Pokémon Red Version and Blue Version are role-playing video games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy. They are the first installments of the Pokémon series. They were first released in Japan in 1996 as Red and Green. “Blue” was released later in the year as a special edition. They were later released as Red and Blue in North America, Europe, and Australia over the following three years. Pokémon Yellow, a special edition version, was released roughly a year later. Red and Green have subsequently been remade for the Game Boy Advance as Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, released in 2004.
The player controls the protagonist from an overhead perspective and navigates him throughout the fictional region of Kanto in a quest to master Pokémon battling. The goal of the games is to become the champion of the Indigo League by defeating the eight Gym Leaders and then the top four Pokémon trainers in the land, the Elite Four. Another objective is to complete the Pokédex, an in-game encyclopedia, by obtaining the 150 available Pokémon. Red and Blue utilize the Game Link Cable, which connects two games together and allows Pokémon to be traded or battled between games. Both titles are independent of each other but feature the same plot, and while they can be played separately, it is necessary for players to trade among both games in order to obtain all of the first 150 Pokémon.