So far, the way I've been dividing Period 1 into parts has been through blocks made by the various designers. It looks as though the Korean Index is chronological, but it may have been set up specifically in batches made by each designer and then input all at once. Period 1a is composed of five designs by Morimoto; Period 1b seems to be either an unknown designer (like Fujiwara) or a collaboration between Nishida and Morimoto (probably the latter); Period 1c was defined by Pokemon designs that were almost assuredly designs by Atsuko Nishida. Period 1d (from Donphan to Unown) is the first block done by Sugimori, the lead Pokemon designer. His style is very distinctive, in the proportions of the Pokemon he draws and the shading he uses. He's highly influential and important to Pokemon's development, and all the earliest Red/Green designs were probably his work. Even later designs were probably overseen by Sugimori, and his style, along with Nishida's to a lesser extent, defines Pokemon as we know it. Sugimori is also responsible for more Pokemon designs than anyone else, including some of the most well known and popular Pokemon. As a result, there are some distinctive features of Period 1d that we don't find elsewhere. First, of all of the Pokemon in Period 1d, only one goes unused. That makes sense given Sugimori prolific output and given how central he was on the design team: he's made so many Pokemon that he knows what works and what doesn't, and he's so important to the overall style of Pokemon that most of his designs are probably more fit for the games than those of other creators. Secondly, most of the Pokemon in Period 1d have a very stable design: almost all of them have the exact same sprite all the way through development, or they changed in only minor ways. Again, Sugimori's style is the style of Pokemon in general, and while other people's designs were probably retooled to fit the games better, Sugimori's probably defined what the games should look like. Another way to put it is that Sugimori's designs didn't change to better match the others; other designs were changed to be more in line with Sugimori’s creations. ID 334: Donphan Everyone’s favorite elephant guy. Donphan’s an important Pokemon to the overall reconstruction of the timeline of Gold and Silver because we know he was created early in development, well before Spaceworld '97. Even though Donphan's design is pretty static throughout the entire development cycle, he's still an interesting guy. In particular, Donphan's neat because we can see many different smaller pieces of evidence suggesting how early his design was finalized, giving us a sense into what Pocket Monsters 2 may have looked like before Spaceworld '97. He's also good evidence for the hypothesis that the Korean Index is more or less chronological. Donphan was one of the first four Pokemon to be seen by the public. His design was first shown in the Pocket Monsters Official Handbook, released May 1997. In the Handbook, four Pokemon from a pre-Spaceworld ’97 build of Pocket Monsters 2 were shown off: Ampharos, Donphan, Slowking, and Ho-Oh. All of these Pokemon are from the first part of the Korean Index, and together they help us date this part of the Index (and what I’m calling Period One) to probably the earliest prototypes of the games, in 1996. In the Handbook, they make some speculation about Donphan, implying that the writers didn’t have any insider information about what it was actually like: “This powerful-looking new Pokémon seems like it could really pack a punch. The details are still unknown, but it looks like a Rhydon-type Pokémon, doesn't it?” Tangentially, the tone of this quote about Donphan is in direct contrast to what the Handbook had to say about Ampharos and Slowking. In the case of those two, the writers of the Handbook implied the designers told them something about those Pokemon, but the Donphan entry is pure speculation. Thus, it isn't clear what sort of access the writers had to the Pokemon team: were they just given the sprites and told to speculate, or did the Pokemon team tell them a little about each one? Anyway, Donphan certainly ended up having only cosmetic similarities to Rhydon (the Handbook probably just meant that Donphan, like Rhydon, was probably brutish and aggressive). We’ve already discussed Ampharos, which had a completely different sprite in the Handbook, and we'll talk about Slowking shortly. Donphan, unlike Ampharos, has pretty much the same sprite as it has in the final: the only differences are minor shading changes and that he seems to have a blue palette in this version: In Spaceworld ’97, that palette changed to brown (which became its shiny palette in the final), and in every build after that, Donphan had a gray palette. And...that was it for Donphan's design: it looked essentially the exact same in 1996 as it did in 1999. While all of Sugimori's designs stayed relatively the same throughout development, there's an additional explanation