In terms of Pokémon Black Version 2 and Pokémon White Version 2, it was actually near the end of the development of the first games when we started talking about what we wanted to do next. It was maybe only three or four months before the actual release of Pokémon Black Version and Pokémon White Version in Japan.

By that time our internal staff was able to play the game even though it hadn’t been released yet. They were able to go through the whole scenario and start getting feedback about how the story was good, and they enjoyed characters such as N and Ghetsis.

But our staff was very interested in what happened to these characters after the ending. From all this feedback, we got the idea that would could expand on the story using those characters, and that’s when the idea of a direct sequel came up. We figured it’d also be a good challenge for us because we had never done a direct sequel before.