Why The Pokémon Red & Blue Intros Have The Wrong Date

The intro to Pokémon Red and Blue has been witnessed by millions of gamers around the world. The same is also true of Pokémon Red and Green, which are the best selling games ever in Japan. There is an oddity in the intro sequence of all these Pokémon games that fans might not realize, as the date at the start is technically incorrect, seemingly due to a last-minute delay.

The development of Pokémon Red and Green was tumultuous, as the entire Pokémon concept took a long time to nail down. Leaked Pokémon Red and Green content shows just how much the games changed over time. It didn’t help that Pokémon Red and Green was the biggest project Game Freak had tackled up to that point, and it had to use the limited hardware of the original Game Boy for such an ambitious set of games.

When a player boots up Pokémon Red and Blue, they’re shown three dates: ’95, ’96, and ’98. The ’96 refers to the year Pokémon Red and Green were released, and ’98 refers to the year Pokémon Red and Blue were released in Europe and North America. Pokémon Red and Green, meanwhile, only have 1995 in their intro sequence. The Pokémon franchise is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, so what does the ’95 refer to?

Pokémon Red & Blue’s Intro Date Mistake Explained

The answer to this question can be found in old adverts for Pokémon Red and Green (via Famicom.chu). The original release date for Pokémon Red and Green was December 21, 1995. This means the games would have launched just before the holiday season, but they were pushed back to February 27, 1996. This delay was apparently so sudden that the original copyright date was retained. Despite this, The Pokémon Company ignores the original date when referring to the anniversary of the series.

It’s likely Pokémon Red and Green were pushed back due to glitches. The first generation of Pokémon games are notoriously buggy, so it wouldn’t be surprising to learn they needed some last-minute work before hitting store shelves. Pokémon Red and Blue were superior in terms of polish, as the developers had time to iron out some of the worst bugs – not that this stopped glitches like MissingNo. from slipping through. The 1995 copyright is likely a result of this seemingly hasty delay, but it might have been necessary in order to make sure the first Pokémon games were working properly.

Source: Famicom.chu/Wayback Machine

About The Author

Scott Baird
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Scott has been writing for Screen Rant since 2016 and regularly contributes to The Gamer. He has previously written articles and video scripts for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz.
A graduate of Edge Hill University in the UK, Scott started out as a film student before moving into journalism. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you. Scott specializes in gaming and has loved the medium since the early ‘90s when his first console was a ZX Spectrum that used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.

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