I don’t pay much attention to Logan Paul, the content creator turned wrestler with side hustles that involve turning Pokémon cards into heartless cash grabs and a failed NFT game. But the social media persona entered my field of view last night after making a now viral post pitching his idea for a new Pokémon game. Well, “new” is a stretch, considering what he’s asking for is essentially another fucking remake of the original Pokémon Red and Blue games. But having been in the series’ vicinity for almost 30 years, I know that this is the type of artless pitch lapsed and casual Pokémon fans would happily gobble down like Moomoo Milk.
Pushing aside with all our might that this reads like a pitch to Game Freak that was probably written by ChatGPT (“nostalgic equity” is a phrase no human has ever said), let’s look at what Paul is actually asking for.
Idea for The Pokémon Company:
I think there is a MASSIVE opportunity to capitalize on the decades of nostalgic equity that fans have with the franchise
The same frenzy that originally propelled Pokémon into mainstream culture lives within millions of adults that yearn for the…
— Logan Paul (@LoganPaul) January 5, 2026
He says that The Pokémon Company has a “massive opportunity” to bank on nostalgia, as if Pikachu and friends have ever not taken the opportunity to shove the original Kanto starters into something over the past 30 years. He also mentions how, every few years, he’ll boot up the original games on a Game Boy to find “just as much joy” playing back through them as he had as a child.
He then admits he doesn’t have “much of a connection” to newer Pokémon, which is where he begins to give the game away. He does like Annihilape and Baxcalibur, suggesting he’s not completely out of the loop. But since he doesn’t really seem to care about anything Pokémon has done in the last 27 years, he argues it would be cool for Game Freak to create “remastered” versions of the Generation I Game Boy games, with “adaptive NPCs that evolve alongside the player.”
He says they could even use modern technology to let players connect to the internet for trading and battling, something Pokémon has literally been doing for 20 years, ever since Diamond and Pearl on the DS. He goes on:
This will do three things
1.) Give older fans a chance to relive their childhood thus awakening a massive, dormant demographic
2.) Give newer, younger fans a taste of what originally made the franchise so special
3.) Bridge the gap for older fans who don’t connect with newer Pokémon in a way that’s familiar to them
If we believe that video game cycles are like a pendulum, the near-future of gaming may birth a desire for more simplified, block-based aesthetics. We already see it happening with games like Minecraft & Roblox. As technology continues to advance at an alarmingly rapid pace, I personally believe the future will lean towards “retro”
This LinkedIn-ass post tries to intellectualize what is obvious nostalgia-pining as some kind of market inevitability; that it would just be good business sense for Pokémon to go back to Kanto for the people who only played those original games decades ago, outgrew them, and now think the problem is that the all-ages franchise has fallen “behind the times.” Also, crucially, Game Freak already remade those original games twice with FireRed/LeafGreen and the Let’s Go games on Switch, the latter of which are only seven years old.
Yes, the original Red and Blue are still the best-selling games in the franchise, and maybe some people are too young to realize that the level of Pokémania back then was far beyond the still massive success Pokémon enjoys right now. To insinuate that Pokémon is in danger of getting away from its base of ‘90s kids, though, is like saying the sun isn’t shining because you’re inside and can’t feel its warmth. But this is the sentiment of a lot of retired Pokémon trainers who stopped playing in elementary school and mistake their own lack of interest for the series no longer having the sauce.
It’s the same mentality that makes people mad that Scarlet and Violet have “regular animals” in them like Flamigo when Red and Blue had Seel, or who didn’t like that Gen V and VI had Pokémon made of “objects” when Grimer and Voltorb were literal sludge and a living Poké Ball. Pokémon made me feel something specific as a child, and now that I’m an adult and my brain has developed differently, I don’t feel that way anymore. Instead of the realities of adulthood crushing my spirit, it must be because the Pokémon games don’t have Professor Oak and Misty in them all the time.
If all you’re looking at is video game sales numbers, you probably could foolishly think Pokémon is “struggling” in the market compared to what it hit in the ‘90s, despite the absolute trashfire that was Scarlet and Violet still readily selling around 27 million copies, a number any other company would kill to hit. But Pokémon is a lifestyle brand that makes most of its money from merchandise sales, and you would think someone who played a major role in inflating the value of the trading cards would know that.
Honestly, if people like Paul want something that feels just like the old games did when they were five, try a ROM hack. Fans have been making retro-style Pokémon games for decades. They’re not only great, they’ll probably also make you feel cozy-wozy with their pixelated graphics that look like what you played on your Game Boy. And hey, you can probably find plenty that don’t include all the hundreds of new Pokémon you don’t like, but which millions of younger players grew up on and hold as dear as old-timers do Pikachu or Charmander.
This yearning for the mines of Kanto exists around the periphery of Pokémon every day, and it’s only going to ratchet up more this year with the series’ 30th anniversary celebrations already paying tribute to those old games. ROM hacks, mock-ups from people who don’t even like the games anymore, and even fan art are constantly gesturing at the series’ old aesthetics. I still have my original copy of Pokémon Yellow sitting on my shelf to this day, and maybe if Game Freak releases those old games on Switch this year, I’ll play it again.
But I don’t need The Pokémon Company to keep looking back. And the company certainly doesn’t need to tap into a “massive,” untapped well of fair-weather fans who will come back to the franchise for good if they remake Red and Blue again. I think it’ll live.
