Well, I haven't posted here in what, a year now? This thing hasn't been dead, I just haven't had things I'm interested in talking about. There were like 4 draft articles I had in the works (still have them, actually) but not one felt right to finish and publish for varying reasons. I may eventually release the WIPs and call it a day if there's interest. Oh, and I've been slowly accruing more responsibilities on Smogon, so that's a thing. However, I've been working on some stuff with The Cutting Room Floor, and with the scans finally finished, I'm able to cover them properly. Fans of the first generation's history may recognize this sprite sheet. It's from the November 1996 issue of Corocoro Magazine. This was the first look players had at the title, which would be up for mail order in October of that year. I go over bits of it here. However, some of the sprites are not what you would see in the final release, implying there were some revisions before or after the press release provided to Corocoro. I'm leaning towards after. For a very long time, we didn't have very good scans of these, mostly relying on photographs from zoidsland. This wasn't a bad thing - it was better than nothing - but the quality was...not great. So we have a collection of sprite scans that aren't of the best quality, to the point you can't even recreate them. How do you solve it when upscaling isn't really an option? Go out and buy the magazine yourself and scan it, of course! Well, erm, that's what I ended up doing on a whim. Why? Because seeing things like this ridiculously low-res Persian made me want to slash my eyes out, hahaha! Not all of them were like this, mind you, it was just...inconsistent. For the sake of clarity and because I don't want any random price increases, these magazines cost me almost nothing. The November 1996 issue cost me around £10 before postage, as did the December 1996 issue. Despite it taking a while for me to find someone with them, I do not believe these are actually rare in Japan considering the prices I saw them go for. The new scansWell, no more beating around the bush: you're here for the scans, yeah? For those wanting to see 1200 DPI scans of the sprites, you can use the following links to download them. The file size packs a punch of its own, so don't say I didn't warn you! I used an EPSON Stylus SX400 Printer-Scanner to do the deed, for those interested. It's nothing too extravagant, the printing part doesn't even work on it. But it scans japanese magazines from the 90s, which is all I need it for, eh? Anyway, here's a poorly-put-together compilation of the unique sprites for those who don't want to stare at those pages until their eyes melt out of their sockets. It's in JPG format so the quality isn't that great either. It'll do for the purpose, anyway. Some of these sprites are simply unrefined versions of the final;
RhydonRhydon's Blue JP sprite is very unique, and serves as a bridge between Rhydon's Green and Blue designs. Many tout Rhydon as a Pokemon near-unchanged since its inception, but this couldn't be further from the truth: it's actually very inconsistent. I've attached a timeline above that sums up these inconsistencies over time. There's more I haven't noted - including sprites - but at that point I'm really nitpicking. I'm not sure if Yellow truly removed the secondary horn as a part at the top of the head looks like it, but in that case, it was moved to god-knows-where...the perspective is really weird. Curiously, the Rhydon sprite from our little magazine has a breastplate akin to Yellow's, rather than RG's, though the eyes and secondary horn are clearly derived from the latter. On the flip side, the teeth are much like RB's. This is a very interesting intermittent design stage; you can look at this for ages and probably notice something else. RaticateThe Raticate sprite is quite clearly a less refined version of the RB sprite, but it's interesting for multiple reasons. It seems the Raticate sprite looked a bit smaller than the final, and the ears are drawn differently. Furthermore, the final Raticate sprite shrinks the middle whiskers, linking them with the upper row. But, there's an elephant in the room... There's a weird cowlick-like hair on its head, seemingly implying an unshaven appearance. This is shown on the GSC Scratchpad as well, only in a more pronounced fashion, implying that these designs are linked in some way. With this in mind, I believe that the Scratchpad Sprite is actually from the same time period as the early Blue JP one, considering that this design is never seen in any other material after the final game. It's not too difficult to make the assumption - the hands are near-identical among other uncanny design similarities - but that little hair really does it for me, at least. AlakazamAlakazam's sprite has a bit of history tied to it, and it's a bit difficult to present efficiently. I apologize if it isn't coherent enough... In Red and Green, Alakazam had a star on its forehead, which some say looks like (or outright is) the Star of David, making it a point of contention. Anyway, that could be worth its own article when thinking about the Abra line's history of weird controversies. Alakazam had this star removed by the time Corocoro Magazine dropped its December 1996 issue. Some may draw parallels to Uri Geller's accusations of antisemitism and unauthorized use of his image, with him citing its depiction in the Pokemon TCG. However, that controversy only started in 1999, and as such, Uri Geller's intervention had no bearing on this design change, which makes it more plausible to assume this was an attempt to simplify Alakazam's already complex design. It's not uncommon to see Game Freak alter Pokemon designs and remove features that made them difficult for children to take in. This especially applied in the early days when there was just a small Game Boy screen and a limited amount of pixels. Another thing I find interesting here is how Alakazam's RG and early Blue JP sprites have very similar artstyles, while the final design is very different in that regard. Not only is it more refined, the eyes are drawn in a much more pronounced fashion and everything is much easier to take in. Furthermore, the feet lack claws, something that is featured in every other Alakazam interpretation to date. It is also the first Alakazam interpretation to feature two toes, which is something that's now commonplace for it. Overall, this a very good example of how Game Freak refines their designs during development, often with the intent to simplify it. ConclusionWhile I could go on about these sprites, the rest would be more nitpicky and just draw out the length of this article. Besides, I'm sure everyone else would love to scrutinize these sprites further and provide their perspectives. I'm very happy to own both magazines and seeing these sprites finally have scans that give them justice is a fantastic bonus.
Unlike MicroGroup Game Review Vol.14, I've not scanned the rest of the magazine due to its sheer size and lower-quality scans generally doing them justice anyway. I got the magazines to scan the sprites, and I think it's all that's necessary of me. Better-cropped sprites and more comprehensive reviews will be on The Cutting Room Floor, so keep your eyes peeled for that! I'm sure they'll do it better than my caveman-quality MS Paint diagrams, anyway. I also have a friend looking to recreate the sprites as well, since you can make out the individual pixels perfectly, which should be very interesting. If that project is finished, I'll either update this article or write up a new one.
