No, the intended to release a game in early 1998, but had to stop development of it due to the Porygon episode of the anime (the one that was rumored to have caused seizures). They later restarted development on it later in 1998. For some reason, during this time they decided to scrap what they had developed and basically start over again, this time with the assistance of HAL Labs, to create what would eventually become Pokemon Gold and Silver (Iwata was actually a major contributor here - the talks about his compression algorithm saving development was a real thing). The TCRF page goes into way more detail about this.
it wasn't rumored, and porygon took the blame and doesnt appear because of it.... pikachu caused it ---