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?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
About meSo I really, really like researching Prototype Pokemon information. That's about it. I also do things on Smogon, I guess. Archives
January 2021
Categories
All
|