Current Events > Was there hype for Pokemon Red and Blue?

(+) Yeah! (+)

For those who were old enough to remember, was there hype for Pokemon Red and Blue? I knew about Pokemon, but like most people, I learned about it from the anime and cards before I played the games.

I think so, I remember being hyped, and hearing the same on the playground

Yes.

kiddy gimmick cartoon crap, it'll never get off the ground

ooh you can catch beanie babies in balls, that'll make billions for sure

Nintendo Power put the hype train into full gear for me, for a few issues they had a Pokmon Power insert with a bunch of game details and even a comic made of the early anime episodes.

Merch flooding the market is part of the hype for the games

viewmaster_pi posted...

kiddy gimmick cartoon crap, it'll never get off the ground

ooh you can catch beanie babies in balls, that'll make billions for sure

Lol that's a funny reference because meanwhile, people were so sure, so positive, so hopeful that beanie babies would be a thing, it was like that generation's crypto bitcoin currency, and we all know how that turned out. You really had to be there to appreciate how hilarious it is and laugh.

Yeah.

I was in Japan at the time of both the Japanese and English releases and got to see the hype transition gradually from one side to the other. Even got to play Green well before the English release in a Japanese...Toys R Us, I think it was.

I was in highschool so I wasn't paying a lot attention until the games came out. But I believe the anime was in America maybe at least a year before Red and Blue launched here. I assume to spread hype for the games. Get kids addicted to the setting and then launch the games.

This VHS Toys R Us sent in the mail was how I discovered what Pokemon was, 6 year old me was very hype

https://youtu.be/OvdvgZ3CpWA

The games and cartoon/anime were extremely popular.
The biggest hype was probably the first one or two sets of cards though. Or that's just when it generally peaked overall.

gamer167 posted...

This VHS Toys R Us sent in the mail was how I discovered what Pokemon was, 6 year old me was very hype

16, but same.

When Pokemon was localized in North America they started airing the anime first to build hype for the games.

For years I remember there were people who thought games were based on the show instead of the other way around.

You'd watch the rich kid playing for a bit, and, even though you could barely tell what was happening, it was the coolest fucking shit ever just conceptually. You'd never heard anything like it before.

That blob of pixels? "Oh that's Blastoise, he's like a giant turtle with tank guns. I'm gonna use him to beat that fire guy, cause water beats fire"

My fucking mind was exploding with all this new information and implication.

I'm pretty sure there was purely because everyone who had a gameboy had it.

That doesn't happen without hype.

There was hype, But games back then had a different level of hype

hell it was probably the first BIG massive craze game that got mainstream attention for good reasons

It was massive. Nintendo knew what they had when they marketed in North America. It was a ton of people's first ever RPG (so it was a novel experience for a lot of kids), it was also super intuitive (Water puts out fire, grass absorbs water, fire burns grass) had tons of kid friendly designs and it was meant to collect and trade with your friends with the link cable.

When the games first dropped, not really. I kept up with games, and I was the only person I knew who played it when it came out. But it blew up QUICK, and within six months, it was a monster. Even the rednecks at HS were playing it.

I was in 5th grade when we got it and I didn't know about the games. I remember seeing the episode where they had to call a real doctor into the pokecenter and I think there was an electrode involved.

It was on Kids WB and I was watching it on a Friday and then I started watching it as much as possible and then I found out about the games from my friend who had a gameboy.

I don't remember any leading up to it, but I was like 7. Or actually, it was a few years later when it came to the US I think. I don't remember.

But once they actually dropped, it was epidemic. The parents and schools near me went to war against Pokemon worse than I have ever seen. Probably because they used the term "evolve."

It was madness. Like all toys, teachers confiscated Pokemon cards on sight. But unlike other toys, the principal had to go on the intercom every day with the reminder that there are NO "Poke-uh-man" cards allowed at school. Unlike other toys, the school bus came to a screeching halt when someone shouted out "he has Pokemon cards" when someone refused to trade, and the bus driver demanded them before the bus would continue. That poor kid never got them back either. I know, because that poor kid was me.

I'm sure it made perfect sense in Kyoto, but in small town USA, the trading concept for a children's property was just doomed to be an issue for schools. We didn't have kids that lives next door. We didn't even have a playground. We had school, and the bus, and both of these locations were battlegrounds against the school administration.

Everyone was talking about it after it came out. Didn't know what it was before the games though.

Good fucking lord, yes.

Does anybody else remember the commercial where a bus driver fills his bus with Pokemon and then turns it into a Game Boy cartridge?

EDIT: Oh god it's even more fucked up than I remember
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw9ZJ071P-o

They were out a long time before I was aware of them and played them. So no dont really remember hype. I would be aware if there was

Zikten posted...

I was in highschool so I wasn't paying a lot attention until the games came out. But I believe the anime was in America maybe at least a year before Red and Blue launched here. I assume to spread hype for the games. Get kids addicted to the setting and then launch the games.

It was a month.

And there was ads for the anime all through summer. And yeah, I don't recall too much hype beforehand, but once the anime launched, it took off like a rocket.

At my school there was zero hype before the games. The anime had been running but I didnt know anything about that. I got the game on day one just because it was a TBRPG on Gameboy and I love RPGs.

Within 2-3 months it was HUGE and almost every kid was talking about it.