Masuda Feared Pokemon Would Be Rejected For Being Too Cute In The West

In interviews we shared with you earlier this week, Junichi Masuda and other developers at Game Freak feared the original Pokemon games wouldn’t succeed in the west.

Masuda has shared another fear specific to the US – that Pokemon were too cute to be successful in the US. Game Freak was advised to change the design of the cuter Pokemon, but as you can see, they did not follow that and Pokemon turned out to be very successful.

Here are his full words:

“At first, we were told that the Pokemon were too cute to be successful in the U.S. and that we should change the design of the characters. At the time, it wasn’t common for RPGs from Japan to be popular overseas. I remember being worried that players outside of Japan wouldn’t accept Pokemon for what it was.”

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