The groundbreaking Pokémon Red & Blue spearheaded what would be a cultural phenomenon, still relevant two decades later all around the world. The small Japanese RPG would quickly catch fire and hooked both fans in its native Japan and those around the world. The games probably aren’t as good as you remember them being but hey, what two-decade old game is? Like almost any game released within the last twenty years, the games have a plethora of hidden secrets fans have spent years discovering and documenting. But among them there are some that are better off left untouched, unless you want to get ticked off.

While some game secrets can be interesting others can be rage inducing as they either highlight some incompetence on the developers part or simply show us features we would’ve loved to see in the games but can’t due to either restrictions or simply a bad judgment call. It just goes to show you that some things are better left unknown. While we most likely want to know about these things they can really turn sour quick – especially when it’s in regards to such a legendary game. Here are 15 things you never knew about Red & Blue that will make you pissed off.

15 Charizard Can’t Fly

This might be something a lot of you who never played the original games never once thought of. That’s because it kind of seems silly to think that there would be a Pokémon game that limited you to the extent that it wouldn’t allow you to teach your Charizard Fly. For whatever reason, Game Freak made it so the menacing Fire-type couldn’t be taught the useful HM. This was quickly fixed in Yellow but left all of us with Red & Blue scratching our heads at the odd choice by the developers. But it’s not all bad. Since it was fixed in Yellow, you could technically have a Charizard in Red & Blue who knew fly, you just had to trade it.

14 Censorship?

One of the earliest interactions you can have with an NPC in the original games comes in Viridian City. Most of you who played the game will probably remember something about the tutorial that teaches you the basics of catching Pokémon. It involves an old man blocking your path. The old man is cranky due to his lack of morning coffee. But this is a little different in the original Japanese versions. He still needs some coffee, but his reasons are much different. Originally, the man was supposed to be passed out on the road drunk. However, Nintendo of America deemed this unfit for children, and so they changed it up a little. It’s an early example of bad censorship in localizations – a trend that sadly continues.

13 Female Trainer

Pokémon fans first got the choice between male and female main characters late in Gen II when Pokémon Crystal introduced the concept. Since then the games have always featured the option to choose between choosing a male or female lead. While it was nowhere to be found in Gen I, that wasn’t necessarily supposed to be the case. Initially, the plan was to have this option there from the start, as is suggested by some artwork and the official strategy guide. The female trainer was most likely removed due to hardware restrictions at the time. The game character was instead used as “Green” in the Pokémon Adventures Manga and finally made her first official appearance in the Gen III remakes as Leaf.

12 It Almost Never Happened

It’s hard to picture, but we once came very close to having a world without Pokémon. Given how popular the series is today, that might be a tough pill to swallow, but it’s true. Prior to the game's release, the concept was rejected multiple times by Nintendo. It seemed pretty bleak for a while, and at one point the idea just seemed like it would never garner enough interest to move into the developmental phase. But that all changed once Shigeru Miyamoto caught wind of the project and took a serious interest in it. In order to obtain the capital required to fund the game, Game Freak started working on several Nintendo projects – starting a long and fruitful partnership.

11 Lance’s Dragonite

Lance is by far, one of the toughest SOB’s you’ll face in Gen I. His specializing in Dragon-type Pokémon made him an incredibly tough opponent at the time considering just how overpowered Dragon-types were in early games. The Elite Four battle against him stands as one of the more frustrating you have to endure, but beating him gives you a great sense of achievement. His Dragonite is incredibly tough and can single handily decimate you if you aren’t prepared for it. It gets an unfair advantage though in that it learns barrier. Why is this unfair? Well, Dragonite can’t learn the move under ordinary circumstances – making this difficult opponent that much harder to beat.

10 Dead Raticate?

This is more of a fan theory than fact, but it does make some good points and is pretty hard to ignore. Your Rival in Gen I is kind of a d-bag. It’s pretty much one of the only things we remember about him – though to be fair, plenty of subsequent Pokémon games have also had less than savory rivals. However, his is remembered for another thing; potentially having had his Raticate die at your hands. When you encounter him in Pokémon Tower, he’ll ask you why you’re there seeing as you have no Pokémon to mourn. Throughout the conversation, it is heavily implied that he has lost a Pokémon on his adventure. His Raticate is notably missing from his party at this point, suggesting that it was mortally wounded during your last battle and died before it could get to a Pokémon center.

9 False Advertising

Since the beginning Pokémon has based itself on one catchy slogan: “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.” Most of us just caught what we thought looked cool, or whatever we so happened to run into without giving it much thought, but others went all out in their pursuit of completing their Pokédex. They soon found out that it would be harder than simply tracking every Pokémon down though. The blurb on the back of the game boxes states that 139 out of the 151 Pokémon could be caught without trading. While true, this number also included Pokémon the player had to choose between, like the starters. So the real number when taking all those Pokémon into account becomes 124, making it painfully obvious that either a second game or a close friend were needed to truly catch them all.

