1. Simultaneous Worldwide Release – A First for the Series

Under development

We are releasing both games simultaneously around the world¹ for the first time in the series, something we have wanted to do for a long time. How does that make you feel Ishihara-san?¹. Excludes certain regions.

That has been a goal for years, so it’s inexpressible. But simply put, when development began, I thought it might be impossible! (laughs)

Even though it was your idea, you thought it would never work. (laughs)

I questioned it at first too.

You too?! (laughs)

Yeah! (laughs)

Actually, I thought that too. (laughs)

(laughs)

When I first heard about it from my staff, I couldn’t help but ask, “What? Are we really going to do it?!”

But as development progressed, I realised we could do it. We didn’t make different games in different languages for different countries. Instead, we took a seven-in-one approach. In other words, we put all seven languages – Japanese, English, French and so on – into one version of software, and the players can choose whichever language they like. When these games were done, I wanted to praise myself even though I didn’t do that part myself! (laughs)

(laughs)

But that’s how strong a sense of accomplishment it was, so I’m extremely happy.

I suppose making it was hard, but the seven-in-one approach simply made sense in some ways.

Yes. Until now, we’ve always made seven separate versions of the software, one for each language, but this time we just needed to make one.

How was it for you during the hands-on work, Masuda-san? Wasn’t the seven-in-one approach extremely difficult with a Pokémon game?

It sure was.

What was the biggest hurdle?

The script. Until now we would first write the Japanese, then translate it to English, before translating it into the various languages like French and German. But this time we went directly from the Japanese into all the other languages.

It truly was “directly”! (laughs)

Yeah! (laughs) Since we did it “directly”, the translation progressed speedily.

And lots of new Pokémon show up when there’s a new Pokémon game. Wasn’t it hard deciding on names for all of them?

Oh yeah! The team has particular staff members for assigning names, and – practically in tears – they gave it their best! (laughs)

(laughs)

Tons of names have already been used up, so thinking up new Pokémon names is incredibly difficult.

You have to come up with names that fit each Pokémon, like expressing their physical form. And you have to make sure not to infringe on any rights.

Right. And this time we wanted to make the names the same in every country around the world if possible, so those put to the task really struggled. However, the sense of accomplishment was incredible.

I have a feeling you did this (pumping his fist) whenever the team came up with a great name that didn’t have any rights issues anywhere in the world, am I right? (laughs)

You sure are! (laughs)