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Recently some content on 4Chan was dropped on /vp/ in a rather weird manner, similar to how many leaks on Pokemon beta content go. Looking at it, well, it's very likely to be real, as it draws a lot of parallels to the "Wacko+Ganix Leaks" as I like to call them. It appears there may be more stuff coming out than just this too, given what's in this "USB stick from someone's uncle at Nintendo", but I digress. The files include the following, all of which is a good bit to unpack;
Cry Order in the Crystal JP Symbol TableI first want to look to the Cry Order. This tells us a lot; including beta names for various Pokemon. These cries are in the same order as the final, so I used some ROM Hacking tools to see who uses what cry, based on the order.
After this it's simply just the Kanto cries repeated. While this is far less interesting than the Kanto or later gen cry orders, it's still definitely something of note. Donphan is certainly the highlight given you can technically reconstruct his old cry. Nintendo's Official Game Boy EmulatorAmong the screenshots lies an official Game Boy emulator. However, we do not have the actual program, it seems to be being hoarded. This emulator is Japanese and features a Debugger among other things. It's clearly quite old, shown by the old Windows Troubleshooting Icon and Folder Open Icon. It also has Copyright dating from 1996 to 2000, and was coded by Nintendo R&D1. Here's a picture of that building, one of the only ones I know of. For those who don't know, Nintendo R&D1 is Nintendo's oldest R&D department. This department developed the Game Boy under Satoru Okada's plan, which was to make a powerful console with interchangeable cartridges and 3rd party support, after the success of the NES under R&D2. Internal reception of the "Dot Matrix Game", the internal codename for the Game Boy, was very poor, with it being called the DameGame (Dame - だめ - meaning "Hopeless" or "Lame" in this context) by employees. However, it would quickly defy expectations and become one of the most popular game consoles of all time. R&D1 was merged into Nintendo Software Planning and Development along with R&D2 in 2004. Its final game was Metroid Zero Mission in 2004. We can also see an old email. Doing a quick namesearch, Teruki Murakawa is a member of staff in The Pokemon Company, and has been working on the series since Pokemon Red and Blue as a US Programmer. Going by his name in the credits of games up to Pokemon X & Y, it seems he has primarily worked on localization, and has often received Special Thanks placements in the credits. Going by a further leak of the source code (that I won't cover because that's definitely reaching very illegal territory), it appears that Teruki Murakawa was the main correspondent between Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Japan. Teruki Murakawa's nickname, Teru, is alluded to with the Teru-Sama items in Pokemon Gold, Silver and Crystal. In this case, -Sama is a Japanese honorific, implying formal, high respect for someone. It should be noted that Teruki Murakawa isn't credited in the Japanese Generation 2 games, and the items are named differently (Instead referencing Kōji Nishino), and as such this relation is likely something exclusive to the localisation team. Given these factors, it appears this emulator may have been designed for the US Debuggers of the Pokemon Blue and Yellow ROMs we have here. There's a bit too much English text for a Japanese emulator, is there not? Perhaps Mr. Murakawa was the localization team's correspondent. I unfortunately couldn't find a picture of him, nor any interviews...oh well! Unfortunately, there isn't much else to talk about in regards to this emulator, as there simply isn't much else to go off of. As we can see it has very expansive functionality in regards to debugging, Mobile Adapter compatibility and more. It's clearly one of the more advanced Game Boy emulators, typical for something the developers themselves used. Should this be released, I may well give it a look... Oh, and there's also this in-house Game Boy manual going over its technologies, written in Japanese. It's going over the RAM system. I'm not too smart in this area, but maybe one or two of you readers will be interested? Pokemon Blue Debug ROMAnyway, yeah, there's also debug ROMs for Pokemon Blue. Here is the timestamp that was found on the ROM, allowing to help date the localisation;
In terms of progress, the game is quite close to the final. I know this, as from my testing, the translation was already different from the release material as shown here. Pokedex data is also mostly the same, and Pokemon have their Final Names from localisation. By this point in development I'm pretty sure both ROMs were being prepped for shipment and having advertisements made. Overall, the premise of the Debug Menu is simple. Press Select on the Title Screen to access a Debug Menu. You get two options: FIGHT or DEBUG. FIGHT in Blue Version is unique compared to other Debugging tools. In this menu, you get a Rhydon to nickname, before immediately fighting another. Picking ITEM will bring up a menu full of 0 SOFTBOILEDs. Not the item, the move name. No clue why, it just does. Even if your HP has been hit, you still can't select them. I have never seen this in any instance of Generation 1, and usually if you don't have any items the game just has a Cancel button. I'm very curious as to why the game pulls these up... No matter what move you pick, your Rhydon will always use Pound, while the opponent will pick normal moves. Moves are based on the level of the Pokemon as if you caught a wild one (so you also get randomized DVs), and in this case it's a Level 20 Rhydon. So, you get the most recent 4 moves Rhydon learns via Level Up: Horn Attack, Stomp, Tail Whip, and Fury Attack...not that you can use them. If you KO, run away from, or are by defeated the Rhydon you will be given the nickname prompt and enter another battle. This won't let you get additional Rhydons. You'll usually be defeated, as you're stuck with Pound while the opponent has Tail Whip to drop Defense and higher base power moves. Here's the one time I beat the Rhydon, only to be thrust head-first into yet another brawl...legit one of the hardest fights in Pokemon history. It also has Exp. All switched on, which I'm curious as to how given my item menu didn't have it in there...not that I could scroll, though. If you enter Debug, you will be named Ninten. You also get a full Pokedex, your starter is set to Charmander (despite being Blue...), you get $3000 and all badges except the Earth Badge from Giovanni. You can also Fly to any location, and your rival is named Sony. Before starting out, you will get these exact Pokemon during the intro with Professor Oak:
