5/5/2021 3 Comments ID 310 (Natu) through 314ID 310: Natu (Neiti)Our first Pokemon that made it all the way to the final build! Well, maybe Celebi did too, but that's assuming 301 really was an early Celebi, and even then it wasn’t in SW97 and was substantially changed by the final. Natu, on the other hand, is more or less the same sprite-wise throughout development, though the similarity masks some interesting changes as it went through development. We’ll be talking more about these changes as we discuss this three (?!) stage line, but there’s still a lot to note about Natu itself. The different sprites from Spaceworld '97 to the final are all very similar, but Natu started with a brown palette, which put it in line with its more obviously Native American themed evolution, Xatu, which seems to have been originally based on a totem pole. Natu's palette eventually changed in June 1999, before eventually settling on the green from the final by Spaceworld '99. Still, it looks like it took a bit longer for Natu to get redrawn and gain a new palette than other Pokemon from Spaceworld '97: it’s still rocking the white look in and old sprite in June 1999, after others had already been reworked. The silver sprite was held over even longer, as you can see that it was still the old style even in Spaceworld '99. The Native American theme would suggest that whoever created Kokopelli also created the Natu line: likely Morimoto, possibly Sugimori. It also lightly suggests they were made at the same time, meaning that if Kokopelli was early, so was the Natu line. This isn’t the only reason to think that the Natu line was probably very early. First of course, it appears so early in the Korean Index, next to things like Donphan (the first Gold/Silver Pokemon revealed to the public) and the R/G Elephant. But even if you don’t buy the idea that the Korean Index is chronological, there are other reasons to think it was early as well. First, as we’ll talk about in more depth below, Natu has a second form unseen in Spaceworld '97. There is a lot of evidence that this second form was created prior to 1997, which also suggests that the Natu line was early too. We'll touch on those reasons in a bit. The best reason to evidence that the Natu line was from an early stage of development can be found in its drastically different early movepool: The first thing to notice here is that two of Natu's moves don't exist as-is in the final version. Stalker is an early name for Mean Look but probably does the same thing, and Synchronize (not to be confused with Generation V’s move with the same name) was a move that made the opponent take the same amount of damage as the user on that turn; it was replaced by Icy Wind in the final game. We know that the internal move list in Gold and Silver is chronological, because the Spaceworld '97 list is incomplete only at the end, and the only differences between it and the final are moves added to the end of the list which were created for Pokemon after Spaceworld '97. Which means that the move list was probably tabulated sometime before Spaceworld ’97 to match the Pokemon they already had. Natu has four moves added in Gold and Silver—Stalker, Synchronize, Pursuit, and Spite—and all of those except Pursuit appear very early in the Gold/Silver movelist. Given that Synchronize and Stalker were reworked, it strikes me as plausible that Natu’s moveset was figured out before they had fully completed the Spaceworld 97 move list, and was filled in with mostly early moves (Pursuit could have been added in slightly later, maybe to replace an earlier move). All of this suggests to me that Natu itself was done earlier than other Spaceworld ’97 Pokemon and it’s moveset was thus finished earlier than others. This isn't the only reason the moveset is important: the moveset hints at a very different flavor for the Natu line that will help us explain the next Pokemon in the index, 311. Natu’s an awkward Pokemon in the final game: it’s a Psychic/Flying Pokemon with only two Psychic moves: Foresight and Psychic. Foresight is awful and only learned after it has already evolved and Psychic is learned at level fifty IF you Natu it unevolved until then; otherwise, you have to wait until level 65, past when you’ve beaten the Elite Four. Other than that, it has one bad Flying move (Peck) and Nightshade, a Ghost-type fixed damage attack that is bizarrely given to a bird Pokemon that has nothing to do with Ghost Pokemon. The final moveset is very evocative of a mysterious bird that can tell the future, and I think it’s a real triumph in giving it character. But part of that character is that it’s pretty frustrating to use in battle. Not so the early version of Natu! In Spaceworld ’97, it starts with Confusion, which is a decent enough Psychic move to take advantage of its typing, and has a number of Flying type moves to use, like Drill Peck. Moves like Stalker, Quick Attack, and Pursuit all give it the flavor of a fast Pokemon which chases after prey; moves like Spite and Synchronize (which makes the opponent take the same amount of damage Natu would this turn) give it a flavor of an attrition