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"It was a very stressful project, for sure," Masuda says. The games were meant to be the starting line for the next few Pokémon games. The Pokémon fad is over! It’s dead!'," Masuda says. "After Gold and Silver came out, it was a huge hit around the world, but shortly after everyone was saying, 'That’s it.
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The main problem with the game wasn't the technical side, but rather the general opinion surrounding the franchise in the early 2000s. "It allowed us to do a lot more and gave us more freedom, but at the same time it made it take a lot longer to do things and was more resource-intensive." "With Ruby and Sapphire, the screen got a little longer and it was a different aspect ratio, a lot more colors and sound channels so the tech was improved dramatically," Masuda says. In some ways, the technical leap between the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance helped development. Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire released in 2003 to wide acclaim and impressive sales. Pokémon X and Y may have marked the series' biggest graphical upgrade, but according to Game Freak co-founder and Pokémon director, producer, and composer Junichi Masuda, the most difficult Pokémon to bring across the finish line were the games that brought the series to the Game Boy Advance. The Pokémon series has transitioned between three different handheld generations comfortably (four if you count Game Boy to Game Boy Color), but there is one one in particular that proved more difficult than the rest.
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