Another long string of mostly unused designs (plus four Pokemon that, revised, made it to the final!). The first of these are clearly “cute” designs by Atsuko Nishida but have an unfinished look; the rest of them look to me like a mix of Morimoto and Nishida’s designs, possibly in collaboration. Again, most of these are “Animal+” designs and seem to be brainstormed ideas for fauna that could populate the world; not unlike how Pokemon like Rattata and Pidgey were used in Red/Green as generic animals to populate the environment. At least one of these is almost assuredly a scrapped Generation I Pokemon, and I have my suspicions about at least one more. This period also starts the designer’s early obsession with bird Pokemon designs, which this list seems to have a ton of before they cut them. Whether these were just a quick dump of old designs, redrawn and made available to tinker with, or a brainstorming session of world-populating fauna, almost none of them feel all that fleshed out and very few of them probably had a lot of design work put into them. ID 305: ??? This is…very basic. It’s clearly a design by Atsuko Nishida: it screams cute, it’s got the cheek dimples that appear in many of her designs, and it’s based on a simplistic shape that accentuates its adorable features. Cutting Room Floor points out that it slightly resembles Kirby and, well, fair enough. But it doesn’t look very developed at all, and certainly isn’t ready for a Pokemon game as is. It doesn’t have a hook, any features that denote a type, or any concepts to build a moveset around. It shares a bit with the earliest designs of Jigglypuff, but even Jigglypuff has those huge eyes that pull the design together, making it distinctive: There’s one thing that gives us a clue to this pokemon’s larger design goals, and make me think the design similarities to Jigglypuff are not indications that this is a early version of it or that they’re related. Namely, this little guy seems to be the first in a four (!?) stage evolution, followed by 306, 307, and 308: We’ll discuss the weird mystery of how there seems to be a four stage evolution when we talk about 306 and 308, but for now it’s worth noting that these other stages give us clues about what was going on with 305. All three of the following are clearly grass types, which means that 305 could possibly be designed after a seed that grows into the tree at the end of the evolution. That would fit with his round design, though frankly it’s still a weak design even if we know this. Sunkern, in the final, is a much better depiction of what a seed Pokemon could look like: I doubt this is an early version of Sunkern; Sunkern seems to have been created in the July 1999 build but doesn’t yet have a sprite by then. It has a sketchy sprite that looks completely different in Spaceworld ’99, which suggests it has a separate origin, much later than this. As to my best guess about this pokemon? This is 100% speculation, but I wonder if this whole evolutionary line was a very early design for the Oddish family. Nishida also designed that line and Oddish shares a similar simplistic circular seed design that blossoms into a larger plant. But that’s just speculation. This little dude could be all sorts of things. The only thing I can say for certain is that it would have been revised before moving forward as a design. ID 306: Yuki Usagi?The second in the 305-308 evolutionary line, and probably the most interesting. Rather than a generic smiling blob like it’s predecessor, this stage of the line has a distinct idea behind it. It’s grown leaf ears and it’s body has elongated, giving it the appearance of a rabbit. It could be a Yuki-Usagi, or a type of bunny snowman that are commonly made in Japan: These bunnies are not only super cute, but they have a long history in Japan. Notice the Yuki-Usagi in the background of this painting from 1772: 306 sure does look like a Yuki-Usagi, right? It also resembles a daifuku, or a sweet type of mochi made in Japan, which is sometimes also made in the shape of a rabbit: That, importantly, raises an interesting possibility. Like 305 before it, this design has all the hallmarks of Atsuko Nishida’s design. And because of an interview that was helpful translated into English by Dr. Lava (all credit to him for the below picture) we know of one other Pokemon Nishida designed based off a daifuku: Could this be the original design of Pikachu? Well, possibly. To my mind there are a couple of reasons to doubt it. First, according to this interview, Nishida believes that there’s no data left over from her original design. This sprite is not drawn in the Red/Green style—notice how the back sprite isn’t artificially blown up like Red/Green back sprites were—so if it were Pikachu’s original design, it would have to have been specifically redrawn when they were brainstorming for Gold/Silver. Secondly, 306 definitely seems to have a grass aesthetic (not to mention that if it were a Yuki Usagi, it would also be Ice type) while of course Pikachu is far away from that design; if this were Pikachu’s original design