>>57386367>>57386398Wrong, Pokemania was already dead before RS.
>"After Gold and Silver came out, it was a huge hit around the world, but shortly after everyone was saying, 'That’s it. The Pokémon fad is over! It’s dead!'," Masuda says.>"At the time, the atmosphere and general thinking was that the Pokémon fad was over and there was huge pressure to prove people wrong," Masuda says. Toy stores that used to be filled with Pokémon toys were clearing out their stock, and when visiting America, Masuda says he noticed that all the Pokémon merchandise, including the unofficial toys featured at mall kiosks, were beginning to disappear. "The next time I visited it was all Star Wars. Everyone was saying it was on a downtrend, the fad’s over and I really felt that pressure to make something amazing," Masuda says.>Despite the general perception of the series, and Masuda's stress-induced hospital visit, he never gave in to the pressure. "We at Game Freak took that as a challenge and said, 'It’s not dead. We’re going to show you guys you’re wrong!'." Masuda says, and ultimately, it worked out. Game Freak were able to use the names Ruby and Sapphire and the games sold well. "The morning after, the day of release, I went into the local shop and saw people lining up to buy it and was extremely relieved. It was close. Super scary at the time."RS was made specifically to prove Pokemon's American appeal could outlive Pokemania, and it succeeded in doing so.
Crystal being a shitty third version and the Johto Anime being a massive turd that completely dropped the ball (literally, the GS Ball which had been set up since the end of Indigo League getting swept under the rug because it conflicted with the executives wanting a Celebi movie forced them to scrap basically everything) were damning marks against Pokemon, not helped by natural fad decay, the Nintendo VS Sony consolewars, other franchises such as the aforementioned Star Wars, Harry Potter, Yu-Gi-Oh and the like, and so on.
