Ishihara:

That's why it was originally conceived as a game that would be developed for this new hardware. Then there were substantial delays in completing the title… Still, as the producer, when I saw the content of Red and Green, my personal feeling was that of all the titles I had experience of, that I had played or worked on as a producer, this was of the very highest calibre. That is to say, I was confident that this was streets ahead of the crowd in terms of sheer enjoyment. But with the release date being when it was, I had considerable concerns about the title at first.