However, the real meat of this is the fact this is Tsunekazu Ishihara's team. Ishihara has gone on record saying he used an Exeggutor during the dev cycle of Pokemon Red and Green, and "explored many places", which can be taken as why it has such an..illegal moveset. This article I linked also talks about how Ishihara wanted to give Exeggutor more of a spotlight, foreshadowing the creation of Alolan Exeggutor as well. It should be recalled that Exeggutor also won the dev poll for the best Pokemon design during Red and Green's dev cycle as well: this Pokemon was very popular. Your Item Bag will also have these items in it:
Pokemon Yellow Debug ROMNow for Pokemon Yellow. Here's the timestamp so you can get an idea of dev progress at the time;
Here are all 3 instances of the Fight Debug Menu we've seen so far. The far left is from the Yellow Debug ROM in question, the middle is the Spaceworld Demo (both my screenshots) and finally the one from Crystal JP (Credit: TCRF). The premise of this debug menu is simple. You go through the Pokemon by Index Number by using A and B, and use the D-Pad to go to different Pokemon or Level setting on the right. Press Start to progress. This takes you to your fight choice. You can switch between Wild or Trainer Battles with the first bit, and then go through the Index for either Pokemon or Trainer to modify the battle to your specifications. Pokemon you obtain through the Battle Debug will have the OT Tom, with an ID No. of 00000, and moves will be based on Level Up learnset as if they were wild. Be careful (or have a party) when doing Trainer Battles, as setting the wrong team modifier on the right can have you wind up fighting some pretty crazy glitch teams. In addition, like the Rhydon battle in Pokemon Blue, all battles force you to only fight using Pound. As a result, some of these battles can become extremely difficult. You can however use the power of Battle Debug to debug your attacks out. When starting a Debug game, you get $9999999, all badges except the Earth Badge from Giovanni, a full Pokedex, Rival set to Sony, your name set to Ninten, and the following Pokemon;
You also get the following items;
This appears to be where Nintendo R&D1 got better at debugging their games and improving their quality control. It's a good insight, and quite clearly they were a very social work environment based on their inside jokes and the like. Interviews with the R&D1 Team have shown a similar aspect. It shows that they were determined to go out and fix their glitches! The Missing Debug ROMsThere are two Debug ROMs missing from these files that were distributed. That being a Pokemon Gold Debug ROM with the ability to generate Pokemon entirely, and a Pokemon "Platinum" prototype that seems to actually be Pearl, but hey. The curious part of this is that these ROMs were not being played on In-House Emulators, but bgb and Desume. These ROMs are out there, but have not been distributed. The Pokemon Gold ROM shows that there are extensive debug functions available, more than any Pokemon Debug ROM that has ever been distributed. The Pearl ROM, while not as fleshed out, clearly has some interesting content that wants looking at. I was looking through the 4Chan thread this dropped in and found more screenshots than what was leaked as well. Be warned though, there's a lot of anger and transphobia being spewed out...and it seems a lot of weird stuff went on behind the scenes. I don't really care too much honestly about what happened or where it came from, but hey, it's there. Perhaps we'll see all of what's here sometime. Maybe not today, but sometime. What do you think? ConclusionI will say, the handling of the leaks of all this content has been handled really...oddly. I'm not sure what it is, nor do I really care on the writing front as it's made it much easier to cover everything. While sure, I wish I could view more, it's made me more excited regardless. It seems as though the Prototype Community has a hoarder problem, and a lot of moral issues coming up from where the data came from. I'm pretty neutral on the whole situation, I just take what I can get and dig into it unnecessarily.
So, what do you think? Pretty crazy findings, eh? Just more stuff from that craptastic server hack by Wack0. I've zipped up the files in a format that isn't on a shady website, plus the screenshot from Ganix. You can nab it here. After doing a very, very big spreadsheet, I found that almost every Pokemon in Generation 2 had some kind of change at some point in development. The only ones who didn't were ones like Yanma or Larvitar. So, here's a big look at some of the notable changes. If you want to know them all, view my spreadsheet here. Trust me, virtually every Pokemon had some change somewhere, and covering them all would be impossible in a single article, nor would it be particularly interesting. Meganium's Spaceworld Connection
Gold -> Silver Design ChangesHowever, rather than focus on Spaceworld connections, how about some Gold and Silver-specific stuff? I believe there is none more interesting than Magby. Magby's design between Gold and Silver is actually quite different. Namely, the belly pattern in Gold is not only different, but it also mirrors Spaceworld. This implies to me that the Gold sprites were made first, and Silver's later. This could have started around 1998, I think. Crystal then darkened the colors of Silver, but the back sprite across all 3 games still kept the old belly patterns. Lugia is another interesting case to look over. Its Gold sprite features talons, and a parting on the left wing. This meant that that wing...wasn't a hand. Silver would remove both of these aspects and remodel the face, which Crystal would build upon when using Gold's sprite for the animated one in its game. Gold's Lugia design was essentially very different. GS -> Crystal Design Changes
Raikou inspired me to go on this little journey, due to the head and weird cloud-cape colour being completely different. Essentially, this Raikou is a completely different design to the Crystal - and thus modern - one. It's a pretty popular bit to look at in the beta section of the Pokemon community, so covering this is a bit of a cop-out, but hey! So what does this mean?So these are just some of the changes I discovered. But, what does this mean? Well, essentially, Pokemon Gold and Silver may well have been rushed out the door. There are many designs that received significant changes in Crystal, many I didn't cover here (basically, view the spreadsheet).
