 Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX is adorable. It's also a chance to revisit the very first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, which laid the groundwork for one of the most popular Pokemon spin-off series. Did you know, though, that Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team are actually also Dragon Quest spin-off games? Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team only came into existence because the head of the Pokemon Company is an enormous fan of the long-running Mystery Dungeon series of games from Chunsoft. Indeed, when Satoru Iwata first heard of plans to make a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game, he said, that sounds impossible. But it would be amazing if they could pull it off. Back in 1993, Koichi Nakamura, co-creator of the Dragon Quest series, was looking to make something new. A colleague was playing a lot of rogue, a tough game with a random layout that was different every playthrough. Koichi gave it a try and was very unimpressed. He said, I played it for a whole week and didn't see what was supposed to be so fun about it. As he stuck with it, he began to see the appeal but didn't like its random difficulty spikes. So Koichi and his team started experimenting with making their own rogue-like game but tried to make it more fair and balanced. The original Dragon Quest had been an endeavour to simplify the role-playing game experience, and this new title tried to do the same thing with the emerging rogue-like genre. In their game, players would face a Mystery Dungeon, filled with random runes, enemies, and loot, making the game feel fresh every time you picked up the controller but not overwhelming the player with tough difficulty spikes. The result was Tornico's Big Adventure, a spin-off from the Dragon Quest game, and the first title in the new Mystery Dungeon series. From here, Chunsoft took the formula and applied it to their own original characters but also worked with other famous role-playing game brands, such as Final Fantasy. It's worth noting that, prior to Red and Blue Rescue Team, only two Mystery Dungeon games were released in the West. This was not a series that had any kind of reputation outside of Japan. Enter Tsunekazu Ishihara, who would eventually become president of the Pokémon Company. The first time he played Tornico's Big Adventure, he was blown away. He loved this style of gameplay, a game he says he must have played a thousand times. Years later, when he started working on the Pokémon brand, he was desperate for the chance to work with Chunsoft on a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game. Tsunekazu was able to convince Chunsoft to consent to this collaboration, but many developers at the studio were hesitant to say the least. It was only because the head of the Pokémon Company himself was pushing for the game that it ever saw the light of day. Without really knowing how to approach this crossover, the creative team at Chunsoft decided to focus on giving the Pokémon a certain amount of charm. They tried to make them feel more like well-rounded characters than in the main Pokémon games, with their own personalities that shined through both the dialogue and the artwork. One creator, Shinichiro Tomi, wrote up a proposed story for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, which he took to Tsunekazu. Shinichiro wasn't entirely sure how to make a Pokémon-style narrative work for a Mystery Dungeon game, and it showed in his early story pitch. The head of the Pokémon Company flat out rejected this plan for the game. It didn't match his vision of how the crossover should work. As a fan of Mystery Dungeon games, he wanted a story that did justice to the series. Tsunekazu then instructed the team to create a story where the player is a human who is transformed into a Pokémon. This would help provide the game with that cute charm they were aiming for, and it made the game something fundamentally different from the main series Pokémon role playing games. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, Red Rescue Team, and Blue Rescue Team were released worldwide, and quickly became Western audience's primary point of reference for the Mystery Dungeon games. From this, the Pokémon Company continued to work with Chunsoft on more titles in the series, all the way up to the present day, and the release of Rescue Team DX. All of this came about simply because the president of the Pokémon Company was a big fan of Mystery Dungeon games, and wanted to work on one himself. The moral of the story is that no matter how impossible your dreams might seem, you never know. They could come true. Don't lose faith. You never know what tomorrow will bring. Do your best, have patience, and look forward to the adventure that is waiting just around the corner. Thank you very much for watching. I'm supposed to direct you to some of our other videos now. Can't really recommend a specific one, but I'm assuming if you're here for Pokémon content, we've got lots of those. Go check one out. Hey, go watch all our other stuff!