Pokemon Originally Didn't Have Plans for Multiplayer Battles

gamerant.com:

Pokemon fans enjoy the franchise for a multitude of reasons. Some love to collect every Pokemon available in a given game, filling out their PC boxes and their Pokedex until every creature from their starter to the legendaries are in their collection. Others, simply love the lore and storytelling provided in the Pokemon games, especially when the series focuses on the narrative as a priority or incorporates the catching and collecting as part of the story, as seen in titles like Pokemon Black & White and Pokemon Legends: Arceus.

However, something that the majority of Pokemon fans would not enjoy if taken away from the franchise is the battling. With the moral concerns around training two magical animals to fight each other until one of them is unconscious aside, creating a team of strong Pokemon and have them work all the way up to face the Champion of a region is one of the most fulfilling aspects of a mainline Pokemon title. Something that can top that thrill, is when a Pokemon player challenges their friends to a battle, to truly test their team against a non-AI opponent.

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According to a recently dug-up interview from the late 1990s, it seems that Pokemon Red and Blue almost didn't allow for the ultimate test of player versus player battling. Game Freak Producer Shigeki Morimoto was concerned that battling with friends would be a difficult thing to program in the early Pokemon titles, and «personally didn't find the idea very interesting.» With interest low at Game Freak, Nintendo stepped in to ensure that Pokemon would have multiplayer battles, as this was something the company wanted in the game. Considering how multiplayer and competitive Pokemon has evolved since the