8 Deleted HM

There are plenty of secrets hidden away in the original Red & Blue games. You’d be surprised at just how much you can find out about a games development by taking a look at its code. Luckily, for those of us without the wherewithal to do such things ourselves, we can go find a bunch of info online. Some smart fans actually found out that there’s an unused HM in the games that never saw the light of day, and was buried sometime in the developmental process. The unused HM can be seen in between Fly and Surf and not much is known about it. It was most probably supposed to be something that could be used in open areas like Strength or Cut, but you can’t be sure.

7 Unused Type

We’ve been introduced to a bunch of new Pokémon types over the years, with the new Fairy-type being incredibly overpowered and pretty popular as a result. But there’s one type that we never even got the chance to try out. Bird-type Pokémon were apparently something that was conceived early on in the development phase as either a counterpart or alternative to Flying-types. Not much is really known about it, but it might’ve been cool to have in the game as another type option. Not that the game would have needed it, but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt to include it in the game. Sadly we’ll never know just what the Flying-type was all about and so we just have to speculate.

6 Reused Sounds

Sound engineering has come a long way in the last couple of decades. We all remember those classic retro sounds that seem to consistently bring out those nostalgic feelings. But those were done out of necessity rather than choice. This was especially true with early portable consoles seeing as they couldn’t handle sound as well. Old Pokémon used to sound pretty lo-fi and really weren’t all that distinguishable from each other. But only 37 unique sounds were used for all 151 Pokémon. The cries were modified by altering pitch and slowing down sounds. There are also four pairs of Pokémon that share the exact same cry, which seems kind of lazy.

5 Translation Errors

There are a number of weird translation errors in the original games, some of which are pretty damn confusing. Luckily, the English translation is pretty decent. But other countries weren’t as lucky with the quality of their translations. Specifically the Italian and Spanish versions of the games, where there were a few notable translation errors ranging from poor grammar to mistranslated Pokédex entries. Particularly the entry for Squirtle which mistranslates shell as sea shell. There’s also a bug that appears any time you encounter a Pokémon by fishing. It says “Hooked _____” has appeared which just doesn’t roll off the tongue. There’s also a weird error in the English version that mistakenly refers to a Raichu after a trade and claims that it’s evolved.

4 Missing No.

This is one some of you might’ve already heard about as it references to a pretty well-known glitch that occurs in the first games. Glitches happen in pretty much every game, but it takes a pretty elaborate one to cause as much of a stir as the Missing No. One did when it was first discovered. The glitch is triggered if the player has a Pokémon who know the moves Fly and Surf and go to Viridian City, triggering the catching tutorial. Afterward, the player has to go to Cinnabar Island in order to trigger the event. The aftermath of this encounter sees the item in your sixth item slot duplicated to the maximum 255.

3 Selling Pokémon?

Pokémon weren’t always supposed to be caught in the wild it seems, at least not all of them were. The idea behind Pokémon is pretty simple, go out, explore the world and catch as many little friends as you can on your adventure to be the best that you can be. Part of the fun is actually looking for specific Pokémon. But this feature was almost either completely different or somewhat watered down. According to some early concept art, you could actually go out and buy Pokémon in stores. If only certain specific Pokémon. The picture shows some in the back and possibly more around the store. It would’ve been pretty weird if you went out and paid for your Pokémon.

2 190

It might be old news at this point, but the original 151 were almost a way larger group than they ended up being. Some fans fondly remember the originals with tinted goggles and will adamantly defend their point, going so far as to condemn any other Pokémon. Jokes on them though because 39 Pokémon were missing from Gen I and would be introduced in the next generation of games. Why theses 39 were kept out of the original games is a mystery, but you can be sure that it had something to do with storage space, as most of these kinds of problems from that era did. It’s understandable but still disappointing that we couldn’t get more Pokémon our first time around.

1 Battle Vs. Oak

Throughout the entire game, Professor Oak serves as a mentor and guardian to the player, watching over you throughout your adventure – it’s a very behind the scenes role. But while Oak’s role was pretty much cemented as being from the shadows, the people at Game Freak might’ve intended for his role to be a little more hands on. A battle against Oak was actually programmed into the game, but it never really saw the light. The only way to actually access it is via a Gameshark or a glitch. Had he been included it would’ve been the toughest fight in the game as his team consisted of a lv.66 Tauros, lv.67 Exeggutor, lv.68 Arcanine, lv.70 Gyarados and whichever starter was left behind, fully evolved at lv. 69.