than it went through quite a journey as it got redesigned. Third, of course, 306 is part of it’s own evolutionary line that looks very different from Pikachu’s; but then again, this could be an artifact from when Pikachu was much different. If this is the original design of Pikachu, then it potentially gives us an explanation for 305-308 is a seemingly four stage line, when that’s more or less against the evolutionary rules in Pokemon games. What could easily have happened was that 305, 306, and 307 were designed as a line, but that Yuki Usagi was picked out to be redesigned into its own independent Pokemon. After it was pulled from the line, 308 could have been added as a third stage to replace it; this makes sense, given how different the coloring and design of 308 are. Of course, it could also have been the case that all four were designed at the same time, knowing they would discard whichever was deemed the weakest design and use the rest to make a three-stage design. It also seems to be that the Pikachu connection to 306 would make the possibility of my Oddish theory for the rest a little more farfetched. Pikachu was designed in Period 3 of Generation I’s design (1993-1994), right when Atsuko Nishida was hired, while the Oddish line is one of the very last pokemon families she designed, right at the end of Red/Green’s development. Furthermore, it looks like the Oddish line was developed because they needed more grass types (it’s made at the very end along with the Bellsprout line, there were very few common grass types without these two additions), which suggests that she made the line based on the balance needs of the game right at the end. While Nishida could have dipped back into her earlier stuff and redesigned 305, 307, and 308 to fit this need, it doesn’t suggest that Pikachu and Oddish were made independently. Which also implies that either my Oddish theory or the Pikachu theory are correct, not both (though it is possible they coexist). One last thought, in favor of the Yuki Usagi-Pikachu connection. Each time I look at them, I can’t help but notice how similar the eyes of 305, 306, and Pikachu are: Obviously this similarity can be explained away by Nishida’s style, but on the other hand, I can’t shake how, if you erase everything else extraneous, these all look very much like three different takes on the same Pokemon. ID 307: ???307 is clearly the third stage evolution of 305 and 306. It’s more developed, and it’s leaf ears have turned into leaf hair. Other than that, there’s not much to say about it. It feels under-designed; though it does have shading, the majority of it is just a bland white, like 305, and its face is almost completely unchanged from it. It does look like a natural extension of that Pokemon, but while 305 didn’t have any discernible type, 307 is obviously grass. Another weird characteristics of this line is that if 306 was designed at the same time as the rest of the line it would imply that 307 would be Ice/Grass, just like 306 seems to be. But 307 shows no features of an Ice/Grass Pokemon and 308, following it, looks a bit like a tropical tree, which fits an ice typing even less. These discrepancies just make me feel even more that this line was either half baked, a brainstorming session that didn’t ever go much further, or early designs that got brought back to tinker with but in the end weren’t used. Beyond that, 307 fits my early Oddish theory probably the most out of this line; its leaf hair looks quite a bit like Oddish’s and despite its coloring 307 could be mistaken for Oddish’s big brother. We’ll probably never know the truth behind what was going on with this line, but my speculation is that these were early ideas and they either became something else that looks completely different, or were dropped for more nuanced designs as development moved forward. ID 308: ???The last of this four stage line of cute white grass-haired critters. 308 is quite the departure from the rest of the evolutionary tree: its shading is different, its eyes and mouth are a completely different style, and while 307 at least resembled a plant, this one is a full-on palm tree of some type. It’s legs have also turned into roots, furthering the connection to a plant, and there’s shading on it’s body that makes it resemble bark. It’s most similar to Sunflora in the final, but Sunflora (as Sanii or Sunny) appears later in the Korean index, and so they were probably unrelated. There’s a lot of strange things going on with the Pokemon, so let’s take them one by one. First, let’s address the four-stage elephant in the room. To this day, there is not a single Pokemon evolutionary line that has four stages (discounting mega-evolutions, of course). It strikes me as very unlikely they were considering one here, especially if, as I suspect, this is an earlier scrapped design from Red/Green. The speculation on Cutting Room Floor is that this is a split evolution from 306, and that’s possible, but for a number of reasons I don’t see that as likely. First, just on an aesthetic level, 308 doesn’t look anything like 306: it’s hair doesn’t even look close to the ears on 306 and there’s not even a hint of bark skin to 306. Furthermore, the concepts are completely different, given that one’s a Yuki Usagi—associated with snow and ice--and the other is a palm tree—associated with fire and sun. On the other hand, while it’s still quite a difference, 308 does seem to grow out of the design of 307, which in turns seems like a natural outgrowth of the design of 306. 