Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon devs on how Team Rainbow Rocket came to be, designing Ultra Beasts, more
The official Pokemon site published a new interview with Kazumasa Iwao and Shigeru Ohmori from Game Freak today. The two developers had plenty to say about Pokemon Ultra Sun and Pokemon Ultra Moon. Topics included the creation of Team Rainbow Rocket, designing Ultra Beasts, and more.
Continue on below for the full interview.
Know Your History
Pokemon.com: What were your first experiences with the Pokémon brand as players? How did you end up working at GAME FREAK?
Kazumasa Iwao: I first played the Pokémon Red and Pokémon Greengames when I was a kid and enjoyed each entry in the series after that. When it became time to look for work, I thought about what I wanted to do, and I knew I wanted create games. So I decided to pursue a career at GAME FREAK, who had created some of the games I really enjoyed.
Shigeru Ohmori: My younger brother was the perfect age for Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green when they came out, and I picked up the games to play together with him. We both got really hooked on the games, and we would battle and trade together, along with his friends.
I knew I wanted to work in video games as a game designer, but there weren’t a lot of companies at the time recruiting for that position. However, I found a job posting at GAME FREAK to the position and applied for it.
Pokemon.com: What were the first titles you worked on, and what were your roles on those games?
Mr. Iwao: I first worked on Pokémon Black and Pokémon White as a game designer. I worked on the UI, battle system, and the Pokémon Musical feature. I was a complete beginner and wasn’t knowledgeable about game development, but I was lucky to be able to work on so many different aspects of the game.
Mr. Ohmori: I first worked as a game designer on the Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire games. I worked primarily on the game environments and communication features. For the television connectivity features, I came up with the initial concepts and worked on them to completion.
The Roots of Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon
Pokemon.com: These games are a bit of a departure from previous follow-up titles like Pokémon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition or even Pokémon Black Version 2 and Pokémon White Version 2. What would you call out as the core concept behind Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon?
Mr. Iwao: We came up with the theme of “core” for the development of the game. We decided that we wanted to always focus on the core, or what serves as the base of things, and always focus on what is truly important when developing this game, and that’s how we landed on the theme. What is the “core” of Pokémon? What is the “core” or an RPG? What is the “core” of what makes a game? We would constantly ask ourselves these kinds of questions to make sure we were on the right track when coming up with new ideas for the game or making development decisions.
Pokemon.com: Bringing back so many characters from previous games with Team Rainbow Rocket unifies the Pokémon universe in a way we haven’t quite seen before. What was the impetus for that idea?
Mr. Iwao: Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon are really kind of a culmination of our efforts up until now, and we knew when setting out on development that we wanted to do something that features characters from the other Pokémon games. At first, we were planning to just have some of the bosses from previous games appear in the Battle Agency, but these characters have so much personality, and our story writer felt like he could come up with a story featuring them that could be possible only in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon. That’s how the post-game Team Rainbow Rocket scenario got its start.
In the game, each of the bosses comes from a world in which they managed to fulfill their dark ambitions. Worlds in which the player character must not have existed. Playing with parallel worlds like this is only possible because of the existence of an Ultra Wormhole in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon. Because the player character exists in the Alola region, he or she will have the chance to stop them from achieving their ambitions.
