https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2018/9/27/17909916/pokemon-red-blue-junichi-masuda-interview

We went back and of course played the Yellow version, for example. If you go back now, it’s actually that there’s some fairly tough parts in there. It maybe takes like 40 hours to complete the game.
We knew that we needed to make it a little bit more streamlined for more modern audiences.
So really just improving the pace of play without destroying the feel of the original games was how we approached it.

えぇ…