for why Donphan’s design is so static: Mewtwo Strikes Back. The first Pokemon movie came out in July 1998, but it was probably produced over at least the half-year before that. That means that the animators of the movie had to base their designs off of Gold/Silver builds even earlier than that, possibly even before Spaceworld ’97. This is important because in Mewtwo Strikes Back, importantly, Pokemon fans got to see their first animated Generation II designs. In a short before the movie, Snubbull, Marill, and Togepi appeared, but in the actual movie, exactly one Generation II Pokemon made a cameo appearance: Donphan. It's time on screen is brief. At the beginning of the film, Donphan briefly fights Bulbasaur in a tournament. Since it appears in the film, the designers probably thought they couldn't change Donphan's design any further, and thus Donphan stayed essentially the same even as the Pokemon around it were shuffled back and forth and redrawn multiple times. Interestingly, Donphan uses Rollout in its on-screen battle with Bulbasaur, which is a move the final Donphan learns, but not one that Donphan learned in Spaceworld ’97. Was Donphan’s moveset changed soon after Spaceworld ’97 to include Rollout (and the filmakers were working with an post-SW97 updated moveset), or was it given Rollout in future builds because it had the move in the film? Rollout already existed in Spaceworld ’97, but it was only learned by the Geodude family in that demo. My bet is that the anime team was given a list of moves that Donphan could probably use, and they decided on Rollout because it was a cool visual. After that, Game Freak may have changed its move set to match the movie. However, either explanation could be right. It would be interesting if the film was the reason Donphan got Rollout: it's not the only time the anime influenced the games, but it is a rare enough occurrence to note. Regardless, once the movie showed Donphan, its design was fixed. Notice as well that Donphan’s palette in the movie was its final grey: they probably did enough work on it before the production of the movie started to change its coloring from Spaceworld '97's ugly brown palette, and after that, Game Freak could mess with the coloring any more. Donphan did, finally, receive a minor design change, but it took until the international versions of Gold/Silver, and then it was extremely small: they deleted some of the texturing under Donphan’s trunk. Why? Because it closer matched the movie, in which Donphan had a smooth underside to its trunk. Some people theorize that Donphan was actually designed even earlier than Gold/Silver, and is, in fact, a redesigned version of the Elephant Pokemon that was cut from Red/Green. Anything’s possible, but there are a couple reasons I doubt this theory. The biggest problem is that the Elephant is already accounted for, as ID 309. Sure, its pose has been dramatically changed since the Red/Green incarnation of the Elephant, but 309 is unmistakably the same creature. As a result, in order for Donphan to be a later design of the elephant, they would have had to first redesign it into ID 309, then take another crack at it, but for some reason decide not to overwrite the earlier redesign. Which is possible, and something similar happened at another point in this list (Elebebi and Elekid), but doesn’t seem all that likely. Besides, when it comes down to it, the only similarity Donphan has with the original Elephant its that they both were elephants; it doesn’t even have the extra tusks that were part of the early elephant’s design. Saying that, I will admit that the poses of 309 and Donphan are very similar. I think this is probably coincidence more than anything, but it is there. Besides its movie appearance and its early appearance in the Handbook, there are some other indications hidden in Spaceworld '97 that Donphan was an early design. First of all, while most of the new Pokemon in SW97 have placeholder stats of 50 across the board, Donphan has 70 HP, 70 Attack, and 70 Defense. It’s not much, and it’s by far not the only Pokemon without placeholder stats, but it does suggest that Donphan was around long enough that they had already tweaked its stats a little during testing. Notice that, for instance, Phanpy, its preevolution, has the generic 50s in each stat. Phanpy appears much later in the Korean Index and probably was designed right before SW97, so it makes sense that they wouldn't have had time to design stats for Phanpy. As a side note, the late inclusion of Phanpy in the Korean Index also demonstrates that Donphan was probably designed originally as a single stage Pokemon, possibly even by the time the Handbook was describing it. Phanpy is at the very end of the Index which suggests that it was a last minute idea before Spaceworld '97 was finished, and that Donphan was only given an evolution later in development. To further this, Phanpy is right in the middle of a later Period of the Korean Index that is