Since AI generation technology began to flourish, the potential and risks this technology brings to the entire gaming industry have often triggered heated discussions. Even though many companies have begun to actively invest in the development of AI technology, many players and developers still criticize or even feel disgusted with the related technology. However, just recently, an AI user successfully generated a playable “Pokémon” replica game with just a simple prompt word.
As one of the world’s largest video game IPs, “Pokémon” has inspired countless imitations and tributes over the years, most of which are independent games that imitate its core gameplay or art style. However, this case is completely different from the past. There is almost no sign of human participation, but only generated by AI.
Chris (@chatgpt21), a Twitter user who often shares various AI applications, recently shared a clip of a “Pokémon” imitation he made using AI, showing about two minutes of game footage, which includes the “Initial Royal Family” selection screen similar to “Pokémon” and the battle between Charmander and Rattata. Although the graphics of this “imitation” are very simple, with a bit of the pixel style of the Atari era, it seems to have quite complete content elements, such as NPCs, dialogue content, explorable locations, and even some sound effects. And this quickly sparked heated discussions among players.
I told Claude 4.6 Opus to make a pokemon clone – max effort
It reasoned for 1 hour and 30 minutes and used 110k tokens and 2 shotted this absolute behemoth.
This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever made with AI pic.twitter.com/oIP7VVqETT
— Chris (@chatgpt21) February 6, 2026
From the display video released by Chris, you can see the protagonist walking around freely and talking to other characters. There are facilities similar to Pokémon Centers in the game, which can restore the HP of injured Pokémon. There are also shops selling props such as Pokémon Balls and Recovery Potions. Nearly all NPCs have dialogue, provide hints, or guide players through areas to explore, although no wild Pokémon appear in the film.
According to Chris’ description in the post, he only entered the prompt word “Make a “Pokémon” imitation” into the AI tool Claude Opus 4.6, and let the model perform reasoning for 1 hour and 30 minutes, and finally successfully generated this result. Judging from the final product, Claude’s AI model seems to have chosen the classic style of the Game Boy version on its own, and named this imitation “Pokemon Fire Red”.
What worries many players is that the results generated by Claude use a large amount of copyrighted materials. From the character and Pokémon names, gameplay to game titles, and even the choices of the three royal families are exactly the same as the original “Pokémon”. The battle screen also shows players throwing Poké Balls. This is one of the reasons why AI generation technology can cause controversy.
A look at Chris’s personal Twitter page reveals that this Pokémon knockoff isn’t his only AI-generated game. Before this, he had also shared voxel-style imitations similar to “Minecraft” and other “Pokémon”-related works. However, the previous works seemed not as good as this one. “Pokemon Fire Red” seems to be the smoothest result so far, and it also shows the speed of AI technology advancement.
Using AI tools to create works that are highly similar to existing games may constitute infringement. There have been many cases of “Pokémon” counterfeiting being sued in the past, including “Pokémon Pal”, a high-profile work that is loved by players. But even if the creators have no intention of selling these AI-generated games publicly, Nintendo, as the copyright holder, may still take legal action.
In addition to legal risks, community backlash is also very likely. Many fan groups have become increasingly disgusted with the “crude content” generated by AI in recent years. Even large publishers such as Take-Two are currently very hesitant to use AI due to negative reactions from players. Even games like “Light and Shadow: Expedition 33” have sparked controversy because they briefly used AI-generated artwork to place space during the development process, even if they have deleted all related content in the final product. Therefore, it remains to be seen how Nintendo officials and Pokémon fans will view this AI-created Pokémon Fire Red.
Source: KOCPC Chinese