Game Freak can't add hundreds of new Pokemon and more Types every generation or else new games would take too long to make, director says: "If you added like 300 or so new monsters, that'd just be too many"

Pikachu facing an angry Raichu in the Pokemon anime series.

There are well over 1,000 Pokemon now, steadily added in batches of about 100 new creatures every generation. It's easy to wonder if developer Game Freak is going to run out of ideas, but, historically, that didn't seem to be a major concern at the studio. In fact, the devs apparently have so many ideas for new Pokemon that the real challenge is narrowing them down.

As veteran Pokemon art director Ken Sugimori previously explained in an old interview with games™ (a sister publication to Retro Gamer), "The reason why there are about 100 Pokemon added per game is not that we can't come up with the ideas, especially when we have new staff – everyone can come up with unique ideas. The number is set by the duration of the project."