>>47623717There was a mountain of ideas to make trading fun!
-In “Pocket Monsters”, were “collecting” and “trade” ideas you had since the beginning?
Tajiri: The first time I saw the Game Boy I paid attention to the link cable capabilities, I honestly first thought of using its trading capabilities to battle. The very idea of “exchange” made me feel a gorjeus impression, as with this cable, lots of information can travel much like tv or radio.With this I thought that something amazing could be made.From there the idea of “trading through cable” raised living beings came from.
Sugimori:for example you could trade something rare that you found in the game and boast about it.
Tajiri:For example, Dragon Quests had the rare item Mad cap, and Sugimori tells me he has two. I played for days trying to get a mad cap, and almost gave up and thought it'd be nice if someone who had two could lend me one. So since the beginning I had a strong feeling of wanting to develop an rpg where people “traded”. The rpg and raising aspects were added later on.
-So, as long as you traded there was no problem if it wasn't an rpg?
Tajiri: Yeah. But “trading” could only happen if there was merit from both sides. Originally, in “pocket monsters” the monsters where bought with money, but that'd make battles a matter of saving money, and the value of the effort of looking them up and catching them would be lost. Thinking from that, the game style slowly came together. I also thought of a way to add money to the Pokémon exchange if there was a clear difference in value between the Pokémon submitted by the two parties, but expressing the Pokémon value and the money value in the game goes beyond the limits of what we could do.