I can sort-of date the Silver sprite additions through Magby and Lugia: it must have been around Late 1998 to early 1999, mid development, once the art style shift was done, and enough so that the Spaceworld designs were not completely changed (See: Meganium). The art style shift happened in 1998, but no Silver sprites were revealed. You can see that the sprites were not "presentable" until later given that only Pokemon Gold's sprites received any coverage at all (Prerelease TCRF page shows this). Naturally though, it's still very vague. I believe that the game was rushed out of the door due to the time it took for the game to be made at all, and that Poke Fever as it was called was slowly dying off. To maintain the hype, it made sense for the sequels to be forced out. Therefore, we got designs that did not match official artwork. Hell, some Silver sprites were the same as the Gold ones (eg. Sneasel, Spinarak, Ariados, Legendary Beasts), or had very small alterations (eg. Hitmontop, Togetic). Crystal took on a pretty arduous task of fixing all these disparities, and it did damn well. So there you have it, some light shed on one of the more interesting parts of Generation 2. What do you think? Do you see any designs that particularly interest you? Gastrodon is a fairly interesting Pokemon, and I don't often cover Pokemon beyond Generations 1 and 2. This Pokemon has quite a bit of interesting information about it, so I thought I'd compile it all so you can have a look. In Nintendo Power May 2007, it was said by Junichi Masuda that two "sea slug" Pokemon were meant to be in Ruby and Sapphire, but were cut. It's an interesting topic. There are actually two cut Pokemon in the Cry Order from the German Debug ROM, with fully functional cries. You can get the actual ROM here. Many often talk about Gastrodon and Shellos being in Gen 3 at some point, citing this magazine. However, this is false. The exact statement is; "There's also a sea-slug Pokémon that we weren't able to put in Ruby and Sapphire that we were able to put in this one, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl" It is highly likely that these unspecified Pokemon indirectly inspired Shellos and Gastrodon, like how Gyaoon inspired Tyranitar. I don't believe that these were the two Pokemon we got due tot he statement, though. There is also more evidence for this than one would think, so let's have a look. One case of a concept being completely revised for a game is Mantine, who was originally Haneei. This Pokemon was likely based on Glaucus atlanticus, or the Blue Sea Slug. In the end it became a stingray, more befitting its name (haneru means jump, hane means feather/wing, and ei implies stingray, thanks to TCRF). So it could be theorized that the concept of sea slugs being used for Pokemon could date back to Generation 2, given the appearance of Haneei (although you could say from the name that the evidence is a bit weak). Anyway, let's move on a touch. In August 2006, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl was in a debugging phase. How do we know this? Well, it leaked in June 2019. In this ROM, Shellos and Gastrodon had different Japanese names; Siiusi and Siidorugo, rather than Karanakushi and Toritodon. Gastrodon's name appears to be a reference to Dolgo, a Kaiju (thanks to Helix Chamber). These names were considered a mainstay it appears, as they made it into Pokemon Battle Revolution. In fact, the names made it into the final game under debug options. You may have also seen these sprites before, which are unused in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl as well. It is likely that these are our "Siiusi" and "Siidorugo", the old Shellos and Gastrodon, before they were changed into what they are now. You may notice that Shellos has the East Sea's back. This is because, well, at one point that concept wasn't exactly founded yet. The final game has a debug function talking about the forms. I like to think that they had a bunch of designs for these sea slugs that they liked, and chose to make multiple forms based on, well, the different sea's sea slugs. The Gastrodon here may have been one of the designs that they chose to cut. It makes a lot of sense, as compared to the final game and early Shellos, it's a bit out there. It would have been a bit redundant to have more than 2 forms as well, although the East's head patterns have no record of presence at this time. It could have been in their little Shellos-Gastrodon war chest, though! So there you have it, multiple generations of wanting sea slugs in Pokemon, amounting to the creation of Gastrodon and Shellos. And honestly, I'm glad it came out. It's a well-known competitive Pokemon in the VGC sector for its Storm Drain ability, and frequently finds its way onto teams to counter Rain. While it rarely ventures out of the lower tiers in Smogon, it has an OU tiering under its belt for Gen 5 and frequently travels through every tier above it in every game for one reason or another. While Shellos has significantly less competitive history, it's nice to see all of its development history, providing a deep inside look at how Nintendo designs their Pokemon.
This article should have been released far earlier, in hindsight, but here we go. The Spaceworld 1997 demo of Pokemon Gold and Silver contained a complete, albeit early, special split for Generation 1. I compiled a full scale look at the revision history of the special stats here, back in December. I used The Cutting Room Floor as well as my own data from my research doc to fully compile this information.
The Spaceworld Demo's stat changes to the Generation 1 Pokemon were quite interesting, especially considering the Nintendo Cup. Nintendo Cup 1997 was well under way by the time Spaceworld 1997 rolled around. Thus, these revisions of Pokemon can be seen as balancing opinions made by the developers prior to release. What is Nintendo Cup?
What is Nintendo Cup, you ask? It's a ruleset that Nintendo employed when doing tournaments for Pokemon Red and Green (and, naturally, Blue JP when that was released via Corocoro). The main one, Nintendo Cup 1997, is the most often played format for Generation 1 if you're not playing Smogon. This is technically the oldest competitive format for Pokemon to ever exist. The rules were as follows;
All this sound familiar? It should, because this was in Pokemon Stadium's Japanese versions as well as Pokemon Yellow! Pokemon Stadium made specifically to encourage players to enjoy Nintendo's competitive format. This essentially means that the Nintendo Cup formats are, well, extant. Pokemon Stadium JP, the original we never got in the west, featured Nintendo Cup 1997 and 1998. (Credit: Javier Dos S., who happened to have a gameplay video.)
Pokemon Stadium 2 - what we got as 1 - added further formats, specifically the ones from Pokemon Yellow's Colosseum 2. This includes Pika Cup, Petit Cup, and Poke Cup. And Poke Cup, well, is essentially Nintendo Cup 1997 but optimized for Generation 1. They unbanned Mewtwo, though, but this change didn't stay in Stadium.
The PAL and NTSC versions of Stadium 2 - what we got as 1 - removed Nintendo Cup 1998 and 1999, as we never got to play those. This made for a pretty odd menu in the international versions...
Through this we can see that Nintendo Cup was pretty big in Japan, although the formats after 1997 are notoriously bad. 1998 was only played on Stadium JP and capped levels at 30, and 1999 banned all Pokemon used by the finalists of 1997 and 1998. So their removal wasn't the worst thing, right?
