Twitter appears to be in its death throes, but the app has at least given us one more surprising video game Easter egg, and it cuts straight to the origins of Pokemon as we know it.
As our friends at PC Gamer spotted, Junichi Masuda, co-founder of primary Pokemon developer Game Freak and now "chief creative fellow" at The Pokemon Company itself, recently posted an innocuous photo of a Japanese studio with the (auto machine translated) caption: "On the 5th of July, Pokemon was born in Japan, where Game Freak once lived."
7がつ5にちここは にほんの しもきたざわむかし ゲームフリークが あったばしょここで ポケモンが うまれた pic.twitter.com/HRv0E4uN43July 5, 2023
I also ran the post through DeepL and touched it up with my own limited Japanese, and the result is a little more informative: "July 5th. This is Japane's [Shimokitazawa]. Where Game Freak used to be. This is where Pokémon [was] born." The former studio Masuda's referencing is in Japan's west Tokyo Shimokitazawa neighborhood, which has been highlighted before.
At first blush, this appeared to be little more than an innocent bit of nostalgia acknowledging the 34th anniversary of Pokemon's life. However, fans like Pokemon sleuth Lewtwo were quick to point out that July 5 also carries special meaning within the Pokemon universe: it's the same day that the Legendary Mew was discovered.
An old data log in the 1996 Red and Blue Pokemon games confirms that on July 5, in Guyana, South America, "a new Pokemon was discovered deep in the jungle." We now know that mysterious Pokemon was Mew, as it was later named on July 10. Curiously, and in defiance of Pokemon movie lore, a February 6 log also says "Mew gave birth" and the newborn was named Mewtwo, but we're not going to worry about the ramifications of that right now or how it was seemingly retconned in Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee.
The point is, Masuda has seemingly revealed a Pokemon Easter egg that's been hidden – or at least virtually unknown – for 27 years. Mew's appeared in countless games, and the history of Pokemon has been chronicled to death, but I've never seen the date of its discovery connected to the birth of the series until now.
Meanwhile, a bunch of Pokemon fans are playing a custom ROM with the extremely cursed ability of Infinite Fusion.
