The headline is not a lie, Nintendo of America attempted to convince Nintendo to redesign Pikachu and that redesign gave it breasts.
This whole thing stemmed from viral Reddit thread before bleeding into an actual investigation from Japanese media outlet Game*Spark (via Automaton). Many felt the thread lacked evidence and was just patently absurd, but there’s some lingering truth to the story. An old interview during Gold and Silver’s era with CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara that ended up discussing localizing Pokemon for the US.
These pictures are now lost to time at this point, but he did confirm that Nintendo of America thought it was “too cute” and offered some redesigns, with the example given being Pikachu “changed into a character shaped like a kind of a tabby cat with huge breasts.”
“When I first showed Pokémon to them, they told me it was too cute. The staff at Nintendo of America then suggested their own designs for the characters – I won’t show those illustrations to anyone as long as I live, but they kind of looked like the characters from the Cats musical. So, for example, Pikachu was changed into a character shaped like a kind of a tabby cat with huge breasts.”
At first, you might think he’s talking about pecs, but further context really ends up being the nail in the coffin when asked if it was like the girls who cosplay as Pikachu at cons. He did think it was interesting in a “cultural differences” kind of way, but he also didn’t want to compete “with that kind of thing.”
“Yes, exactly, they presented that kind of design to us for real. I thought it was interesting, in a sense of appreciating such cultural differences. However, I didn’t want to compete in the [overseas] market with that kind of thing.”