Nintendo Cup returned in 2000 for Pokemon Gold and Silver, employing the same rules as 1997, only banning Ho-Oh, Lugia and Celebi, adding a Freeze Clause like Stadium, Item Clause, and having Destiny Bond and Perish Song fail when used by the final Pokemon. So how is this relevant?
Well, Nintendo Cup 1997 was going on right as Generation 2 was being developed. As a result, balancing can be clearly derived from what was popular. Let's put this together with some of the Pokemon they banned for 1999.
And as we know, many of these Pokemon did indeed turn out to be titans in the present day Smogon Gen 1 OU format; Tauros was even recognized as "The King of Gen 1". However, Hypno, Aerodactyl, Electrode and Dugtrio definitely did not deserve those bans...nor those nerfs. At least Aerodactyl finally got STABs to make use of in Generation 2, and Hypno got juiced with elemental punches to use in Tradeback Gen 1 OU as vengeance.
However, Spaceworld also did have some pretty insane Pokemon. Lapras had 95 SpA and 105 SpD, making it essentially better than its Generation 1 counterpart. Persian had 85 SpD to give it tangible bulk, Venomoth had 100 SpD, Ninetales had 100 SpA...there were a lot of great benefits. But then, we see Snorlax have 100 SpD, which was increased to 110 in the final, thereby helping solidify it as Nintendo Cup 2000 and Gen 2 OU's despotic king. This balancing was...definitely very odd. Earlier Revisions of Pokemon in the Spaceworld "Clones"
There is more, though. I noticed that Sui, one of the Spaceworld 1997 cut Pokemon, had 125 SpA and 50 SpD, the latter of which was dummied out like other stats (see Rinrin article). As it turned out, after comparing BST, it was found that the Legendary Beasts in the demo had their stats cloned from the Birds. Politoed and Slowking had theirs imported from their Kanto counterparts as well. However...
Sui's SpD turned out to be 95, and the SpA was 125. Given it was imported from Articuno (En and Rai were Moltres and Zapdos in every way, obviously), it can be concluded that this is an old revision of it. Articuno must have had 125 SpA and 95 SpD at some point in development...which would have actually made it viable in competitive play. Slowking was completely imported from Slowbro, but had his SpD at 50, 15 less than Slowbro's at the current stage in development, thereby leaving him strictly worse. I do have faith that Game Freak wouldn't do this - yes I am slightly unhinged to be saying that - but I feel we can conclude that he was not dummied out at all. While I did say Politoed imported Poliwrath's stats, he simply used Demo Poliwrath's stats and had no difference. If my conclusions are correct, what does this mean? Well, Demo Slowking and Sui's statlines are earlier revisions of Slowbro and Articuno. There's no other feasible explanation. I actually tweeted about this back in December when I was analyzing the stats.
This does once again line up with the influence of the Nintendo Cup meta if we look at how Slowbro and Slowking came out, though. Note that Slowbro was not banned in Nintendo Cup 1999. Slowbro came out with 100 SpA and 80 SpD, significant buffs from Spaceworld. Slowking came out with 100 SpA and 110 SpD, the latter of which was swapped with Slowbro's Def and Final SpD.
They must have been buffed due to their lack of prevalence at the time (despite how good Slowbro turned out to be). Slowbro wasn't banned, and he got quite a bit of love in Generation 2. This would have been to bring attention to him, and as we know it definitely did: he's been pretty viable ever since, hovering around UU and even being OU in Generation 6. So overall, it definitely seems that Nintendo Cup 1997 had a guiding hand in the rebalancing of Generation 1's Pokemon, and likely mechanics, for the next games. I believe this is where the stat changes came from, and find that this was a good insight into the balancing side of development. What do you think? Take a look at the spreadsheet I linked up above and imagine Gen 2 with those stats. Give me your thoughts! The mysterious Mew is known for many things: it can learn any TM or Tutor move, it's the first mythical Pokemon, it's a playground myth that turned out to be true, it's been featured in a number of movies, and has quite a bit of lore to it. Oh, and it's also known for having a really ugly original sprite that resulted in Pokemon Green getting the stereotype of having terrible sprites. But, did you all know that Mew has a history of revisions across Generations 1-2, moreso than any other Pokemon? Let's start at the beginning, Pokemon Red and Green. Mew was added over Omega in Index 21 to fill space, and was used for easy TM testing. Mew was kept in for release and later used as a promotional, "mirage" Pokemon. During this time, Mew looked like...this. Indeed, Mew embodied the fetus aspect of its design. This little jerboa embryo is often toted as an abomination, a creature that should have never existed. Me? I think it's hilarious and had a more dark tone. But yeah, this thing is what eventually became Mew's design today. The question is...when did it change, and why? The Red and Green Asset Leak contains a prototype Blue JP sprite for Mew, still featuring the little bump on its head and the creepy eyes. This was from Blue Version 1, I believe, given the file name. Given this is only in black and white, I also took it upon myself to colorize it like I did with Gyopin's back sprite. This version has been increased a bit in size so apologies if the scaling looks off. So really, there are two incarnations of Mew's original design. Despite this though, the official RG artwork for Mew does not show this. The very first time Mew received art had it in its revised design, as Ken Sugimori was redesigning Pokemon at this stage. Given Goldeen's horn change, we can deduce that these RG artworks were where the design changes began. However, RB did not always reflect these changes, as we saw with Goldeen's horn as well. Anyway, despite the odd discrepancies in design, when Pokemon Blue JP did the revised sprites in October 1996, we got the Mew we now know and love. No longer was it an odd fetus, it was now more a cat-jerboa-embryo-thing. But...due to the way Generation 1 handled the sprite changes, we still had the back sprite from Red and Green. It seems that when you commanded Mew yourself, you unleashed the horrible blighter to the international audience's poor eyes. How awful! Pokemon Yellow preserved this change as well, meaning Japan had 2 versions with the old Mew, and two with the new. Remember, Blue JP and Yellow were essentially Red and Green sequels in Japan. The international audiences received Blue JP's Mew, as well as Yellow Mew, meaning we never saw the evil fetus in the west until the internet dredged up Green from the depths of the ROM websites. However, prior to Yellow's release, there was one more Mew sprite. This was at Spaceworld 1997. This Mew featured a similar design to Pokemon Red and Blue's, and was used in the demo and the Mew distribution cartridges over there. The screenshot I have here was on a bilibili video, at 32:23. I had this image for comparison on an old article, but it had the wrong date! I've fixed it though. So overall, there are 5 known Mew sprites from Generation 1, not counting back sprites. The Spaceworld Mew, given its use on Generation 1 Distribution Cartridges, can be considered a Generation 1 sprite. If we consider it Gen 2 and count the ones from there, we have 8 Pre-Gen 3 sprites total, more than any Pokemon from that era.
