"Hello there! Welcome to the world of Pokémon!"
Pokémon games have long been a staple of Nintendo's lineup on their handhelds. From 1996 all the way to 2017, we've been graced with Pokémon games that kept us glued to our handheld screens, sharing rumors and myths with friends at school, and even trading or battling with buddies. While we did eventually get Pokémon Stadium 1 and 2 on N64—finally bringing Pokémon to the home console—they weren't fully-fledged Pokémon RPGs, acting more as an expansion of the Game Boy games. It wouldn't be until the GameCube that we'd finally get what we'd been waiting for—an actual Pokémon RPG on a home console, in the form of Pokémon Colosseum. With the Switch and Sword and Shield, we'd start seeing mainline Pokémon games on home console.
One of the reasons why it took so long for the mainline Pokémon series to come to a home console is because Game Freak wanted to keep the social aspects of Pokémon at the forefront of the experience.
So why didn't we get a Pokémon RPG on N64? That would've been the perfect time to release something like that, right? Well, we just about had it. Pocket Monsters RPG was going to be that game. Originally planned for the doomed N64DD (a failed add-on for the N64, allowing more storage) Pocket Monsters RPG was going to be everything we'd known and loved about Pokémon on Game Boy and Game Boy Color, except in 3D.
Unfortunately the idea was very short-lived, and there aren't even any tech demos or images of the game to share. According to an interview with Tsunekazu Ishihara (the president and CEO of The Pokémon Company), there were plans for multiple Pokémon games for N64DD, which turned out to be Hey You, Pikachu!, Pokémon Snap, and Pokémon Stadium. Alongside those was supposed to have been a Pokémon game in the same line as the Pokémon Game Boy games. But that's it. We never heard about it ever again.
There are a number of theories floating around as to why the game just disappeared. As we know, the N64DD failed commercially, was not sold worldwide, and any games planned for it had to be scrapped or reworked. It's likely that the game was scrapped in favor of the development of Pokémon Stadium and the other Pokémon games that had to be reworked for use without the N64DD. Some great points made by TheGamer.com point to the incredibly rocky development of Pokémon Gold and Silver. At that time, the development team was very small, and were already being stretched too thin with the development of G&S (Gold and Silver), the localization of Red and Blue, and the development of Pokémon Stadium. Rather than adding more to their plate, they probably decided to just can Pocket Monsters RPG.
While there aren't any official images or videos of the game to share, the images above are from a pretty rad mock-up of the game done by a Reddit user named "Rorustudio".
The video below by Nolan Thunder on YouTube provides a lot more detail, along with some fantastic references.
What was this game going to be? Was it supposed to have been a remake of Red and Blue for N64? Was it going to be its own self-contained adventure, like Colosseum or XD? Would it have any kind of connectivity with the Game Boy/Game Boy Color games?
Sadly, we'll never know.