entirely devoted to designing evolutions for other Gold/Silver Pokemon. Donphan was likely a much earlier design, and as they were putting the final tweaks on the Spaceworld roster, Game Freak probably filled it out by expanding on the Pokemon they already had. Donphan's moveset also shows signs of how early it was designed. Donphan’s SW97 moveset is actually almost completely different from its final moveset. It seems to have been designed more as a tank than as the sweeper it became: 1997 Donphan had Protect and Endure while the final gets Rapid Spin and Earthquake. It has no Ground type moves in the prototype, which is weird since it was Ground type in that build, and suggests that it inherited a Normal-type moveset from earlier in its design. They probably changed this moveset in part to differentiate it from Rhydon, which has a very similar moveset to Donphan in SW97, but in addition had Earthquake, making it more or less superior. Oddly, in the final, while Donphan no longer learns Endure, Phanpy still does, which could be a throwback to the earlier moveset that they forgot to change. Anyway, the most interesting thing to me about Donphan’s early moveset is that it only has three new moves made for Gold and Silver: Protect, Endure, and Scary Face. They’re all really early on the internal move index (which was probably made chronologically as they needed a new move): Scary Face is move #184, Protect is #182, and Endure is #203 (remember that Generation I’s move list ends at #165, so all of these were in the first forty moves designed for Gold/Silver). Rapid Spin, an addition to its final moveset, is #229, much later in the index. Thus, the Donphan of SW97 might have had its moveset designed before they had made many new moves for Gold/Silver, and it was later edited to add moves they designed later in development. None of this is proof, but it all fits with Donphan being designed earlier than many of the other Pokemon. That’s all there really is to Donphan. It’s a cool Pokemon, and I’m sure Game Freak was reasonably happy with it from the beginning, which is why they had the confidence to show it off in the Handbook and in the movie. I don’t think there are many other Gen II Pokemon that remained this static over the course of development, and it’s interesting to see that in the midst of so much being thrown out between SW97 and SW99, Donphan was a solid rock in a sea of chaos. ID 335: SlowkingSlowking’s the third of the four earliest Gold/Silver Pokemon introduced in the Pocket Monsters Official Handbook. Thus, like Donphan, Slowking's one of the important Pokemon that helps us date the different periods of the Korean Index. Because of Slowking, Donphan, Ampharos, and Hooh, we know that the Pokemon around this part of the list we all pre-Spaceworld ’97 and likely dating back to 1996 builds of Gold/Silver back when it was just called Pocket Monsters 2. It’s interesting that, of those first four, they all appear pretty close together in the Korean Index: Donphan and Slowking are right next to each other, here at IDs 334 and 335, Ampharos was only 14 early at ID 321, and Hooh is thirteen after this, at ID 347. Why were these four, all close together, the first four shown off to the public? First, three of the four are Sugimori designs and one was made by Nishida. Since Sugimori and Nishida were the most important designers, their designs were probably some of the most popular early designs, and also the most likely to be finished or close to finished. As a result, when selecting Pokemon to preview, it might have made sense to pick some of the early--and thus most iterated--designs by these two designers. Secondly, it could just be that this is a sign that Periods 1c and 1d are where the designers were finally getting serious about designing Pokemon directly for Gold/Silver. Periods 1a and 1b are filled with either incomplete designs or throwback designs from Red/Green, but 1c and 1d seemed to have been worked on more completely (goofy Japanese ghost design nonwithstanding). So the selection of these four Pokemon could be an indication that the designers saw this as more or less the beginning of the list, and the Pokemon before this as less developed or designs that they brainstormed but weren't sure about. It certainly seems that Sugimori was happy with the Slowking design, as it barely changed even from its first appearance pre-SW97. The shell’s design does vaguely change between SW97 and the final, as you can see in the backsprites: most prominently, it loses its teeth gouging into Slowking’s head. But the front sprites are nearly identical. This seems to be a repeating pattern for any of Sugimori’s designs in the Korean Index: most of the time, he seemed to be happiest with the first design and it kept relatively stable. But there are other parts of Slowking that seem more in flux. For instance, I’m not sure they had really understood how Slowking would evolve for a long time, and tried out various ideas. In the