So, while this was more of an info dump article than any real explanation, what do you think? Do you like the unreleased Mew sprites? Lemme know your thoughts!
I don't often cover generations after 2 due to a lack of information, but some recent findings with Pokemon HOME have finally given me something to look at. This is some rather new information brought forward by a Twitter user, but I wasn't sure about bringing this article up due to a lack of info. Thanks to an old friend named Eric though, he dug up a Reddit post that brought me to a source for some extra spicy stuff to put together for a new theory.
Back in 2012,Nintendo laid down new trademarks for their Pokemon receiving Mega Evolutions. At the time random (due to Black and White 2 being on the horizon), this included all of the XY Mega Evolutions. It also included Latias and Latios who were in the code of said game, but not released until ORAS. In addition, in 2013, Aggron and Absol were also added to this list. However, there was one, significant outlier: Jynx, who never received a Mega at all. Nobody knew why Jynx was on this list at all. So, what gives? There has been for a while, a long-running idea that Jynx possibly had a Mega Evolution cut back in the day due to this article. And thanks to a tweet by Mattyoukhana_, this has finally received some significant validity. In Pokemon HOME, an unused cry was found that was strikingly similar to Jynx's, with a Mega reverb to boot;
Those who played Generations 6 and 7 should absolutely know what that reverb is: it's a trademark of a Mega cry. My theory, is that this is a removed asset from Pokemon X and Y. Some have said it's a Galarian evolution, but the reverb and echo simply don't match that. Given the trademarks, the context here is clearly different. Besides, if this were the case, where's all the other content from the DLC?
A day later, we also got this tweet stating that Jynx is highly likely to be an alternate form. This lines up with how Galarian and Mega forms are put into the game. In fact, through hacking, it is possible to have Mega Evolutions stored in exactly this way through both Bank and Home. So it definitely isn't Gigantamax.
So, why was this removed? Those who have followed this blog know that I have covered Jynx's controversial aspects in-depth on a good few occasions. Back in 1997 over to around 2001, Jynx was the recipient of a good deal of backlash by critics of the Pokemon series. This prompted a change in design, having its skin colour changed from black to purple. It's not unknown to my readers that Jynx's previous role in Gold and Silver was cut, likely due to this controversy. Jynx also hasn't appeared in the anime since 2006, in "Mean with Envy". Jynx is, to put it bluntly, Game Freak's problem child.
So, why would Jynx have been the intended recipient of a Mega Evolution? Well, by this time, the controversy had pretty much completely died down. Electabuzz and Magmortar received evolutions in Diamond and Pearl after all three gained Baby Pokemon in Gold and Silver. Clearly there is some inconsistency here. Jynx, Magmar and Electabuzz have all been seen as a trio in the past, while Pinsir, Scyther and Heracross are another. So, giving it something to make up for this seems quite logical. However, due to how controversial Jynx is, it was left in the dust. For all we know, there could just be a Mega Jynx design in Game Freak's old design vault. Maybe even that Mega Flygon that was also dropped. In fact, the very quote that is used here implies it was planned since XY; "...Flygon has had the potential to have a Mega Evolution since XY, but we were unable to complete a design and so it was dropped from consideration."
In which case, well, why don't we see Mega Flygon on the copyright list? Simple answer here is, well, he was cut early on. All the Mega Evolutions noted here must have been confirmed and/or had designs sorted. Filing a trademark isn't exactly cheap. This would strengthen the idea that Jynx, once again, likely has a Mega form all tucked away in Game Freak's vault. Obviously though, this is all speculation.
