>>58416404In an extensive Game Informer feature on Game Freak and Pokémon from 2017 before USUM, Masuda talks about how he joined the Gold and Silver team in 1998 after finishing his work on a side project (music for Bushi Seiryūden) and how everything was in total disarray. We can see from the Spaceworld 97 demos from November 1997 that there was no new music or even new cries/SFX in the ROM, stuff Masuda was entirely responsible for in Gen I. He clearly wasn't on the team at the time, and we know not long after Spaceworld, Nintendo and Game Freak went radio silent for over a year, and that's because the entire project as it was got scrapped and they used what pieces they could for the version we got. Masuda is listed as sub-director in GS in Japanese (and the possibly more accurate co-director in the localization), and Tajiri just took a backseat role from then on while Masuda immediately took over as director of the following three mainline releases.
>Gold and Silver (sub-DIRECTOR)>Crystal (DIRECTOR)>Ruby and Sapphire (DIRECTOR)>FireRed and LeafGreen (DIRECTOR)>Emerald>Diamond and Pearl (DIRECTOR)I like imagining him as Leto, this tyrannical despot who's iron grip on everything is seen as suffocating, but his actions are ultimately best and he knows this. Where it falls apart is that what Leto did was best for humanity countless eons from now, while Masuda's micromanagement ultimately doomed Game Freak to not being able to manage themselves.
