Trivia / Hey You, Pikachu!

• Keep Circulating the Tapes: A very interesting case of this trope. Like almost all video games, you can easily find a ROM of Hey You, Pikachu! online and you can run it in emulators just fine. However, there used to be no way to actually play it in an emulator because no one could figure out a way to emulate the VRU (even if you use an Adaptoid), leaving you stuck on the first screen with Pikachu, unable to do anything. A way to play it on emulator was eventually figured out, but besides the complicated setup you'll still need the actual VRU to input any voice commands instead of just being able to use any microphone, so you still can't play it completely independent of the official hardware. And don't expect a rerelease any time soon, as the VRU functionality complicates porting the game to other consoles (as the aforementioned difficulty with fans emulating the game has proven).
• Late Export for You: The game took nearly two years after its original Japanese release to get released in North America, by which point Pokémon Gold and Silver have already been released a couple weeks prior, even though Hey You, Pikachu! was a Gen 1 Pokémon game that featured no content from the Gen 2 games aside from having Togepi in it (who was being featured in the anime well before Gen 2's release).
• No Export for You: The game was never given a European release, most likely due to the difficulty of adapting the voice recognition feature to the large variety of accents and languages found in Europe.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • One very persistent rumour is that saying "Sony", "PlayStation" or "Sega" will make Pikachu angry. None of these words are in the game's command list.
  • Ways to evolve or otherwise interact with Togepi were speculated on, but there's no way to do so. It just hatches out of its egg, and that's it.

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