However, on this trademark list, we don't see Blaziken at all. I believe that Mega Blaziken may well have replaced Jynx after this discrepancy, as well as to foreshadow - and to build up hype for - ORAS. Far less risky and far more profitable. Jynx is simply not an easily marketable Pokemon, up there with Kadabra. Even the Kanto lovers have a common distaste for it. Can this Pokemon ever catch a break? So, what do I think of this? Well, as a person who's looked heavily into Jynx's history, I would love to see a redemption arc in this PR train wreck. My friend who tipped me off on this is actually a bit of an enthusiast! Jynx is among the most interesting Pokemon in the series, and almost viable to boot. Access to Fake Out, a very accurate sleep move in Lovely Kiss, very nice special attack, and a fairly good speed stat of 95: just 10 points away from breaking the dreaded 100 threshold. An old OU titan in Generations 1-2, and an underdog in Gen 3, seeing Jynx return to the Smogon Singles metagame would be pretty nice. I'd rather see ol' Tauros though, personally. I have requested The Cutting Room Floor, cut content enthusiasts, to have a look through XY to check for this cry. I'm not exactly savvy in datamining anything past GBA, but there are some individuals eager to try and seek out this cry in the data. Or perhaps, something more. Should anything occur, I will post a follow-up article as soon as possible. I have also contacted Mattyoukhana_ for comment. Gyopin is a curious little blighter who always seems to find its ways into leaks about Generations 1 and 2. However, I have never covered this little thing! Gyopin is a pre-evolution to Goldeen - a Baby Pokemon - whose first recorded appearance is in the Pokemon Red and Green Asset Leak. It was positioned at Index No.156, meaning that if you tried encountering it now you would find a MissingNo. in its place. Yes, this is an unmasked MissingNo.! However, it had no known name from that point in time, but these days we call it Gyopin due to its later appearances. The asset leak was released in February 2019, but held for an undetermined amount of time. We only have a back sprite of this little guy, and only in black and white too. However, I have taken it upon myself to make a speculative back sprite using the final Red and Green Goldeen's palette. This was with Bulbapedia's sprite. As a result, we wind up with this; The then-unnamed fish also had a learnset, but I have yet to translate these. I will however provide what I have;
This unnamed fish would later appear as Gyopin in the Spaceworld 1997 Demo leak that happened in 2018, released by the same person. This time, with far more completion; including a front sprite, a palette to actually look at, and a full learnset. (Credit: The Cutting Room Floor) Gyopin was Pure Water Type, with no stats (as in they were all dummied to 50), and a 50% chance to hold a Berry and a 5% chance to hold the old Mystic Water, the Wet Horn. It evolved more quickly than its Gen 1 counterpart, evolving at Level 16. As for learnset, here we are. Sourcing it from Team Spaceworld's research spreadsheet that I saved a copy of, before it was taken down. I use it for personal research records now. It's essentially Final Goldeen's, with no different moves from there. Levels are a bit different. Demo Goldeen learns moves more slowly by virtue of being a Stage 1 evolution. Gyopin is however a source of confusion for some, due to its design being a bit different to Goldeen. This, is a misconception. Goldeen originally had a spiral horn, which began being changed when Pokemon Yellow was released in September 1998. As a result, considering this fact, Gyopin's design actually makes perfect sense. Pokemon were often proposed in groups, meaning Gyopin was likely intended as a member of the Goldeen line from the very beginning. It just...got removed in the end. (Sprite Credit: The Cutting Room Floor - Gyopin, Bulbapedia - Goldeen) It gets a bit weird though. In all of Goldeen's official artwork from the era - even the Cardass art - I cannot for the life of me find anything showing Goldeen with a spiral horn. In fact, I couldn't find it for Seaking either, despite having the exact same spiral horn trait in Red and Green, and Blue JP. The closest I got to any reference was on some Cardass artwork for Seaking, but it's a bit of a reach. So, what does this mean? The spiral horn sprites for Goldeen and Seaking represent an intermittent design stage, like Gold and Silver's designs for Meganium, Spinarak and the Legendary Beasts being changed for Crystal. I believe that the artwork for Goldeen and Seaking must have been made after their in-game sprites were already finished, thus why their spiral horns were removed in Yellow and later just erased from existence. And, well, I think I can date this as well. I believe it must have happened during - and after - Spaceworld. Pokemon Yellow was released in September 1998, almost a year after Spaceworld. We have sprites showing the spiral horn in the demo, which was changed in the final. I also have a bit of a smoking gun, and that's Seaking's Spaceworld sprites. (Sprite Credit: The Cutting Room Floor) Notice the front sprite's horn: there's no spiral. They were in the middle of the redesign right as Spaceworld was going on. This leads me to believe that perhaps Gyopin and Goldeen have versions of their Spaceworld sprites without the spiral horn being featured as well somewhere, but...that's a reach, I feel. Well, why would they remove such an awesome looking design? I believe the anime must have been using the Red and Green artwork as a basis, as Goldeen had already been shown without a spiral horn. The first appearance was in Pokemon Emergency. In fact, this was its most iconic appearance that even led to Goldeen being featured in Super Smash Bros. doing the exact same thing: flopping on the floor. Thus, they must have changed it for consistency reasons. When did this air? April 8th 1997 in Japan, around the same time as when MicroGroup Game Review Vol.14 was released, doing commentary on the first episode of the anime: there was a lot of promotion going on. I believe Gyopin was removed for several reasons. It would have been extremely weak, and left Goldeen as one of the weakest middle evolutions of all time. Most Baby Pokemon reduce all the older form's stats by around 20, meaning its defenses would have been absolutely pitiful.
So there you have it: Gyopin, the Goldeen line's long lost baby, and part of one of many Generation 1 redesigns. What do you think? Personally, I wish that horn stayed, it adds a lot more personality to this line of Pokemon. Many often call Goldeen and Seaking basic, mundane and/or unimaginative. Personally I absolutely love Seaking, given my love for the more regal kinds of goldfish. Shoutout to Game Freak for giving it Swords Dance again in Sword and Shield after being deprived of it for 2 decades by the way. That was a Gen 2 event move, one of the most unfortunate casualties of the move to Gen 3. Left me super miffed. But anyway, that marks another mystery solved about not just Gyopin, but the entire Goldeen line! Out of all the Pokemon in the Spaceworld 1997 demo, most have their stats either unfinished, dummied out or otherwise. There is one, however, who stands out from the crowd: Rinrin. (Credit: The Cutting Room Floor, fan-made art by RacieBeep) Rinrin, in my opinion, may have been intended to be an alternative evolution to Konya, a scrapped pre-evolution to Meowth. This is because it is right next to Konya, a pre evolution to Meowth. It is the only Pokemon in the demo to have a true defined statline. Rinrin was a female-only Pokemon while Meowth was male, implying that there was an intention for gendered evolution. Konya would evolve at Level 14. Fun fact, Konya was also cut from Gen 1! Unlike most Pokemon in the Spaceworld dex however, Rinrin was finished. All stats but Special Defense were done (as SpD was dummied out universally, the split was still in progress). By using Meowth's Demo BST, we are able to devise what the SpD was. It was...low, but not unlike many Pokemon back then. (Source for these images are my private research sheets) Rinrin had access to Bell Chime, which was the prototype Heal Bell. Same effect, just a different name. This was actually its signature move. It would have been quite a desirable Pokemon given this, although it didn't seem like it would be too bulky, so it's definitely subjective. Access to Lovely and Sweet Kiss is certainly an eye-opener as well. Like every other Spaceworld Pokemon though, Rinrin had no TM learnset due to them still being used for debugging. Rinrin also had an evolution known as Berurun, evolving at Lv.28. This Pokemon would have been essentially a Persian counterpart. No stats are available, and it has largely the same learnset. You could technically replicate the stats through going +20 to each, as this is a common thing done for evolution, but know that it isn't definitive. (Credit: The Cutting Room Floor, fan-made art by RacieBeep) It is thought that the Rinrin line inspired Purrloin and Liepard of Gen 5. I do believe I see the resemblance, especially in regards to the idea of trickery being their forte. They have a lot of disruption-centric moves in their learnsets, so perhaps the concept of a deceptive cat got carried over! Game Freak has never acknowledged the Rinrin line in interviews to my knowledge, but Meowth has received Gigantamax, Alolan and Galarian forms, as well as an alternate evolution in Perrserker if it's Galarian. There's quite a lot of love for this cat, but still no Konya or Rinrin...
