New details on Saturo Iwata’s work on Pokémon Gold/Silver have been discovered
Iwata had previously been credited for including two regions in the second generation of games
New information about Saturo Iwata’s input into the development of Pokémon Gold and Silver has been discovered.
It has long been believed that Saturo Iwata was responsible for helping Game Freak fit the Kanto region, as well as the Johto region into one GameBoy cartridge of Pokémon Gold and Silver, but a new investigation suggests that isn’t the case.
A new video from DidYouKnowGaming suggests that data from Pokémon Gold and Silver actually point to Iwata’s work being related to the game’s speed.
According to the investigation, Iwata repurposed code from Earthbound for Pokémon Gold and Silver, which made the game run quicker than it did prior to Iwata’s involvement.
As shown in the video, the improvements are very marginal, with Iwata’s code saving as little as a fraction of a second in some cases. This can be seen when encountering wild Pokémon.
For years, a rumor had persisted that Iwata managed to reduce the game size of Pokémon Gold and Silver, which allowed the games to include more content, but DidYouKnowGaming actually points out that Iwata’s code made the games take up more room on the GameBoy cartridges.
Several Nintendo luminaries are responsible for large contributions to the Pokémon franchise. For example, it was Shigeru Miyamoto who suggested to Game Freak that the original Pokemon title be split into two games, each containing version-exclusive Pokémon, in order to encourage trading with other versions. This has since become a staple of the franchise.