Official Handbook, the writers described a version of Slowking’s evolution that matches ideas later found in the anime: Secret Data on Slowking: Slowpoke, a very stupid Pokémon, was out fishing for bait when a Shellder clamped onto on its tail, causing it to evolve into Slowbro. However, it is said that, in 1 instance out of 10,000, a Shellder will clamp down on a Slowpoke's head instead of its tail. As the Shellder bites down, its essence penetrates the Slowpoke's listless brain cells, bestowing upon it extreme motivation. Slowking has quickly become a hot topic among Pokémon collectors. How its evolution takes place is still unspecified, but it has been established that it evolves from Slowpoke! There are two important parts of this passage worth paying attention to. First, the passage suggests that Slowking's method of evolution has something to do with where a Shellder ends up choosing to clamp down. While of course the game's mechanics can't be expected to perfectly convey the flavor the designers have in mind, it is notable that this passage says nothing about trading Slowking to evolve it or the King's Rock, both features of its final, and Spaceworld '97, methods of evolving. Now, to be fair, the sentence "how its evolution takes place is still unspecified," matches other similar sentences in the book "Pokedex," translated by Dr. Lava, Nob Ogasawara and Did You Know Gaming here. That book, written in 1996 (a year before the Handbook), contained a lot of unused lore from the early Pokemon games, and notably used the phrase "it's method of evolution is still unknown" whenever it discussed Pokemon like Gengar that evolved via trade. This could be coincidence, or it could be a hint they already knew Slowking would evolve through trading with another player. We should be careful not to make too much of this, as this "secret data" is mostly flavor. Regardless, I still find this paragraph suspicious. All of these details may be lore, and who knows how much of those details were provided by Game Freak and how much were speculation from the authors of the Handbook, but this whole paragraph strikes me as a ton of details for a discussion of an evolutionary method that has absolutely nothing to do with the in-game mechanics. The second thing to notice is this: “it has been established that it evolves from Slowpoke!” On the one hand, that should be obvious, but there’s a very weird inconsistency in Spaceworld ’97. For some reason, in SW '97, Slowking evolves from Slowbro, not Slowpoke! It evolves the same way as in the final-- by trading holding a King’s Rock—but it doesn’t evolve as a branching evolution from Slowpoke. Which is weird. To add to this weirdness, there's another Pokemon in Spaceworld '97 that looks very much like it should have something to do with Slowking's evolution...but doesn't. I present to you Taaban (Turban): Taaban’s a weird Pokemon, and we’ll discuss its irregularities in full when we get to its entry. To be clear, Taaban has no data associated with Slowking or Slowbro in SW’97. It is found much later in the Korean Index (ID 418), which suggests it wasn’t created at the same time as Slowking and probably, at first, didn't have to do with Slowking's evolutionary method. In fact, it seems like a later idea. Because there’s no data for it relating to the Slowpoke line, it could simply be a coincidence, and be otherwise unrelated. But look at it. There’s clearly some connection here, one that wasn’t implemented in SW’97, and may not have been implemented at all before Taaban was deleted. We'll come back to Taaban; first, I want to discuss the irregularity of Slowking evolving from Slowbro in Spaceworld '97. What's so odd about this is that the Handbook, which is pre-Spaceworld '97, already states that Slowking is a split evolution. If that's the case, why wouldn't Spaceworld '97 follow it? It could simply be an error, or something they hadn’t fixed yet. But my supposition is that Game Freak wasn’t sure how Slowking would evolve at first and tried a number of different methods. Originally, I think Slowking was designed as the third stage of the Slowpoke line. That would have been very early, pre-Handbook, and its just speculation, but given that Crobat, a new stage three for the Zubat line sits right next to Slowking in the Korean Index, they may have both been invented at the same time as new third forms for Gen I evolutionary families. Even if I'm right, however, this evolutionary tree didn’t last long, and even by the printing of the Official Handbook, Game Freak had already decided on a different idea. This, of course, was the branching evolution as pioneered by Politoed. Politoed was updated from its old Red/Green design and put into Pocket Monsters 2 around the same time as Slowking. And like we discussed in the Politoed article, Politoed was the first attempt at a branching evolution in Gold/Silver, born out of a problem that they couldn't solve with Politoed first incarnation in Gen I. The original