Pokemon was almost a 'bloody' baseball RPG, but only in the West

It's a good thing they didn't listen to the head of marketing and advertising for Pokemon in the West back in the 90s, because if they had, we would have missed out on one of the most iconic video game sagas in history. At least at first glance and in the West.

As revealed by Gail Tilden, former advertising manager for Nintendo in America, things could have been very different. In an interview with the Video Game History Foundation, she says that there was at least one conversation to make the game a baseball RPG in the US and, by rebound effect, in Europe.

In other words, Pokemon had already been released in Japan as we know it and Nintendo was already working on its launch in the rest of the world. At first, the idea did not attract much attention at the US headquarters, which is why they proposed a change of direction.

Pokemon was almost a baseball RPG in the West

"Before I worked as a team leader, we all saw the [Pokemon] game. It was a black and white RPG for Game Boy with very Japanese characters. We all thought the same thing: 'ugh'", he explained straight away.

The agency did not like the idea too much, and this is why they proposed a change. "Our advertising agency asked if 'we could change the art and make it more raw, putting graffiti on the walls, blood in the streets and things like that'".

It doesn't stop there, as they even suggested "making all the characters baseball players in a baseball league and not a Pokemon league." To be honest, I'm really glad that Nintendo put its foot down and said no, as we can't know what would have happened in Europe or America if they had done this.

Luckily, Pokemon was gaining popularity in its original version. Because of this, Minoru Arakawa, founder of Nintendo America, stood firm and decided to keep the franchise as it had been originally designed.

Thanks to this, the idea of creating a baseball game using the Pokemon base was completely abandoned. And just as well, because... I don't even want to imagine what would have happened, although I'm convinced that in Europe and Spain it would not have been successful.

Extended statements by Gail Tilden

Below is an excerpt from the interview in which she talks about some of the most interesting points of the process. You can read it in its entirety through the Video Game History Foundation

"We thought about the way the game was designed. Could we make all the characters baseball players in a baseball league and not a Pokemon league? As all these meetings and discussions went on over several months, Pokemon was gaining popularity. Now there are TV shows, comics, movies, toys and more games."

Finally, Mr. Arakawa said: "Forget it. We're going to do it. And not only are we going to do it, we're going to do it all. We want total control of everything. We need to gather all the rights in Japan and we want all the rights to be granted to Nintendo America." We had a licensing agency that we worked with, which was 4Kids, so we were going to work with them to make sure it was done like in Japan and that we could control everything.

We followed some of the techniques we had used before and sent a videotape. That video talked about the program, the game, a little about the card game and toys, and included the station codes where it should be tuned in. The series was broadcast through syndication, meaning it aired on individual stations rather than a national network at the time.

We launched on Labor Day weekend and, as a side note, because my daughter is here, that day we also went to pick up two kittens, and she named her cat Misty because it had orange hair. The game launched two weeks later. We didn't know if this black and white RPG for the Game Boy was going to work. We also made 10 Volkswagen Beetles because that year the Beetle was coming back on the market. It was a coincidence that we could make it look like Pikachu.

So 10 yellow parachutes descended on Topeka, Kansas, and out came the 10 yellow Beetles, which toured the country for two or three weeks and visited theme parks, beaches, etc. They opened the trunk, showed the video, gave away toys. It was a massive local promotion effort.

The cards didn't come out until a little later in the fall. And one of the mistakes we always mention was that Kentucky Fried Chicken jumped on the promotion early and launched it in November, but it was too early and it didn't work. Their kids' meal program was a failure, but it wasn't long before the Game Boy games took off.

Normally, we didn't do multiple campaigns, but we decided to do a campaign with the link cable earlier in the year to show that you couldn't catch them all unless you connected with someone else or got the special characters.

By 1999, Pokemon had already taken off. It had become a complete phenomenon. We moved the TV show to Kids WB as the main network. They promoted it heavily, and we also sold the first three movies to Warner Bros.

For the first movie, when you went to the cinema, you received a collectible card with your ticket. It was released in November and had the biggest box office opening of that month up to that point. It grossed around $82 million, if I'm not mistaken. But a lot of people bought tickets in large quantities just to get the special cards. I don't know how much those cards are worth today.