Behind the Scenes: Early Pokemon Red & Blue scripts (and final) (Patreon)

Usually I start writing my videos by jotting down some ideas that I have that I know I want to use in the video, and then once I have a bunch of them organizing that into an outline. Well, this video didn't really start that way. Initially, this was not going to be a big project, it was going to be some random thoughts I had about Gen 1 that came up when I was reading the comments to the FRLG video slapped together into a quick easy essay. The plan was to get this out within a month or two and move on to other content for the rest of the year. There was no research done for this one, no history section, just planned on basically going with whatever I came up with on the first go.

Here's the earliest set of notes I can find when I was first jotting down ideas:

Gen 1 Viewers disappointed that I didnt talk about kanto lore in frlg

Kanto sets up the world that Pokemon takes place in

But what is that world?

A world from a child's perspective

All pokemon games tackle the theme of progress vs preservation to some extent

Even DP did this with traditional vs science

Kanto takes you through an increasingly urbanized landscape

As you progress buildings start to rub up against nature

And as that happens you start to see the ways in which nature is destroyed

Marowak in the tower for example

Team rocket is a stand in for humanity's greed

Pokemon are a stand in for nature

All people use nature for different ends.

Some to get richer, some to live side by side in a beneficial way, and some study it.

Professor oak asks you to help him study nature.

He asks you to become curious, explore and understand it

Team rocket is obsessed with using nature to become more wealthy, even to the point of blatant destruction, hurting people and pokemon.

Its simple but it is a story from a child's perspective after all

One in which the child grows and gains more understanding of the world they live in than even the destructive adults around them

Be curious, learn, and discover adults arent always right even in positions of authority

Learn how to be better than the adults that raised you

Thats what makes this story so timeless.

Its something you never stop learning to do even in adulthood

Also include eb stuff, design stuff, dq stuff, how people are dumb as hell about game balance Dragonite and mewtwo are bosses

Context of other gb rpgs at the time like ff

Hell even zelda on the gb was buggy as shit

You know

Gen 1 puts a locked door in your face right at the start of the game

thats kind if interesting to think about

cause that happens the entire game

theres a billion dead ends

a bunch of locked doors or blocked paths

every door you open leads to a set of three more closed doors

For every hidden switch you flip there's a lift key you have to find

I can't think of another Pokemon game that's designed that way

at least to that extent

Gen 2 is like that too but Gen 3 doesn't have a lot of that

There are actually more dungeons than there are gyms

viridian forest

mt moon

ss anne

rock tunnel

rocket headquarters

pokemon tower

seafoam island

safari zone

pokemon mansion

victory road

power plant

silph

cerulean cave

much of gen 1 doesn’t make logical world sense

why is the key to the gym in the basement of an abandoned building

how does this system of gyms work

how do you become a gym leader

are there enough challengers to justify it?

the sign literally only lists you and your rival as winning trainers

why does your rival get added as a 5th member of the elite four but you don’t get added as a 6th when you beat him? What’s the limit?

This + the thematic thing about asking a kid to learn = the heart of this game

Much like princess maker

Things put in your way

but they have the faith in you to figure it out without the help of adults

They don’t have this kind of faith anymore lol

The quick turn around obviously did not happen thanks to me getting hired out of the blue, so unexpectedly I had a year to pick at what I had and tweak it and perfect it. I ended up sort of slotting what I had already written retroactively into an outline. I hate doing this because it usually means rewriting a lot of completed work from scratch to fit into a new format where the ideas flow better, but I have done it a few times when I have neglected to write within an outline from the start.

So attached to this post please find three versions of this script. The first two versions are my stream of consciousness haphazard essay, a lot of the ideas that made it into the final video are there but several things are either not finished or ended up getting cut. Some of the notes in there came from conversations I was having with Vidit and Jonna as I was working on the script, the connection that the Electrodes in the Power Plant were mimics was a Jonna original idea. Here are some notes I saved from those conversations:

"Vidit adds:

A similar location that plays with the balance between these things is the Power Plant. Although this out of the way location was made by humans and subsequently abandoned, it became a thriving habitat for electric Pokemon. Though it’s the absence of humans that allows the ecosystem to exist, it is the creation of humans that is responsible for it.

“with so many memorable dungeons-habitats gone, the player is asked to question if what was traded for them is really "progress"

After pokemon evicted from power plant, and Viridian forest cut down considerably, Pikachu no longer has any native habitats to kanto. Instead has been forced to move to Route 2

Jonna says The Pokemon are kicked out of the power plant because of human need for more power because of progress

From very on in development, GF was intent on recreating real life Kanto and parts of the greater Tokyo area.

