As far as I remember, Pokemon Gold/Silver were given to some special assembly optimization guru after the game was pretty much finished. He was able to squeeze

As far as I remember, Pokemon Gold/Silver were given to some special assembly optimization guru after the game was pretty much finished. He was able to squeeze out so much memory that the Kanto region of the original games was more or less added as an afterthought. And it was totally worth it, having the entire first game available in the sequel, just set a couple of years in the future, seeing how the world changed by "your" actions in the first games, blew the minds of many ten-year olds at the time.