based Pokemon which punishes its opponent for trying to defeat it. All of these elements—playing into its identity as a bird, its quickness, and its cruelty to its opponent—completely change the type of Pokemon it is, while its traits in the final—of being a bird who sees the future and hops around slowly—are completely absent. By Spaceworld ’99, it’s Pokedex entries are close to the final and mention its ability to tell the future, so clearly its flavor had been reworked by then. One last thing makes me think the Natu line was one of the earliest lines designed for Gold/Silver. In the final game, Natu is only found in one obscure spot, which suggests to me that it was created at an earlier time in development before they had worked out exactly what sorts of Pokemon were going to be needed to populate the environment. A similar pattern happened in Red/Green: most of the earliest Pokemon created didn’t fit in any region of the game, and so the Safari Zone was created as a catch-all environment for designs they liked but couldn't obviously fit into the regions created for Red/Green. As a result, the Safari Zone was disproportionately stuffed with Pokemon which were early designs from the initial stages of development, like Exeggcute, Chansey, and Kangaskhan. To be fair, Spaceworld ’97 did have a completely different map layout and story, and so you could account for Natu’s obscurity by assuming it fit more into Spaceworld '97’s world than the final, but even that map still had more or less the same regions and environments as final Gold/Silver, just spread out over a Pokemon world version of the Japanese islands. On the other hand, Natu's obscurity could be a result of how drastically its flavor changed over development. As Natu’s development made it into a weirder and more obscure creature (as we'll see in its moveset), it may have gone from a tiny bird that could've fit almost anywhere to a Psychic bird that didn't make sense on the initial routes. One last note: Natu is the first in a series of odd bird Pokemon found in the Korean Index. I’ll be pointing it out as we go along, but the Korean Index is simply stacked with new ideas for birds. If you’re wondering why any of them didn’t make it into the final, my guess is that they were all in competition for the same slots that Natu and Hoothoot got, and that they got cut because Hoothoot and Natu were the superior designs. ID 311: ??? A second form of the Natu/Xatu line! It’s tempting to call it some like Batu or Klaatu, but we really have no idea. I’m not even sure it was ever a second form, and not just an alternate version of Natu. This guy is really interesting to me. He fits into the middle ground between Natu and Xatu in that he’s more developed than Natu (Natu’s final Pokedex mentions wings so undeveloped it has to hop around, and here we see them grown) but he has smaller feet and wings than Xatu, which looks far more formidable than 311. This Pokemon is clearly based on a roadrunner, unlike the more sparrow-like designs of the other two. Again, since Kokopelli was designed around Southwestern American folklore and roadrunners are from the same place, this just continues to cement the idea that these Pokemon were made by the same designer. “Klaatu” also has an eye design on its back, which matches the eye design found on the back of early Xatu, again demonstrating how these form a natural three stage evolution that changes more gradually than Natu into Xatu. Saying all that, 311 feels quite unfinished. Notice the discrepancies between its front sprite and its back sprite. Most obviously, the back sprite doesn’t have a wing where there should be one; either it’s invisible because it’s folded into its back, or this is some kind of deformed one winged bird. Secondly, the tailfeathers are completely different between back and front: in one they cup together into an oval at the top, while in the other they’re spread outwards at the top. The back sprite is a different, and probably earlier, design for sure, but it also seems like it was never completed. Instead, the lack of a wing makes it seem as though its more an anatomy sketch where wings would be added later, but never were. All this suggests that though Natu and Xatu were probably implemented early, 311 may have been discarded even before that. Having said the above, there’s some really interesting conclusions to draw when comparing this roadrunner to Natu’s moveset. At least according to Natu’s final Pokedex, Natu is not a fast Pokemon; its wings don’t even work. And yet its moveset has Quick Attack and Pursuit in it (not to mention Stalker, which of course implies a Pokemon that keeps following its opponent even after it tries to escape). All of these moves seem much more suited to a roadrunner Pokemon than a flightless chick. Could 311 originally have taken Natu’s place, but was then switched out when they came up with Natu? Or maybe they were a three stage evolution when the move set was being designed, and those moves were given to the line because they suited 311? Alternatively, if you don’t believe that the Korean Index is chronological, 311 could have been an