This “Gritty” Pokemon Pitch Would Have Changed the Entire Series

Pokemon is one of the biggest media franchises on the planet. However, it was far from a guaranteed success. In the early days, there were concerns about bringing the series outside of Japan, and the people at Nintendo of America put a lot of thought into the best way to sell the series locally. Nintendo of America’s then-current advertising manager Gail Tilden led that effort starting in January 1998. In a new interview with the Video Game History Foundation, Tilden talked about early struggles to localize the games, and many of the decisions that were made along the way.

“Prior to me getting involved that directly as team lead, we had all seen the game — a black and white RPG on Game Boy with very Japanese characters — we’re like ‘ugh.’ And then our ad agency said ‘could we just change the art and it’ll be like gritty and we’ll make like graffiti on the walls and stuff like that,” said Tilden. “There was also a thought like ‘is the way that the game is formatted, could we make it that they’re all baseball players in a baseball league and not a Pokemon league?’”

Tilden goes on to note that as these discussions were happening, the franchise was starting to become much more popular in Japan. Pokemon Red and Green had inspired a ton of merchandise in the region, including the anime, comics, and toys. At that point, the idea of changing Pokemon had become essentially impossible. As Tilden notes, it was then-current Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa that made the final decision to faithfully adapt Pokemon, rather than attempting to change it into something completely different.

The Pokemon anime launched in North America on Labor Day weekend that year, with Pokemon Red and Blue released 2 weeks later. The finished product closely aligned with what had been released in Japan, and Nintendo of America secured the licensing rights for everything that came over, including products like toys and comics. However, nagging doubts remained about whether the series would become a success in the region. Tilden goes on to talk about the “grass roots effort” to sell the franchise, including a campaign that centered around touring Volkswagen Beetles designed to resemble Pikachu. While many of these early efforts were successful, Tilden said one “failure” was a promotion through Kentucky Fried Chicken, which launched “too early.”

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While it might be surprising that Nintendo of America considered altering the Pokemon games so dramatically, the company made similar decisions in those days to alter Japanese games to make them more palatable to audiences; a year before Pokemon Red and Green were released in Japan, Nintendo of America transformed Japan’s Panel de Pon into Tetris Attack. However, once Pokemon became as successful as it did in Japan, it only made sense to try bringing it over to other countries unchanged. Thankfully, Pokemon fans dodged a bullet in this case!

Are you surprised to hear about these early plans for Pokemon? Were you a Pokemon fan from the early days? Share your thoughts with me directly on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!