Politoed was too close, design-wise, to the other frog Pokemon in Red/Green, but it was also too distinct from them to be related to them or grafted on as an evolution (like Blastoise was grafted onto the Squirtle line). They couldn't solve this problem in Gen I, and the Politoed line was deleted. But in Gold/Silver, the solution Game Freak came up with was to make Politoed branch off of Poliwhirl. This allowed it to be an original take on the Poliwhirl line and offered it a place in that evolutionary family where it was both distinct from all the other forms (because it evolved in a non-normative way) while still acknowledging the toad origins for both. If they had come up with that solution for Politoed, they may have been eager for other designs with which they could also try the branching evolution theme. Slowking was the natural choice. It was made around the same time, it evolved from a Gen I Pokemon, and there really weren't any other good candidates yet, especially this far into the Korean Index. Crobat, the only other Pokemon from this era that fits the requirements of being a third stage from a Gen I Pokemon, doesn’t make sense as a split evolution: it already looks like a meaner version of Golbat, and its connections to Golbat are far more clear than its similarities to Zubat. In fact, it's not until Bellossom (and the Eevees) that you get another Pokemon in the Korean Index that even evolved from a Gen I Pokemon--some pre-evolutions exist between these but they served a different purpose--and Bellossom is ID 436, more than a hundred Pokemon later! By the time of Bellossom, they were probably designing new evolutions specifically for this branching idea; Slowking was so much early it was probably repurposed. Notably, Poliwhirl can't evolve into Politoed in Spaceworld ’97: the Heart Stone that’s supposed to help it evolve doesn’t do anything yet. In fact, none of the other branching evolutions (besides Eevee) work at all: Tsubimotto and Bellossom use stones that don’t work, and Slowking of course is a three stage evolution. This makes me think that by Spaceworld ’97, they may have known their plans for these evolutionary trees but hadn’t yet gotten around to implementing the mechanics. Hence the reason why Slowking still evolves from Slowbro: it's still using its old evolutionary method even though they knew they were planning to change it. This isn't the first time something like that happened: notably, Houndour and Houndoom are only Fire type in Spaceworld '97, even though unused dialogue in the demo has a trainer mention them as examples of the Dark type, which they would eventually be. None of the above theory is for certain- it could be the case that Slowking was never, at any point in development, meant to be a third stage evolution and this was always a placeholder. But if that’s the case, why program in the evolution at all? Politoed, Bellossom, etc don’t have working evolutions, so why bother programming in Slowking’s? Back to Taaban. How does Slowking's disembodied shell fit into all of this? It's very likely, to my mind, that Taaban was created as they were considered exactly how to implement Slowpoke's split evolution. Taaban’s much further in the Korean Index –ID 418—which means that it wasn’t designed around the time Slowking was but after the fact. It’s also the beginning of a series of Pokemon in the Korean Index that all evolve into or from a Gen I Pokemon. IDs 418-428 are all evolutionary relatives of Gen I Pokemon, and everything after that until the end of the Index is either an evolutionary relative of a Gen I or Gen II Pokemon, not a new unrelated Pokemon. It’s very likely, as a result, that Taaban was created with evolution in mind (to be clear, I don't think it was created to have anything to do with Shellder; I think it was created with the Slowpoke line in mind). This is kind of obvious looking at the rest of it’s design: Taaban is clearly modeled on the Shellder that Slowking and Slowbro have (it’s even got the jewel on it that Slowking’s Shellder has) and it has a very basic moveset (Harden, Body Slam, and Water Gun, all learned at level one). It doesn’t make much sense as a Pokemon on its own, either for gameplay or design-wise--why make a second, bad Shellder? And yet, it has no evolution data… It seems to me that someone on the design team was bothered (just as I was when I was a kid) by how little the Shellder clamped onto Slowking/Bro looks like an actual Shellder. We now know the reason for this: Slowbro was one of the original Capumon and was designed without Shellder in mind; the Shellder link in its lore was created after the fact. But someone in the design team created Taaban as a way to explain why the Shellders were so different, and they had plans for Taaban to play a role in Slowking’s evolution. Taaban was supposed to intiate the evolution instead of Slowpoke evolving when traded. Given that even the final Gold/Silver has a story area devoted to Slowpokes and their