attempt to expand the Natu/Xatu line after SW97. If this was the case, it wasn’t considered long, given its lack of wing and that there are no signs of it in the June 1999 build. I very much doubt this possibility. First, the Korean Index introduces almost no Pokemon designs which were later than SW97, and the two it does were probably special cases. Given how similar the lineup of the Korean Index and SW97 are, it doesn’t seem likely to me that they created short lived evolutions like 311 and then scrapped them almost immediately after. Even more significantly, this theory wouldn’t explain why Natu’s movelist seems designed for 311. Quick Attack, Pursuit, and Stalker seem designed for an earlier version of the design which included 311. It is far more plausible that 311 informed that movelist and explains why those moves so ill match Natu. If the Natu line was ever considered as a three-stage line, my suspicion is that 311 was cut when they decided to make Natu evolve by the Heartstone (it doesn’t work in SW97, but its still in the code). Most Pokemon which evolved via stone were two stage evolutions, and they may have hoped to bring Natu/Xatu in line with them. Then, after SW97 when they changed their mind and made Natu evolve just by level, other Pokemon had probably already taken that slot and there was no room to squeeze 311 back in. This is only speculation, of course, since the other Pokemon that used the Heart Stone—Politoed—was a three stage line, but it still seems plausible. It could also have been removed for continuity reasons. It was probably very difficult to make a moveset for a tiny bird, a fast running bird, and a Psychic totem-pole bird. Even the final skips over this by completely avoiding bird moves that Xatu could do but Natu could not: focusing on their Psychic nature probably gave the team more space to design a moveset that fit both stages. Adding another completely different bird might have been too much, and removing it would allow them to avoid the “Natu with Quick Attack and Pursuit” problem of SW97. ID 312: Neitio (Xatu) Xatu’s where we can most obviously the Native American influences in this line. There are two obvious (and one obscure) inspirations for Xatu. The first are Pacific Northwest Totem Poles, like you see here: Not only does Xatu’s beak match this picture, as well as it’s blocky style of coloring, but the little frog friend it has in SW97 seems to be a clear match for a totem pole figure below the bird on the top. In fact, the SW99 and final Silver sprites even match the typical totem pole pose, with wings outspread around it. The second inspiration for Xatu (and Natu) also comes from Pacific Northwest Indian culture. That is, both heavily resemble the trickster god Raven: Raven is one of the most prominent gods in the pantheons of some of the Native American tribes now found in Washington and Oregon states. While most of the gods in these Native American pantheons tend to keep their distance from humans, Raven is typically represented as a trickster god who can be a champion to humankind. There are legends in which Raven gave humans the gift of fire, as well as legends about how Raven put the moon in the sky. Even though he’s not the head of the pantheon, he’s often described as the creator of the Earth and of humans. He’s also a god with a lot of personality and charisma: like other trickster gods such as Loki, or Coyote in other religious system, there are far more stories devoted to him then there are other gods. While Raven is depicted in many different ways, the similarities are unmistakable. For instance, in the first picture of Raven, not only can we see the eye that can be found on Xatu’s back in the exact same place, but we can also see that Raven has a second face, right where Xatu’s companion is on his chest. Furthermore, the second and third Ravens have wings identical to Natu and 311’s wings. While the similarities to Raven and Totem Poles was toned down in the final designs of Natu and Xatu, the similarities still remain. What about the last inspiration? Well, as it turns out, Xatu had made a previous appearance in Game Freak's earlier game, Pulseman! This enemy from Pulseman is more obviously based on a Mallard Duck; likely the same ducks that inspired Duck Hunt. But it has an unmistakable resemblance to Xatu's final palette. It's likely that they either found the Native American theme a bit too obvious, or they simply thought the brown palette was boring, and when they were searching for a new color scheme for the Xatu family, they decided to make it a reference to Pulseman. Regardless, it's a pretty interesting find for me to discover the secret Pulseman origins of Xatu! (Thanks to RacieB for the find!) Xatu’s movepool in Spaceworld ’97 was extremely limited, but that’s because at the time it evolved via the Heartstone, and traditionally stone evolutions like Wigglytuff, Poliwrath, Victreebell, etc didn’t learn any extra moves, presumably to incentivize the trainer to keep them in their unevolved form until they had the moveset they liked. The Heartstone was one of two new evolutionary stones in Spaceworld '97, alongside the Poisonstone, and only Politoed and Natu used it to evolve. It was probably removed when they came up with the idea of evolutions that used traded items, which was a more original way to cause the new Pokemon to evolve. As a result, by Spaceworld 99, they had gotten rid of the Heartstone and changed the evolution method to just simple leveling. Natu evolved into Xatu at level 20 in Spaceworld '99. By the final, they had upped the leveling requirement to level 25, possibly to account better for how high leveled Natus were in the wild. There's only one more point of interest for Xatu. By Spaceworld ’99, we have early Pokedex information for most Pokemon that had survived to that stage in development. Most of these entries are pretty much the same as the final, as you can see with Xatu’s: Beta: It's believed that it stands still all day long, with hardly a twitch or a peep, because it is looking into the future. Final: It's believed that it stands still all day long, with hardly a twitch or a peep, because it is looking into the past and future. Even though these are very similar, I do want to note two things. First, the final added “looking into the past” to the entry. While it’s not a big change, this seems to be more consistent with the earlier Xatu sprite that had an eye on its back, which would have visually symbolized “looking into the past.” I don’t think this is proof the old design was still in use, but it is interesting. Secondly, from this entry it is clear that Xatu is not the sort of Pokemon to use Quick Attack or Pursuit; it clearly spends most of its time staying put. The remnants of 311 were clearly gone by this point, and Xatu’s flavor was nailed down as “future seeking bird” rather than the “fast hunter bird” flavor its old moveset would imply. ID 313: ??? I simultaneously think this is a great design and completely understand why it didn’t make it even as far as Spaceworld ’97. It’s a bizarre, slightly deformed design, not unlike Morimoto’s signatures in Pokemon design. It could also be a Sugimori design given his design work for Hoothoot, which similarly is a bizarre, exaggerated version of an existing bird. It reminds me most of Doduo, though Doduo’s signature two heads aren’t a part of this design at all. However, the long legs, the fact they are both based on flightless birds, and the sort of shellshocked look on its face all remind me of Doduo. It’s clearly based on a Kiwi bird, though instead of looking forward, the bird is looking up straight into the sky, giving it a sort of look to it that makes it look stupid or confused. FrenchOrange at The Cutting Room Floor has suggested it might be an undead bird and that it’s at a weird angle because it’s a zombie undergoing necrosis; it’s possible, but that might be a stretch. My best guess is that it’s either just a play on a Kiwi's innate goofiness, much like Hoothoot is an exaggerated and sillier looking owl, or that 313 is based on old stories in which Turkeys, being extremely stupid birds, would look up at the sky when it rained and drown themselves. Really, any speculation is possible with this guy, as we have so little to go on. Another mystery about this Pokemon is how old its design is: was this originally a scrapped design for Red and Green, like 304, 309 and possibly 305-308? Given its place in the index, so near the beginning, it’s certainly plausible. It does fit the design sensibilities of the second era of Red and Green’s design: it’s an Animal+ sort of design, it’s a deformed and monstrous design similar to Crocky and Cactus in concept and given its close resemblance to real life birds it fits very snugly with Farfetch’d and Doduo, made in the same era as regular birds with one slight twist. If it was created in this era, it probably didn’t make it far, and probably competed for the same flightless bird concept that Doduo nailed much better. If it was brought back for Gold/Silver, it likewise probably faced the same problems of being not distinct enough from the other birds and was dropped again. But we can’t really know for sure, and its just as possible that it was made for the earliest build of Gold/Silver before it was dropped or just never implemented in the first place. Like I mentioned in the Natu entry, there are a ton of bird Pokemon in the Korean index, and its likely they were all competing for the same two or three spots which eventually went to the Natu line and the Hoothoot line. Pokemon like this one probably didn’t get very far in development because they had so much competition; we know from interviews that Sugimori was a huge fan of Hoothoot, and Natu was, as we saw, an early Pokemon that was well liked enough to stick it out through the entire process. In the end, Undead/Stupid Kiwi bird just probably didn’t fill a needed niche in the games and didn’t get beyond a rough idea. ID 314: ??? Like 313, there’s not much to go on with 314 either. It’s clearly based on a scorpion, which wasn't used in Red/Green but is a great concept for a Pokemon. It also shares that “Animal+” plus design typical of these early Gold/Silver designs and the early phases of Red/Green’s