Red: The First Pokémon Hero Turned Mt. Silver Boss

Red has never spoken a single sentence, and that's exactly what made him a legend. He is the franchise's very first avatar, the one who crosses Kanto in the earliest games before fading into the background. Three years later, the next generation finds him again at the summit of Mt. Silver, a silent opponent reserved for those who have collected sixteen badges. In the meantime, his name became the one Japanese strategy guides automatically gave the player — in other words, just about everyone.

Contents

• Pallet Town, a Parcel to Deliver and Eight Badges
• Pokémon Yellow: The Pikachu That Stays Outside
• Three Years Later, at the Top of Mt. Silver
• "The Living Legend": Tournament, Battle Tree and Return to Kanto
• Beyond the Main Games: Ash, Smash Bros. and a Mobile Game
• Red, Satoshi, Ninten: The Story of a Name
• Red at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

Pallet Town, a Parcel to Deliver and Eight Badges

It all starts in a house in Pallet Town, the one the boy shares with his mother. Red is eleven on the day he sets out, and it's Professor Oak who catches him in the tall grass just north of town, to take him to the lab. Blue, the neighbor who doubles as his rival, is already waiting there. Each of them leaves with a Pokémon, and the very first battle of the series follows on the spot.

The Pokédex, however, doesn't just fall into his lap: first he has to run to Viridian City, pick up a parcel at the shop and bring it back to the professor. Then begins the journey across Kanto, meeting along the way the Gym Leaders, the whole of Team Rocket and a Blue who demands a battle the moment he spots his rival. The team comes together place by place: the starter Pokémon (Bulbasaur, Charmander or Squirtle), a fossil picked up on Mt. Moon, the Eevee waiting in Celadon Mansion, the Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan offered by the Fighting Dojo in Saffron City, the Lapras given away in the Silph Co. offices, and Mewtwo lurking deep inside Cerulean Cave.

FireRed and LeafGreen replay this story almost identically, with two additions: the region is home to species from the next two generations, and the Sevii Islands extend the journey. One detail carries real weight here: choosing Red as the protagonist erases his female counterpart, Leaf, from the story.

Pokémon Yellow: The Pikachu That Stays Outside

The animated series ended up rubbing off on the games. Pokémon Yellow borrows several ingredients from it, starting with the companion the hero receives at the outset: on the very first route, a wild Pikachu jumps out at Red and Professor Oak, and the professor catches it himself right then and there.

The Electric-type Pokémon only ends up with the protagonist thanks to a dirty trick: Blue snatches the Eevee that was originally meant for Red. Once adopted, Pikachu walks behind its Trainer instead of traveling shut away, and only goes back into its Poké Ball after fainting or being transferred to the PC. Evolving it into Raichu, however, is out of reach: the Thunder Stone has no effect on it, so you have to trade it to another game.

The region's starter trio is still available, though. Cerulean City provides Bulbasaur, Route 24 Charmander and Vermilion City Squirtle, enough to put together the full set along the way. The lineup of opponents also gains two figures straight from the cartoon: Jessie and James block Red's path four times.

Three Years Later, at the Top of Mt. Silver

Once Kanto is conquered, Red steps out of the picture. Three years go by; he has climbed to the heights of Mt. Silver and no one knows where to find him anymore. The next generation brings him back under the most ordinary label imaginable — a non-player character filed under the Trainer class — but saves the encounter for those who have earned all sixteen badges from both regions.

For the New Bark Town hero, he is the true final boss. Red doesn't say a word there: his lines boil down to punctuation marks, just like back when he won the title at Indigo Plateau. Once defeated, he vanishes, the credits roll, and the player takes control again in front of the mountain's Pokémon Center; the battle can be fought again.

His team sums up his whole journey on its own: a level 81 Pikachu in the lead, followed by Espeon, Snorlax, Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise. All three of the region's starter Pokémon are on the roster, each one at its final stage. The remakes raise the stakes: Pikachu climbs to level 88 with a Light Ball in its paw, Lapras takes Espeon's place, Hail falls throughout the battle, and you need HM Rock Climb to reach the summit. Every Pokémon that comes out on top earns a Legend Ribbon.

🔥 The Charizard on his team has its own section: see the collection devoted to Charizard.

"The Living Legend": Tournament, Battle Tree and Return to Kanto

His return to the circuit goes through competition. Black 2 and White 2 call him up to the Pokémon World Tournament, in the Champions Tournament reserved for League Champions, where he goes by "the Living Legend". His Pokémon there have 30 IVs in every stat, and their order is drawn at random before kickoff: three battlers in Single Battles, four in Double and Rotation Battles alike, and the whole roster in Triple Battles.

Now a young adult, he switches careers entirely. Sun and Moon set him up on Poni Island, where he shares the running of the Battle Tree with Blue, his lifelong rival: as the newly crowned Alola Champion, you have to beat one of the two before entering the tower. Red steps in as the Battle Tree's legendary Trainer in the twentieth battle in Normal mode and the fiftieth in Super mode; the Ultra versions add four levels to his Pokémon and swap Venusaur's Bulldoze for Earthquake.