tales (Team Rocket’s cruel plan to cut them off in the Slowpoke Well), there’s even story space in the final game where Taaban could have gone. So what happened? Likely, they couldn’t figure out a good way for the evolution to work. Maybe if both Taaban and a Slowpoke were in the party together and Slowpoke leveled up, the Taaban would disappear and get merged with the Slowpoke? Maybe you were supposed to use an item on one of them in your party and they’d merge? Either’s a nice idea, but there’s no precedent for that type of evolution in the games yet, and they may just not been able to work out the programming kinks. We know that they tried out something similar in Generation III with Ninjask and Shedinja (though it’s the opposite direction, one Pokemon turning into two), and with Mantyke in Generation IV (though the Remoraid doesn’t disappear from your party), but the idea may have just been too ambitious here. On top of that, why wouldn’t Slowbro also evolve out of a Taaban and a Slowpoke in the party? What makes it different from Slowking? It may have been too complicated to work out. In any event, Game Freak decided to keep the trade evolution method of evolving Slowpoke, but fixed it so Slowpoke evolved when traded with the King’s Rock, not Slowbro. In addition, once the Heart Stone disappeared from the games, Game Freak decided to use the exact same item for Politoed’s evolution; another hint that these evolutionary methods were thought through in concert. Slowking’s moveset and its sprites didn’t change much, but they did decide to get rid of the teeth from Slowking’s Taaban clamping down on his head. Maybe they were just streamlining the design and wanted it to look friendlier; maybe they wanted the Taaban to look less like an animate creature of its own now that Taaban was no longer in the games. Slowking was certainly a favorite of the designers: a talking Slowking even appeared in the second Pokemon movie, released a few months before Gold/Silver came out in Japan. This is understandable: it’s a good design. Slowking takes a distinctive trait of Slowbro and flips it on its head. It’s no wonder that the basic design stayed the same, even if the developers struggled to find the right way to integrate Slowking into the existing line. ID 336: GirafarigOr the story of how the Girafarig lost its head. Girafarig was a great design for a Pokemon, but one that, for whatever reason, lost most of what was interesting about it by the time it had been revised forthe final game. Like all of Sugimori’s designs in the index, Girafarig stayed nearly identical from start to finish, with one exception: its back head. The mystery of the missing head is intriguing. It’s unclear exactly what happened to Girafarig or why they decided to tone it down, but it has an interesting design history, and as we walk through it, I’m hoping we’ll at least understand better why the designers made the changes they did. Girafarig is an palindrome, just like its Japanese name, Kirinriki (it’s only a palindrome in kana, for what its worth). In its original design, Girafarig itself was also a palindrome: it had a face on either side of its body, one normal looking, one evil. RacieBeep’s interpretation of this sprite, in particular, is great and worth showing here: I really like the simplicity and nuance of this design. I like how it was Dark/Normal type originally, because that matches how it was half a normal Giraffe animal, and half an evil Giraffe animal. Every since I was young I didn’t understand why the final was Psychic, or why its name was a palindrome if its design wasn’t quite that. We now know, of course, that those were later changes to the original design. My younger self would have been much happier with the Dr. Giraf and Mr. Farig design shown here. In Spaceworld 1997, Girafarig had this split persona design. It also, interestingly, had a pre-evolution: Twinz (Tsuinzu). Twinz has an winding design story all of its own, which we’ll cover when we get to it. Suffice to say, Girafarig and Twinz weren’t designed together, as Twinz is ID 403 in the Korean Index. But by the time Spaceworld ’97 was made, they’re pretty clearly tied together, and its possible that Twinz was originally designed specifically as a preevolution for Girafarig. It’s certainly a really solid and unexpected design choice: a conjoined ghost pokemon evolves into a conjoined evil Giraffe Pokemon. It's clear, however, that this original design had problems. First, let’s take a look at the move sets for Twinz and Girafarig in Spaceworld ’97: …oh. There’s not a lot there, is there? This is especially an oddity because almost all of the Spaceworld ’97 move sets are complete. The team hadn’t gotten around to balancing stats yet, but except for a handful, all the move sets were programmed in. Which makes Girafarig especially odd. There’s a number of reasons why this could be: they could have decided to include Girafarig and Twinz late and hadn’t done much work on them (unlikely, since almost all the Sugimori designs from Period 1 are used in Spaceworld ’97), or they could have recently changed their typing and erased the move sets while they rethought them. The most obvious explanation is that it was really hard to come up with a move set that suited both an anthropomorphic ghost and a four-legged devil Giraffe. Even with these three moves, they don’t seem to suit Twinz at all: how is Twinz supposed to double kick someone? It seems likely that, because Twinz and Girafarig were so different from each other on a physical level, the team was constantly having issues trying to find a way to make them coherent as an evolutionary family. This extended to typing as well. Dark/Normal fits Girafarig perfectly, but it fit Twinz…okay? Sure, Twinz looks a bit like a dark type (though Dark would eventually come to have a trickster identity rather than an evil one), but it also looks much like a Ghost type. I mean, its sprites (even more its updated sprites in June 1999) even look pretty close to Haunter. So the design team turned Twinz into Ghost type, which necessitated changed Girafarig to Ghost/Normal around April 1999. But that doesn’t make sense either, and it was clear these two Pokemon weren’t working with each other. In the Spring of 1999, Game Freak tried three different solutions to the Girafarig problem. First, they tried to give Girafarig a third form (or second, since it’s not clear if Twinz is still connected to it by this point). My guess is that this evolution was intended to tie the entire concept together: maybe it gave Girafarig more ghostlike properties to bring it back towards the Twinz design. We don’t have a sprite for this form, nor a name (just “Pending 05”), but we do have stats, typing (it’s a Ghost type, unlike Girafarig which was Ghost/Normal), and a move set. This evolution, whatever it was, doesn’t seem to have solved their problems, and so it only lasted a few months before it was scrapped. After the third evolution idea fell apart, Game Freak’s second plan was to completely scrap the Twinz concept, and we have at least the backsprite of a baby Girafarig (its palette is a little wrong). It never got much of a moveset (just Girafarig’s abilities at a lower level), but it was noticeably Normal/Psychic, like Girafarig had finally become by that point. It's very unfinished in the data we have: its still using the Tsunzu name, and its front sprites have been replaced by weird sketches that would eventually become Wobbuffet. Important, baby Girafarig is also the first time we see an approximation of what would become Girafarig’s circular tail/face that replaced its evil face. It isn't clear, however, which came first: did baby Girafarig inspire the tail, or was its tail made to be a less developed version of Girafarig's new tail? The third answer Game Freak came up with was to finally sever Twinz from Girafarig entirely, and let Girafarig exist as a single stage evolution (Twinz, bizarrely, went on to get turned into Wobbuffet). This solution ended up being the only reasonable one, and by this point, Girafarig had lost its second head and now had its final shape. That’s a lot of backstory, and it still doesn’t explain why Girafarig lost its head. The answer could be simple. Sugimori really didn’t like Pokemon concepts that weren’t logical as animals in the wild. An animal with two heads on either side of its body may have been too confusing to think of in an ecosystem: how would it walk, for instance? Of course, Doduo exists, and they didn’t have a problem with that design, so maybe not. In fact, maybe Doduo’s existence made Girafarig feel redundant, and so they shifted its design. Between Spaceworld '97 and the final, there's also a definite move away from scary designs to cute ones: maybe they just wanted Girafarig to be more huggable? Either could be the reason. Another likely possibility is that Girafarig was changed for balance. After Spaceworld ’97, Game Freak may have decided they didn’t need Girafarig to be Dark and that they had a dearth of new Psychic Pokemon. Once they changed Girafarig to Psychic, the evil back head no longer made sense, so they changed its sprite to match the new typing. Of course, this theory is good and all, but it doesn’t take into account the Ghost typing Girafarig had in between. Maybe they simply thought the original design was too on-the-nose, and changed it to nuance the design a bit more? I think the most likely scenario was that the gradual loss of Girafarig’s identity was more or less accidental: that it was a death by a thousand cuts. Girafarig was a problem child because it was connected with Twinz, and each step to solve that problem changed a small thing about it, until it no longer resembled its original intent. First, Girafarig’s typing didn’t match Twinz’s concept, so they changed them both to Ghost, and then to Psychic when that wasn’t working either. Second, they couldn’t find a move set that worked for both types, so