>>50532968As a game? It was nothing masterpiece-worthy, but it was extremely novel for the time and somehow held itself up good enough to execute its concept mostly-competently. For a bunch of monsters fully conceived as sprites first, they did a legitimately great job (for the most part) at having an ambitious ensemble of 151 charming, varied creatures of all sorts of inspirations and ideas.
As a region? It's nice, but I wouldn't call it revolutionary either. Generic as all hell for a grounded, modern-day urban setting and lacked any of that distinct fantasy charm that the MOTHER franchise seized and ran with. Everyone always cites how "open" it was too, but that barely amounted to much that mattered in the long run since the game wasn't balanced for going out of order. The most you'd get was sneaking your way to catch a few somewhat-higher leveled monsters, or generally overleveling for gyms you should have fought several hours ago because you wanted to fight Koga before you fought Surge.
Historically in general? Nigga, it's why Pokemon's even still standing today. But it's not actually because of the games, it's because of the toys, TCG and anime, all of which were devised by a genius-yet-scummy businessman, Tsunekazu Ishihara. And while that was going on, as he saw Yen Signs where Pokemon was, he started seeing Currency Signs everywhere else Pokemon could be. If it wasn't for him, it's incredibly unlikely Pokemon would have been ever considered for localization given how many of its designs were too abstract or Japanese for an overseas market to truly understand, and the franchise may well have actually concluded at Gen 2 without the millions upon millions of profits.