design, which plausibly dates it as far back as the early development of Red/Green where they were brainstorming fauna to fit the world. However, it doesn’t look much like a Pokemon; notably, it lacks a distinct face, which gives it a generic monster sort of look. Of all the designs in Red/Green, as disparate as they were, the designers were careful that almost every single one of them had a recognizable face that could show emotions and express character. The three exceptions--Staryu, Starmie, and Zubat--prove the rule. Staryu and Starmie have a crystal eye, similar to 314, but have a five limbed body that give them humaniod features to emote with. Even Zubat which also lacked eyes, had such huge teeth that it could still show off a face. Not so with 314. What does this mean? It’s unclear. Was 314 from such an early stage of design that it predated the design sensibilities that led to Pokemon’s distinct style? Unlikely, given that the earliest Pokemon we know of, such as Rhydon, Gyaoon, and Kangaskhan, all have even more cartoony faces, not less. Another possibility is that 314 was created by someone completely new to the team, and thus looks so drastically different. Again, it’s possible, but we don’t have any other corroborating evidence. The only other explanation I can think of is that it was inspired by something far outside Pokemon with different design sensibilities, and they planned to bring it into line with other Pokemon before it was scrapped and ignored. For instance, The Cutting Room Floor suggests that 314 may have been based upon a scorpion enemy from Dragonquest: But this doesn’t seem right either, since even this Dragonquest enemy has a face and more personality than 314! If the Scorpion looked more like a Pokemon than 314 does, why would have it been designed to look less like a Pokemon than the original? It could have been based on a different source, and it certainly looks like a generic trash mob from an early RPG; maybe this guy filled in as exactly that when they were programming Pokemon very early on. My bet is on Option 2: this was a design by someone outside the Pokemon design team and it was never redrawn to conform to the design sensibilities of the team. Which means this was probably part of the larger brainstorming very early in Gold/Silver’s design cycle, or from even earlier, at some point early in Red/Green. I’ve also seen suggestions that this is an early version of either Skorupi or Gligar, both of which are plausible: 314 certainly has the pose of Skorupi, and Skorupi fixed 314’s face problem but changed little else, so I can see this being a possibility. However, given the long time between development of Gen II and Gen IV, I’m hesitant to speculate that Pokemon from this list were reused so much later. Given how sketchy 314 is, it’s just as likely that Skorupi was created just to fill a “scorpion Pokemon” slot in Generation IV and they just coincidentally look similar. Likewise, this design might have evolved into Gligar, but just about everything had to change: its pose and its face are completely different, and Gligar even gains wings which 314 lacks. As we’ll see, some Pokemon on this list undergo drastic transformations, so it is possible 314 changed this much. However, as we’ll see when we get to it, Gligar’s early designs hint it was probably originally based on facehuggers from the Alien franchise and its Scorpion similarities were supplementary to that initial design idea. Furthermore, Gligar nor 314 appear anywhere in Spaceworld ’97, so if this did lead to Gligar, it was clearly brought back from the dead after 1997, which is unlikely. If 314 was the starting point for Gligar, it would probably have been a very loose inspiration rather than a direct line, I think.
Because it doesn’t appear in Spaceworld ’97, it is very likely 314 was a very rough design from the earliest brainstorming for Gold/Silver. If it appeared in an earlier build I doubt much work was put into it. At best, they probably planned to come back to it, but by the time they did, Gligar was a better Scorpion design. Whatever happened, 314 never got a chance to fill a niche, and seems to have been forgotten as they filled out the initial 1997 roster.
3 Comments
CupOfKoffeeing
5/5/2021 04:09:26 pm
An alternative name for the lost Natu evolution: Satu!
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Spoon
5/7/2021 02:55:35 am
To me it looks like the scorpion has a singular black eyeball, and the white dot is light reflecting on it. It feels reminiscent of a lot of Zelda designs in that respect, most notably Gohma and Tektites.
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Simbre
3/22/2022 05:56:56 pm
I just realized I posted this in the wrong section. Whoops lol. Here's that comment: I think the Pulseman claim is a bit of a stretch. I mean, it's just two colors, they're not exact, and they're not in the same spots . I think it's just a mild coincidence.
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AuthorMy name's Aaron George, and I'm both a historian and a fan of Pokemon, especially of development. Reach me at @Asmoranomardic ArchivesCategories |