307’s hair gets turned downwards into fronds, its feet get stretched out to the roots. As a result, while I see the progression from 306 to 307 to 308, a progression straight from 306 to 308 seems, at best, like it wasn’t thought out. That’s not to say that a split evolution isn’t impossible here; in the final, Belossom and Politoed both look significantly different than the line that proceeds them. Saying that, there’s a specific reason Politoed looks different that we’ll get to when we hit that entry, and Belossom’s original coloring--despite it’s unfortunately racist implications--do make it look significantly closer to the Oddish line that proceeds it. 308 could very well have been designed like them, to be a significant departure from the original line. The bigger reason to doubt the split evolution hypothesis is that the internal index, not to mention the final game, contains no Pokemon lines completely created for Gold/Silver which also had split evolutions. For instance, Slowking was a split evolution, but Slowpoke and Slowbro were Red/Green Pokemon; Tyrogue splits into three Pokemon, but Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee were Red/Green Pokemon. There aren’t even candidates for other split evolutions like this in the internal index, with the very unlikely exception of 317. It doesn’t seem likely to me that the 305, 306, 307, 308 line breaks this rule, especially when they appear in the internal index so early, far before the first split evolution (Slowking) even makes an appearance on the list. So what’s happening here? I can think of three likely possibilities. The first is that when this line was brainstormed, they came up with four ideas but weren’t sure which ones would constitute the evolutionary line they chose in the end: they may have been thinking of ditching one of the four and creating an evolutionary line out of the other three. I mentioned the second option above, but it could also be that one of these Pokemon was pulled out to become its own separate line (likely 306, especially if it became Pikachu) and another one was designed to take its place as a third evolution. Because this might have happened later, a different designer could have worked on it, explaining why 308 looks so different from the other three. The third option is that 308 was a redesign of 307, possibly created by a different designer other than Nishida (likely Morimoto). One reason to think this is because it looks so much more fleshed out that 307; not only does it have much more personality, but its concept is much deeper than “white thing with leaf hair” and it no longer shares basically a copy/paste of the face of the previous evolutions. Its shading is also more developed, and the design has been sharpened so that multiple parts of it all scream “tree.” Of course, "redesign of 307" theory still runs into the problem that 308 seems completely disconnected from the design of 306. However, that’s more easily explained if 308 was a later redesign: 305 and 306 were probably just not redesigned yet to create continuity with the new design for 308, and the whole line was scrapped before anyone did their redesigns. All of this is speculation, but the overall evidence leads me away from the split evolution hypothesis and towards the redesign idea. Another piece of evidence in favor of the redesign theory is the back sprites of 307 and 308: Obviously, as you can see with the third picture, in which I overlaid 308’s back sprite on top of 307’s, they don’t have identical back sprites. But man are they close. Looking at these two, side by side, it makes me wonder if 308’s back sprite wasn’t derived in part from 307’s, lending credence to the redesign theory. What’s also interesting to me is that 308’s sprite only shows us a bit of the head, while 307’s shows the entire body. In general, Red/Green’s back sprites tended to only show a small amount of the whole creature, and the pixels were blown up to give a sense of perspective. The early designs for the SW97 version of Gold and Silver tended to do the opposite: having a lot more pixels to work with, they tended to try and show the entire creature in the back sprites. However, by the final, they tended to go backwards again, and the complete game once again usually only shows part of the Pokemon in the back sprites. There are a lot of exceptions to this pattern, but take a look at some of representative examples: There's too much noise in the patterns of back sprites to make any clear conclusions, but part of me thinks that this lightly suggests 308 was designed (or redesigned) later than the others, potentially after Spaceworld '97. If that's the case, it does put some doubt on the idea that the Korean Index is chronological, but it is absolutely possible that even if 308 was added after SW97, it could have replaced a Pokemon originally found in this slot and designed earlier, or that the version we see here is a redesigned version of a Palm Tree 308 that had always existed in this slot but in an earlier design. Or that is always existed here but the back sprite is a coincidence. My guess is either the first or second option: that there was probably a white tree creature more in line with 308 here, or this is a redesign of 308 done after Spaceworld 1997 that replaced something else in this slot which got discarded. But if you are inclined to be skeptical this list is chronological, then 308 is your Exhibit A. ID 309: Hanako?This one’s quite interesting! I feel pretty safe in saying that this elephant Pokemon was a newer iteration of a rejected design from Red/Green. That design, found in the original Red/Green leak, only had a backsprite, but it matched up with images we previously had of a cut elephant Pokemon (which may or may not be referenced in Raichu’s final Japanese Pokedex entry, which mentions being able to shock an Indian Elephant into fainting). Unlike other beta Pokemon, we don’t have a name for this because it was partially obscured, but the final letter is either “ko” or “ro.” Some people have speculated its name was “Hanako,” the name of a famous elephant that lived in Inokashira Park in Tokyo for sixty years, and although that name is pure speculation, it’s as good as any other as long as we don’t forget it’s made up. The version of “Hanako” found in the Korean Index is quite different from the original in a lot of ways, to the point that I suspect it was redrawn by a completely different artist (if I had to guess, I’d say Morimoto made the original one, and Sugimori redrew it). The original has a standing pose and looks vaguely sinister, while the second looks much more like a conventional elephant. This generally matches the way designs had changed since the early development of Red/Green and the early development of Gold/Silver: notice how the original one looks a bit like the early exaggerated Kaiju designs like Nidoqueen and Rhydon, while the latter matches the “Animal+” sensibilities of many of the early designs in the Korean Index. Still, all of the distinctive parts of the original design can be found in this redesign. The most distinctive part of the original was that it seemed to have four tusks: a regular pair and a smaller pair above them (they’re hard to see but visible in both front and back sprite). Lo and behold, the redrawn sprite also has smaller tusks jutting out of the regular ones, though it’s also grown a bunch more on the top of its head. The back sprites also look very similar, though the new one has replaced the trunk with a head spike, which also reflects the way the trunk has been redrawn downwards in the newer design.
What’s interesting about this Pokemon is that it provides insight into the process by which old designs were reused. While it is possible the original "Hanako" existed on an earlier version of the Korean Index before getting revised and replaced, the existence of this elephant suggests that old Red/Green designs weren’t simply transferred over but redrawn if they were. This also suggests a level of intentionality: someone at Game Freak must have liked this elephant boi enough to redraw him and put him up for consideration. If the elephant was redrawn, it also means that potentially any of these early sprites were also redrawn rejected Red/Green sprites, though who knows which might actually be (304 and 306 look like reasonable candidates, but really anything could be). Finally, the existence of this elephant here, so early in the Korean Index, supports my thesis that the Index is an (imperfect) chronological record of the development of Gold/Silver. There are other explanations and it could be coincidence, but it’s something. Regardless, even if this Elephant had enough fans to get redrawn and considered for Gold/Silver, it didn’t appear in Spaceworld 1997 or after. There’s no real candidate for a Pokemon that might have been designed out of it: this could be an early Donphan, but Donphan shows up a few more index numbers down the line, we know Donphan had its final design even in 1996, and Donphan’s design seems to have been remarkably stable throughout development. My speculation is that this elephant is from the very earliest brainstorming stage of development when they pulled in any designs they had left over. It was possibly redrawn at least once (to move it away from the original standing design) but nothing more was done with it. Maybe there’s a version of Gold and Silver pre-Spaceworld that features this and a moveset, but my guess is that even if that does exist its moveset was probably very sketchy and undeveloped.
11 Comments
|
AuthorMy name's Aaron George, and I'm both a historian and a fan of Pokemon, especially of development. Reach me at @Asmoranomardic ArchivesCategories |