Whoa, two articles in around a month? What's all this, Plague? Well a majority of my work outside of this blog is done so I'm able to write all the good stuff up now. I have a few more articles in mind, particularly on some findings on some Spaceworld Pokemon, among other things. But, those'll have to wait. The ten people who follow and actually remember the stuff I put out may know that I covered The Jynx Controversy and its effect on Pokemon Gold and Silver's development. Well, I missed some stuff out. I suggest you read that article, as there's some key info. For those who don't want to read two big articles, here's a TL;DR:
I did note that Jynx is used to release Articuno from its egg in Snap, but only really in passing. I do believe there is more connection to this however, especially in when the controversy ramped up. The main thing here, is the time frame in which Pokemon Snap's development started, and the point of release. Pokemon Snap was originally a game called "Jack and the Beanstalk", which wasn't Pokemon at all. It had a dedicated development team under the tag "Jack and Beans", which you can see in the intro to the game. No footage of this is around, nor prototypes, but what we know is the name and that it was meant to be on the N64DD. It was intended to be a photography game, like Snap, and given the name we can conclude it was based on the British fairy tale. Around Late 1996, PokeFever had struck, and so Nintendo were looking into monetizing the game's success. Jack and the Beanstalk's development was going poorly (note that it had started development in 1995), and Nintendo was questioning whether it would even be a success. This was due to a lack of motivation for actually taking pictures. Thus, they decided that taking pictures of Pokemon would possibly be the right motivator, and after a heated debate they decided to make the switch. A lot was scrapped, but the engine was used to produce Pokemon Snap. Pokemon Snap was eventually released in March of 1999, after around 4 years of development, considering Jack and the Beanstalk. Given the time frame of development, and the featuring of Jynx summoning Articuno...I believe that this was intended to be foreshadowing for Pokemon Gold and Silver's intention to have Jynx summon Ho-Oh. Note that Pokemon Gold and Silver were released in November of 1999 as well. It should be noted that the 2007 re-release of Pokemon Snap as WiiWare had Jynx's face changed to purple to reflect the redesign. (Credit: The Cutting Room Floor) Pokemon Snap could well have been the game to fan the flames of controversy, and this does answer some questions I had regarding my theory. Specifically, the fact that Pre-1999 evidence of the controversy is very thin. But, it doesn't answer everything. Here's some details I have from my evidence file. Jynx's redesign however, did begin around Gen 2's release. I got one thing wrong in my old article, and that was whether Jynx remained black in Gen 2. It changed for Western releases, but not Japanese releases. Here's the regional differences, taken from Bulbapedia's page (Credit: Bulbapedia). I also have an updated image of the sprite change timeline from Spaceworld to GS's release. I will also note that Crystal maintained the controversial design in Japan. I do know the episode of the anime that was the root of the controversy: Episode 39 of the original Pokemon Indigo League series: Holiday Hi-Jynx. I believe that old newspapers without internet access must have been where the controversy was first fanned due to this.
There is a common belief that Carole B. Weatherford's article about Jynx (which is what ramped the controversy up in the west) came out a month after the episode was aired in the US. This is false. The article came out on May 1st 2000, while the episode was first aired on December 11th 1999. The episode originally came out in Japan on October 5th 1998. There are multiple instances where content released in 1999 was delayed to October 2000 for western audiences: Gym Challenge in the TCG, where Sabrina's Jynx was censored, and Pokemon Gold and Silver itself. I believe this was intentional, to promote the game. Gold and Silver were released on the 15th, Gym Challenge on the 16th. Both of these also had Jynx censored, which does seem to imply there was some unrest, but it isn't a very strong argument in my opinion. What does this mean? Well, not a lot. Pokemon Gold and Silver were released in October 2000 and April 2001 in the US and Europe respectively. The time frame lines up with Weatherford's article. Thus this doesn't necessarily support my belief that the controversy is what got Jynx dropped from the story. For my theory to be correct, I need evidence that Jynx was controversial in 1999. Do I have it? Indeed I do. It took a bit of searching, but I found it! On September 14th 1999, Washington Post writer Mary C. Norton published an article covering Pokemon's worse blunders, covering the dark sides to the series. It included Jynx and named it as a sexist Pokemon. It can be theorized that this fanned the flames of controversy that would stretch into accusations of racism. Remember, Pokemon Shock had only happened 2 years prior to this, and resulted in a large branding overhaul: Nintendo and Game Freak wanted to keep clean. Eyes were still on Pokemon; it should be noted that this was essentially the Minecraft and Fortnite of the century. Now, this is one article from the Washington Post, and it should not be taken as a direct conformation that the controversy stemmed from it. The beginning of a controversy is honestly one of the hardest things to pin down, especially for a time before the internet became widespread and accepted like it is today. Most of the controversy ramped up in 2000. So, this theory remains open-ended. I do believe there was at least some anticipation from Game Freak regarding this, given that Jynx was dropped from the story despite Pokemon Snap's precedent. That Washington Post article could well have been what tipped them off. Or perhaps, it was simply to use a Pokemon with more favor in the series. What do you think? Leave me some comments. |
About meSo I really, really like researching Prototype Pokemon information. That's about it. I also do things on Smogon, I guess. Archives
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