We’re all now used to every big-name game coming out in five differently priced versions, each containing more in-game stuff than the last, but no matter which you choose you will still be buying the same game. That’s never been the case for the mainline Pokémon series, starting even with its very first English-language release in 1998 with Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue, each version subtly (but to fans, crucially) different. But have you ever stopped to wonder why? The reason is wonderfully silly.

Creating two versions of what mostly boils down to the same game is certainly not an obvious choice. It introduces a huge amount of confusion to an unaware audience, not sure which is the most recent game or whether they’re making a mistake by buying one over the other. To those familiar with the series, it’s a huge feature and selling point, and deciding which version of the game you’re going to buy and why is a big part of the experience. But given the fear of alienation and confusion, it’s hard to imagine most marketing executives would ever allow such a conceit to survive its first boardroom whisper. Yet one of the best-selling game series of all time suggests it can work out OK.

But why? Well, as GamesRadar spotted via Genki_JPN’s X account, in a recent shareholders meeting Nintendo director Shigeru Miyamoto was asked if anything could ever outsell Mario Kart 8. This caused him to recall a conversation with the creator of the Pokémon franchise, Satoshi Tajiri, about how the monster-catching games could ever outdo the success of the Mario games. Via machine translation, Miyamoto told investors, “A long time ago, Tajiri-san, the director of Pokémon, joked with me that if you want to surpass Nintendo’s Mario you’ll have to sell two copies of the game to each customer.”

In a shareholders meeting Shigeru Miyamoto shared a story about Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri and one of the reasons Pokémon Red and Green came to be!

“A long time ago, Tajiri-san, the director of Pokémon, before creating the first Pokémon game, once joked to me ‘If you want to… pic.twitter.com/YTS4AvAbu9

— Genki✨ (@Genki_JPN) November 6, 2025

Miyamoto continued, “This was one of the reasons why Pokémon Red and Green were created.”

(In Japan, the games were originally released in 1996 as Red and Green, with a Blue later the same year.)

For what it’s worth, it’s rarely actually worked! As phenomenally successful as the Pokémon games have been, Mario tends to beat them on each system. The two wins for Pokémon in this match-up have been Pokémon Gold and Silver on Game Boy Color and Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire on Game Boy Advance. On the DS, 3DS and Switch, Mario has taken the lead each time. (There were no mainline Pokémon games on Wii or Wii U.) But it certainly hasn’t hurt, either, with Sword and Shield selling 26.84 million copies, and Scarlet and Violet hitting 27.15 million. It’s just that Mario Kart 8 has rather rudely sold 69.56 million, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 36.93 million, and Super Mario Odyssey 29.84 million.