It was originally much more traditionally jrpg with dungeons and obnoxiously rare drops

Eventually it was shaped into something more earthbound-y

I think with setting in mind, you find Mewtwo in a cave that's very isolated and distant (relatively). It's a location shrouded in myth as an explicitly high caliber training ground. It's an area both a part of nature and for Mewtwo anyway somewhat secluded away from it. Mewtwo has no home and finds refuge only in the darkest corner furthest away from humans that it can find. Among only other powerful pokemon that have forced humans away except for -the- most powerful trainer.

the Cerulean Cave is a Mt. Fuji in that respect"

I also have some scattered notes I guess I took while I was playing through the game for footage:

"Get footage of dragon quest

Sea encounter rate way lower!

Seafoam can’t be passed through and needs to be solved from both sides

FRLG speed test: surfing down from pallet to cinnabar

walking across fuschia

cycling road?

Can’t get wild ice types in yellow lol only trade for dewgong in cinnabar

Mansion was definitely Fuji’s

trained to look at the map and think “I bet there’d be a hidden item there”

Cerulean Cave actually difficult because repels won’t work because wild mons are impossibly high level. I don’t think they’ve ever done something like this again. You pretty much have to catch something there and put it at the front of your party to use repels.

Power Plant is the mimic dungeon

game balance is actually effort vs skill

typing is a piece of it but that is not the entire battle system

There is a lot more going on than just type advantage and base stats

how to make a difficulty system that any player of any age can beat without making the game too easy or too hard

in gen 1 the leveling system actually solves this problem fairly well

congratulations you noticed that not all types are equally a balanced. whats your point

reads to me as “everything needs to be geared towards competitive as a priority” which this game just simply isnt’. It’s the opposite balance of that from modern Pokemon games where everything is geared toward competitive rather than world building or roleplaying

look into gen 1 compet battling being added later

battling was an incentive for trading too, an extension of what the link cable could do

in some circumstances the pastels are really pretty

in others the harsh colors are impossible to look at

Grimer does not appear in celedon?"

The third is the version I ended up with when I re-arranged the "final" pieces to fit an outline to flow better. Then finally, the fourth version is the actual final script that I sent to my editor and originally included some time stamps to help with the assembly process. In this version there are a couple sentences I added at the last minute, indicated in green text, because I realized that I sounded a bit conservative in all of my hmming and hawing about the past and I didn't want to come across that way. Then the intro was originally longer because I sort of wrote it as if it were a formal essay where I outlined my points, but as a video hook it was just way too long so I asked the editor to cut those parts at the last minute and shorten it up. Those bits are indicated in red.

As you might notice, the bit about difficulty being aimed at children was added very late. I've been working on doll content a lot this year and sort of getting back into the headspace of a child and seeing media from a child's point of view, and remembering all the great things that I got out of these games. I think for most of my adult content creating life I have sort of shied away from acknowledging that these games are designed for children, not on purpose but because I view them so primarily through the lens of what I get out of them as an adult. But yeah, these ARE games that were designed for kids first, and I sort of had an epiphany about it at work one day, so I hastily added it to my script. I still have the messages from when I posted in the Egg Hangar Discord that day:

"[10:26 AM] I just had a thought I HAVE to put in my script

[10:27 AM] People dismiss Pokemon games difficulty because "they weren't hard, you just found them hard because you were a kid"

[10:27 AM] But is that not an important thing to do? To design the difficulty of your game to challenge your intended/anticipated audience?

[10:28 AM] Kids need games that are designed to challenge them, to push them and help them learn important skills like problem solving

[10:28 AM] And Pokemon games do that extremely successfully

[10:29 AM] Like the whole point of Pokemon is to teach the next generation about things that are important to the creators

[10:29 AM] So designing your game to challenge children specifically plays to that idea

[10:30 AM] Also something is lost when we disregard elements of difficulty if they are only difficult to children

[10:31 AM] And on the flip side something is very lost if there aren't any games that are challenging to kids in some way(edited)

[10:31 AM] Like if all kids games were designed to be easy for children and if all difficult games were designed to appeal only to adults then kids miss the opportunity to grow those skills

[10:31 AM] Ok I basically wrote part of my script in here rn sorry"

The general response was "uhh, yeah??" but to me it was a lightbulb going off in my head.

Anyway if you wanted a closer look at what goes into writing a script like this, this is one way it gets done! I recommend writing an outline first, it really helps cut down on the additional revising you have to do, especially if you already have a clear idea of what you want to write about like I apparently had.