Pokemon Red and Blue almost had 65,000 different versions instead of 2

videogameschronicle.com:

Game Freak originally wanted the first Pokémon game to have 65,000 variations, instead of two, it has been revealed. 

In a new report from Did You Know Gaming, the channel has unearthed old interviews from the creative team behind the original Pokémon games and discovered that the team initially wanted the game to have thousands of differences depending on a randomly assigned number to each player. 

This idea was dropped after being presented to Shigeru Miyamoto, who suggested the games simply have different colour palettes, as the 65,000 differences would be very difficult to implement. 

Notice: To display this embed please allow the use of Functional Cookies in Cookie Preferences.

How this would work would be based on the Trainer ID system found in the early games. When a player starts a new game of Pokémon Red or Blue, they’ll be assigned a number between 1 and 65,000. This is a Trainer ID and in early generations determined very little.

However, this was originally supposed to change which Pokémon appeared in each game and some elements of the world such as the shape of certain forests. 

In a Japan-only book titled ‘PokeDex’ from 1996, programmer Takenori Oota revealed: “We also considered having each game generate a random ID number the first time it was booted up and that number would determine which Pokémon appeared in the game.” 

While the random number remained, and would be used in later generations for determining some small things, the determination of which Pokémon appeared in which game was changed to being based on which colour version a player purchased. 

In a 1997 issue of Famimaga 64, Game Freak founder Satoshi Tajiri revealed that it was a visit with Shigeru Miyamoto that changed his mind on the concept. 

“The