What was the name of the first Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game pair released in Japan?

The first Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games were Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team.

The pair was first released in Japan in 2005, with Red Rescue Team made for Game Boy Advance and Blue Rescue Team made for Nintendo DS. Unlike the main Pokémon role-playing games, these titles place the player in the role of a Pokémon rather than a human trainer.

Their gameplay combines Pokémon abilities and characters with the randomly generated dungeons of the Mystery Dungeon series. Movement and actions are turn-based, and players can recruit Pokémon encountered during missions. The story begins with the player transformed into a Pokémon and joining a rescue team.

The two versions are closely related but were designed for different Nintendo systems. This is why the series is often described as beginning with a pair rather than a single game. Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness followed in Japan in 2007 and were not the franchise’s first Mystery Dungeon releases.