Shiny were introduced in gen 2? The odd of a shiny in fire red was 1 in 8192. Fun fact: you could techically get shiny pokemon in gen 1 but the value for wild pokemon was bugged and i'm pretty sure they had no shiny sprite. Which mean they would only become shiny by trade.
Just imagine it: your best pal whip out his new pokemon silver cartridge he got for christmas, sadly your momma didn't have money this year for you, so you put your yellow one in and start semi playing while looking at your friends game. You begin some rando trade after his second badge , his team is getting wrecked by a cow..? bam! He show you the electrode you just traded, THAT DAMN INVERTED POKEBALL BECAME GREEN WTF!!
Nowaday you would probably have to pay an extra dlc for that kind of stuff.
For someone not noticing he seem to talk about it alot. He also had to sell twitter to his ai company to get some liquidity prob to pay back some investor whom wanted out. So his action seems to tell he does care. But who know what goes on in his head.