His most recent appearance is set about three years after the adventure he shared with Blue and Green: Let's Go, Pikachu and Let's Go, Eevee place him in front of the League building, on Indigo Plateau. You need six Pokémon on your team and at least six Master Trainers defeated to make him appear; whoever wins, after getting past a level 85 Mega Venusaur, receives the title of Pokémon Master from him. He had made it into living rooms long before: Pokémon Stadium 2 makes him the final opponent of the Kanto Gym Leader Castle, surrounded by Meganium, Typhlosion and Feraligatr, and its opening sequence pits him against Blue, Pikachu versus Eevee, on the slopes of Mt. Silver.

Beyond the Main Games: Ash, Smash Bros. and a Mobile Game

The character has spread far beyond his home region. Ash, who carries all twenty-five seasons of the anime, is loosely inspired by him: same hometown, but a journey made with a group of friends and through lands the video games have never shown, such as the Orange Islands. Three playable female Trainers even have their counterparts among his traveling companions — May, Dawn and Serena — and the boy stars in all twenty-three of the franchise's movies.

Red has also had episodes of his own. Pokémon Origins, a four-part miniseries, faithfully follows the plot of the Game Boy Advance remakes, from his very first Charmander to the title he claims at the Indigo League, not forgetting the fight against Team Rocket. Pokémon Generations opts instead for an alter ego known simply as "the player," equipped with a Bulbasaur, who catches a Pikachu in Viridian Forest before traveling across five regions, from Johto to Kalos. Pokémon Evolutions settles for a fleeting shot of him and his Charizard at the very top of the Indigo Plateau stairs, and a POKÉTOON short shows him being courted by a Pancham that dreams of joining his team, alongside an Arcanine.

Since 2008, he has even had a second career outside the Pokémon games. The "Pokémon Trainer" fighter in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and later Ultimate is modeled on him: he stays out of the fray and sends Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard into battle in turn, with five color options available from the start in the first game, and four plus one to unlock in the second. On February 28, 2020, he joined the mobile game Pokémon Masters EX as one of its headline characters, and he has since appeared there in several outfits.

Red, Satoshi, Ninten: The Story of a Name

Players are free to rename their avatar within the character limit the game allows — Red is no exception to the rule shared by all main-series protagonists. It took until Gold and Silver for his canonical name to become official, and that name comes from an editorial habit: in Japan, the strategy guides published for the Game Boy cartridges named the hero after the English title of their version — Red, Green, Blue, Yellow. The title screen does the same, putting the version's color first among the three suggested names.

The other two suggestions vary from one version to the next. In French, Red and Yellow offer Sacha and Paul, while Blue offers Régis and Jean; the rival, for his part, defaults to Green in Red, Red in Green and Blue, and Blue in Yellow. In the Game Boy Advance remakes, leaving the naming screen without typing anything — or entering nothing but spaces — triggers a random pick from a ready-made list that includes Green, Red, Leaf and Fire.

The Japanese versions offer a peek behind the studio's curtain. Red, Yellow and FireRed suggest Satoshi, while Green and LeafGreen suggest Shigeru: the first names of the franchise's founder, Satoshi Tajiri, and of the father of Mario and Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto — two Nintendo "rivals" who became Ash and Gary in the anime. Digging through the RAM of the English editions turns up Ninten and Sony, once considered for the hero and his rival before being dropped; other unused names point to art director Wataru Yamaguchi, producer Tsunekazu Ishihara, and even the studios Game Freak and Creatures.

Red at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Why doesn't Red ever speak?
  His dialogue consists solely of punctuation marks, both back when he conquers the Indigo League and during the Mt. Silver battle. The games write him almost no lines: the only way to make him "talk" is to have him meet Copycat, and the Spanish version of HeartGold and SoulSilver has him announce an item use in the middle of battle.
• Where do you battle Red on Mt. Silver?
  In Gold, Silver and Crystal, at the far end of Mt. Silver, once all sixteen badges from Johto and Kanto have been earned. In the remakes, he still waits at the summit, which you reach with HM Rock Climb. He vanishes as soon as he's defeated but can be battled again; HeartGold and SoulSilver require a fresh victory over the Elite Four first.
• What is Red's team?
  On Mt. Silver, a level 81 Pikachu accompanied by Espeon, Snorlax, Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise. The remakes raise Pikachu to level 88 and replace Espeon with Lapras. In Let's Go, his team brings together Pikachu, Machamp, Arcanine, Lapras, Snorlax and a Mega Venusaur, all at level 85.
• Are Red and Ash the same character?
  No. Ash, the hero of the anime, is loosely inspired by Red and also comes from Pallet Town, but he travels in a group and explores lands that never appear in the games, like the Orange Islands. The two have influenced each other, though: Pokémon Yellow borrowed several elements from the anime, starting with the starter Pikachu.
• Does Red appear in the Trading Card Game?
  Yes, since the Sun & Moon—Unbroken Bonds expansion, released in France on May 3, 2019. The Red's Challenge card has you discard two cards from your hand in exchange for searching your deck for any card you like, then shuffling it. He also has a figure in each of the three expansions of the Pokémon Trading Figure Game.

In short

Red holds a place in the series that no one else has ever filled: he is both the player's very first avatar and the toughest opponent the next generation throws at them. In between, almost nothing — three years of silence, a summit cut off from the world, and a team that tells the story of the Kanto journey all on its own. The games never gave him a single line, and that is probably what made him impossible to dislodge: every player projects their own playthrough onto him.