bad way). Remember back in 2016 when everyone on Earth was playing Pokemon Go, and how you could go outside and meet up with complete strangers playing it and it was a way to interact with people and we all had this collective interest in Pokemon Go? Well, for Red/Blue back in 1999 it was kind of the same thing but 100 times more intense, everyone at school was talking about Pokemon, the newest episode of the anime, when the movie was coming out, the Pokemon they found and caught.etc I remember kids always getting in trouble for brining their Gameboys to school to play and trade Pokemon and shit.
A lot of kids thought it was a TV show first and then a game, at the time. I remember that specifically at the time
>>58502708I didn't know shit about pokemon until my best friend got gifted american blue from relatives and we played it without knowing the language and couldn't go very far as a result, then one year later the game actually came out and I was like "hey that's the game we played last year" and the anime came out at the same time too and it became a hit pretty much out of nowhere.I dimly recall the news sometimes talking about pokemon mania in japan before that but I was so young I really had no idea what they were talking about.Other than that I NEVER heard anyone talk about pokemon before the anime started airing
>>5850270895% of the population knew about it from the anime first. Many even thought the anime preceded the games as it released before tge games in the west. And many kids did not even play videogames but they did have a TV at home. So pokémania was from the beginning anime-based, and TCG & games-supported.Was there exictement? The first anime season by Takeshi Shudo was a cultural phenomenon rivaling and surpassing brands like Star Wars, TMNT, SpiderMan and anything else at the time. Anything even remotely connected to Pokémon created excitement and consumerism. So yeah
>>58505736I also agree with this, Pokémon was the last and final global monoculture trend, (possibly Harry Potter too), before the internet took over and algorithmic marketing became tailored to each consumer's preferences. Before the internet marketing would just attempt to broadcast whatever was popular at the moment to literally 100% of the population.That business strategy makes no sense anymore, so nothing will ever be enhanced and like that again.
