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Pokémon Red/Green "Capsule Monsters" information

celebi23

celebi23

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Capsule Monsters? "What is that?", you ask. Let's take a trip back to the development of Red & Green....

So, while working on my early Gold/Silver research, I decided to take a look at Red/Green's development history. At first, nothing stood out as too different compared to the final version (unlike G/S's 1997/early 1998 development). All of the artwork was released during the months leading up to R/G's release. And then I found this image



I had no idea where it was from & if it was even official. Turns out it's from a book
http://web.me.com/celebi23/Capsule_Monsters/Books.html that contained a storyboard of the Pokémon catching animation, artwork of Pokémon Center( maybe Pokémart) and some trainers traveling.

In the second book, there is one image. It's some sort of poster/ad design. Turns out, the development really begin in 1990 & it was then called "Capsule Monsters"



It was with this confirmation, it reminded me of a piece of artwork (from the Game On Exhibition) that I saw

Pokemon_conceptart_big.jpg


I was able to find larger versions of certain areas of that poster

http://web.me.com/celebi23/Capsule_Monsters/Exhibits_2.html

I then was able to locate more artwork. This time it came from a Japanese Exhibition

http://web.me.com/celebi23/Capsule_Monsters/Exhibits.html


With these pieces, I could then try & figure out R/G's early development history
(Not 100% finished yet)

http://web.me.com/celebi23/Capsule_Monsters/Early_Development.html

It looks like development started in the Fall of 1990 & was scheduled to be released in December of 1991. From what I can tell, there was not enough funds to continue development so, "Capsule Monsters" was put on hold in early 1992. They then developed "Yoshi" for the NES & the GameBoy.

The surprising success of that game helped to give GameFreak the resources that it needed. In 1993, it was put to an internal vote as to whether Game Freak should complete the Pokémon games (then still called Capsule Monsters). 80% were for finishing development. In the summer of 1994, "Pocket Monsters" resumed development. While development has started once more, numerous interruptions (all money related) kept popping up. And as such, they developed many other games while still working on Red/Green.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Freak#Developed_games

Game Boy
Yoshi (Mario & Yoshi) (1991, Nintendo)
Nontan to Issho! Kuru-Kuru Puzzle (1994, Victor Interactive)

FC/NES
Yoshi (Mario & Yoshi) (1991, Nintendo)

SFC/SNES
Mario & Wario (1993, Nintendo)
Smart Ball / Jerry Boy (1991, Sony)
Smart Ball 2 / Jerry Boy 2 (1994, Sony)
Nontan to Issho! Kuru-Kuru Puzzle (1994, Victor Interactive)

Sega Mega Drive/ Sega Genesis
Magical Tarurūto-kun (1992, Sega)
Pulseman (1994, Sega)

In the Fall of 1995, Ishihara Tsunekazu was appointed President of the newly founded Creatures, Inc. (formally called A.P.E, the company that produced Mother 2/EarthBound). Game Freak & Creaturs, Inc. joined forces to complete the development of Pocket Monsters Red & Green (for their new release date of 2/27/96). And the rest, they say, is history...

I've got more pictures on my website. Some of them are a bit too big to post here.
http://web.me.com/celebi23/Capsule_Monsters/Main.html
 
Wow, pretty interesting. Nice find, thanks.
 
Wow Celebi23, you never fail to amaze me! This is some great stuff, I've been looking with no luck for this for a while.

I have one question- I've read elsewhere when looking for info that Capsule Monsters was originally a small-release manga by Tajiri, but it sold so horribly he discontinued it after a single issue and moved the concept to development of a video game. Is there any truth to this at all?
 
Great work! This is amazing. You are a true Pokémon historian.
 
This is like finding the Holy Grail. I thought this info no longer existed.
 
Truly amazing!
There are not enough days in a week to describe how awesome this discovery is!
Once again, good job there!
 
This is very interesting. I did see some of these images before, but some I didn't. Some of the information was new to me also. I didn't know Nintendo would not pick it up in the early 90s. Just imagine if they never did.
And some of the Pokemon looked even freakier than they did in Green, especially that Lapras.
 
This is... stunning!

You're amazing, man!

Great discovery, though there's still a little that we know about Capsule Monsters...
 
I just realized yesterday was Pokémon's 14th anniversary!
It's really nice to see all these early art... I wonder about that "Capsule Monsters" manga... are you sure it exist? is it possible to find scans of that anywhere? I'm sure it'll be very interesting...
Also, as you yourself said, Red/Green were relased in 96 - so why in the site it says 95 ?
 
Piplup said:
I just realized yesterday was Pokémon's 14th anniversary!
It's really nice to see all these early art... I wonder about that "Capsule Monsters" manga... are you sure it exist? is it possible to find scans of that anywhere? I'm sure it'll be very interesting...
Also, as you yourself said, Red/Green were relased in 96 - so why in the site it says 95 ?
Click to expand...
Because the copyright date of 1995.
 
I actually remember Yu-Gi-Oh had Capsule Monsters, or Capumon, introduced for a short time in the Manga in the earlier chapters.

Wonder if Takahashi got the idea from this? :0
 
Wow. Very cool. It's always awesome to see what could have been.
 
Dude, is there anything you can't find information on? Nice finds, once again.
 
Wow, that is amazing. That early artwork is really cool to take a look at. Also, its neat to read this information so close to the 14th anniversiary of Pokemon. Its great to see how it all started!
 
Sorry about the lack of updates, haven't been able to find much recently. I do, however, have one more update for you guys. Found another picture of that concept art poster thing. You can kinda see the early battle concept art on the left. Looks like Donkey Kong's relative was once a Pokémon :p


(Click the thumbnail for the full-size version)

Oh & I haven't forgotten about my Gold/Silver research. Still waiting on some email responses. Will let you guys know about any finds as soon as I get the information.
 
Oh, wow! An excellent find!

Y'know, the battle screens remind me of the older Dragon Quest games and the overworlds are a bit like the GameBoy Zelda/Saga series.
 
"In 1975 Capsule Monsters was released in Manga Form, although it was un-noticed and unsuccessful it did give Tajiri the stepping stone to teaming up with Ken Sugimori"

this sentence is very very interesting




EDIT: after some search i found that satoshi tajiri was born in 1965, did he started drawing manga at 10 years old? or the translation made a mistake?

if the manga is real i don´t mind seeing it.
 
Last edited:
All right, about this 1975 manga.

I have absolutely no doubts that Tajiri-san was making this monster manga when he was ten. I was making monsters at seven. One of the main reasons they came about was because I was exceedingly shy and reclusive, prefering to play by myself (I was also very prone to obsesions, which helped). Thus, the monsters were created to serve a specific purpose - to help me control my emotions (I was prone to outbursts in my younger years). By the time I was ten, I had the urge to develop them further. I started to draw pictures to give myself a better idea of what they looked like. I was honestly planning on drawing comics (which manga is), but I opted for writing instead because I was a terrible artist.

So, the gist of this, without being all tldr; and wondering how my childhood ties into Tajiri-san's is this: he created the monsters as a young kid to help him deal with his problems (perhaps subconsiously). Thus, he probably was drawing this manga at ten, as outlandish as it may seem.

As for finding surving copies - good luck. It was probably more of him being an entreprenuer and selling a few of them on his front lawn/in school. Most of them are probably destroyed now. :/

This is, of course, based on my own experiences, so it's not some undisputable fact - but I'd bet that a lot of it is similar.

(Or I'm just mad. That could be too.)
 
Hmm... that is very interesting. Thank you for posting this.
 
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