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.
The recaps, for instance, were created because data suggested girls played for shorter and more spread out increments than boys, perhaps making them more likely to forget where they left off and what they were doing. Nowadays, such a quality-of-life feature would be amazing in just about any RPG available, but I digress.
The general difficulty was lowered, to make it more welcoming, to girls, moms and grandmothers alike, according to Masuda. This is another aspect I'd place under sound development decisions, as difficulty curves are really more of an art than a science and it's good to review things wherever possible.
Even the Pokedex was altered to be more appealing to young women, becoming more like a notebook than an electronic device. I hadn't really thought of this decision too deeply, but aesthetically, I think I prefer it, since it gets rid of looking at an electronic device on an electronic device.
Nothing is said on whether these choices led to a great expansion in the playerbase, but since it's Pokemon, it might be hard to tell given the popularity of Gen 1 overall. Either way, these were worthwhile changes, and contribute to these games remaining as popular as they are.
