Pokémon Gen 1 Almost Missed A Massive Game-Defining Feature, According To CEO

Published Aug 28, 2026, 8:47 PM EDT

Chris is a Gaming Editor at ScreenRant. He has been a professional writer since 2009, and has written for top TV, comics, movie, and video game outlets like Engadget, Polygon, Destructoid, and more. He brings with him an expertise in every game genre, no matter how niche or mainstream.

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Pokémon quickly became a global sensation, but at one time, it was just an idea. Although we're a full nine Generations in at this point, across multiple console and handheld eras, there were plenty of challenges developer Game Freak needed to solve before the game could actually be released.

We had the chance to attend a panel at Pokémon Worlds/Pokémon XP 2026 live in San Francisco, California, with current Pokémon CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara, who talked about the trials and tribulations of getting the original game out the door, as well as future challenges for the series. He was pretty open about how tough it was to clear some bars, especially when it came to a key feature that defines the entire series.

The original Generation of Pokémon took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to produce, and Ishihara was willing to give us a taste of what went into that process live on stage at Worlds.

Although Game Freak and The Pokémon Company have talked about it in the past, Ishihara delved further into the high-stakes release of the first Generation of Pokémon, before it became a global sensation. He dug into one issue in particular: the team debated whether to drop the link cable feature entirely for the first Game Boy release.

Evidently, the team ran into a major problem with how the link cable worked, specifically if there was a disconnect or a connection issue during a trade. In the end, he said there were two outcomes they had to choose from: both Pokémon are lost forever in the trade, or both are duplicated.

Ultimately, the team chose the latter, as Ishihara explained through an on-stage translator: "In the end we discussed it with everyone involved, and gained acceptance for the possibility that when the link cable is unplugged, we erred on the side of duplicating the Pokémon in rare circumstances."

Ishihara expands on that, noting that they implemented some measures to protect against duplication: "We did everything we could to minimize that [duplication], like introducing randomness and timing into the communication. But of course millions of players are playing the game, and discovering ways to trigger this duplication, so that was kind of an issue for us...but at the same time we don't regret it at all."

At the end of the panel, Pokémon fans asked Ishihara a final question: "What is the best part of being CEO of the Pokémon company?" According to the CEO, the answer was simple: “Being able to play the games a little bit sooner than everyone else.”