In 1998, Nintendo launched a strange experiment: a game where you spoke to Pikachu through a microphone. The story of Hey You, Pikachu! begins in a workshop in Akihabara, where the Ambrella team combined ham radio components to create a voice control prototype. The success of Pokémon Yellow and the anime craze did the rest, turning the electric mouse into the guinea pig for this technology.
The VRU peripheral and its technical limitations 🎙️
The VRU (Voice Recognition Unit) connected to the Nintendo 64's controller port. Its microphone captured commands limited to a vocabulary of about 200 words in English and Japanese. The system worked with basic noise filtering, but any ambient sound (a shout, a dog barking) could throw Pikachu off. The game processed voice in real time, but the margin of error was high. If you didn't pronounce clearly, the yellow critter would stare blankly as if you had insulted its mother.
Pikachu: the therapist you didn't ask for 😅
The funniest part of the game was seeing how Pikachu reacted to your shouts of frustration. If you told it to do something and it failed, the critter would get sad. If you spoke softly, it would fall asleep. Basically, it was like having a cat with electric powers: it didn't do a damn thing you said, but it melted your heart with its little eyes. Sure, at least it didn't scratch the sofa. The VRU, for its part, ended up in the memory box, alongside the Virtual Boy and the Power Glove.