Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen's recaps, new Pokedex and lower difficulty were all designed to bring in more girls and elderly players, director of the remakes says in resurfaced interview

Key art for Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen showing Charizard against a swirling red background, cropped for a header image.

Prospective Pokemon Masters are heading back out into Kanto to try to be the very best, like no-one ever was, thanks to LeafGreen and FireRed arriving on Nintendo Switch last month. As people have been diving back into the re-releases, an interview has resurfaced where the director of the remakes explained some design decisions were expressly made to attract a more female audience.

Junichi Masuda, the director of the Game Boy Advance remakes, explained the changes to Japanese publication Nintendo Dream in 2004. As translated by DidYouKnowGaming, the aim was to pull Pokemon's audience away from being predominantly for boys, and the team worked toward this by looking at how girls tend to play video games.