Pokemon Red and Blue Fan Video Reimagines the Game in Original Art Style

By Marc Deschamps

When Pokemon Red and Blue first released, the game was accompanied by a lot of excellent art from Ken Sugimori. Sugimori's stunning watercolor art could be found throughout the instruction manual, player's guide, promotional material, and more. Over the years, Sugimori's style has greatly evolved, but a lot of old-school fans still love the original Pokemon art and designs. Fan artist @Pokeyugami on Twitter decided to take Sugimori's style and imagine how it might look applied to a modern day Pokemon game. The result is nothing short of breathtaking, and a must-see for long-time fans!

The video from @Pokeyugami can be found embedded below.

In the video, we can see Red walking through Viridian Forest, passing by a small handful of Pokemon that can normally be found in the area, including Caterpie, Weedle, and Pikachu. There's also a Bug Catcher that looks ready to battle. The UI is clearly based on Pokemon Legends: Arceus, with Poke Balls and Potions on the bottom right side of the screen, and the backpack and Pokedex assigned to the same buttons they are in the Nintendo Switch game. Clearly, @Pokeyugami put a lot of thought into this video's creation!

It's hard to overstate how cool this video is. There's something really charming about older Pokemon art, before every character design was strictly on-model; the Game Boy graphics left room for greater artistic interpretation. It's also one of the reasons I'm a big fan of Toshihiro Ono's Pokemon comic art. For some reason, The Pokemon Company hasn't done any art books collecting older material, outside of one based on the Pokemon Adventures manga. While we'll likely never get an actual game made in the old Sugimori style, it would be nice for fans old and new alike to see all of that art material collected in one place. For now, we'll just have to keep pestering The Pokemon Company to make something happen!

What do you think of this fan made video? Would you play a Pokemon game with this art style? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!

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