The original Pokemon games, originally Pocket Monsters Red and Green in Japan, are some of the most formative RPGs of all time, but if the original Game Boy’s game cartridges had just a little bit less memory, they may have never existed.
Playing the recently released Switch and Switch 2 versions of the Pokemon LeafGreen and FireRed remakes, I’m genuinely astounded that Game Freak managed to pack so much RPG into a literal Game Boy game, and according to the game’s original programmer, Junichi Masuda, it was a near-constant struggle.
“That was an overriding theme – it was a fight against capacity, a fight against what we could fit onto the cartridge,” Masuda says as part of a big 30th anniversary spread. “We had designed these 150-odd Pokemon to get in as well.”
Coming back to Pokemon Yellow 30 years later is like coming home – and playing it in 2026 is even better than when I was a kid
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