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!
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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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