they changed Twinz into baby Girafarig. In the end, they decided they didn’t want to use the baby version, but they liked one thing about its design: the new tail, which after all fit the new typing of Psychic. So when they got rid of the baby, they took the best parts of its design and merged it with the original Girafarig. In the end, Girafarig became Psychic because of Twinz, but by the time they solved the Twinz problem they didn’t have any reason to change Girafarig back. And in the course of trying to solve the Twinz problem, they found a new design they liked better and reworked Girafarig to match. None of these designs were larger conscious changes to Girafarig, but simply a process that ended up at the final design. It sure is a travesty though. Girafarig was so much better as a Pokemon in Spaceworld ’97, when its concept was stronger. The final Girafarig is fine, but it really pales in comparison to the idea of an evil dual-giraffe. Of all the Spaceworld ’97 Pokemon, Girafarig isn’t my favorite, but I do think this ranks right alongside Kyonpan and Grotesque as the best designs we were robbed of. ID 336: CrobatCrobat is another Sugimori design that remained almost exactly the same throughout development, at least sprite-wise. In fact, if you look closely, its Spaceworld ’97 sprite is actually a different drawing than the final one, but the final was redrawn to be as close to it as possible. Sugimori clearly liked the design he had in the first place, and had no reason to change it. It's name and species type did change. In Spaceworld ’97, Crobat is known as “Ekushingu,” which translates into “X-ing," matching the way its wings form an X-shape. Crobat’s species is also “X” in SW '99, instead of Bat like it is in the final. Initially, I thought the Japanese name translated to "X-Wing," but the Japanese spelling for that is a little different, unfortunately. Which means that Crobat isn't as related to Star Wars as I'd intially thought: I’m not sure why Crobat was the logical progression from Golbat. Golbat’s central characteristic is its large, ungainly mouth, which actually grows smaller when Crobat takes the driver’s seat. Meanwhile, Crobat’s four wings don’t seem to be predicted by Zubat or Golbat’s designs, though Zubat’s “legs” do look a little like they could have evolved from it. Part of me wonders if, like Politoed, Crobat has its origins in an early design somewhere, but that wouldn’t really make sense given that Red/Green had an unused Zubat pre-evolution that was scrapped, which leaves no room for a fourth Zubat. Crobat probably doesn’t date from that far back. On the other hand, most of Gold/Silver’s added evolutions weren't direct progressions from their Gen I progenitors. Instead, Game Freak tried to add a unique twist to what came before. That’s probably all that’s going on with Crobat. Crobat was probably always designed as a third evolution for Zubat; there was probably never a time when it was considered as a split evolution. In Spaceworld ’97, it had a simple evolutionary method: all it took to evolve Golbat was to get it to level 44. A lot of the Spaceworld ’97 third forms evolved simply from a level requirement, which is interesting because by the final game, none of them would use a level requirement. In one of Gold/Silver’s cleverest design choices, all the new third evolutions they introduced could only be evolved through methods introduced in Gold/Silver, such as friendship, or by holding a particular item. It’s a small little design decision, but I’ve always loved that attention to detail. It creates an illusion that these Pokemon were always in the world, even in Red/Green, and if you just had a King’s Rock when you were in Kanto you could’ve also had a Slowking. Which means that Crobat eventually shed its simple level requirement and changed to evolving based on high friendship. Friendship was a new stat introduced in Pokemon Yellow that determined how much your Pikachu liked you. Mostly, the in game reward for high friendship was that Pikachu would make cuter faces you talked to it. Using Pikachu in battle and walking around with it raised its friendship; making it faint lowered its friendship. ...I'm not sure why Pikachu's wearing Daniel Boone's hat in one of those. (Edit: FrenchOrange has informed me that this is actually a bucket. I'm not sure that makes it make any more sense than before, though.) Anyway, at some point after Spaceworld ’97, the developers decided to import this system from Pokemon Yellow into Gold/Silver, but expand it to include every Pokemon. Friendship, in the final game, can also be raised by grooming your Pokemon in the underground mall, and affects the power of Return and Frustration (both these moves appear in Spaceworld '97, but I'm not able to verify whether they worked with the friendship mechanic yet). To make the best use of friendship, Game Freak decided to it as a blanket evolutionary method for all the baby Pokemon they were introducing, a cute idea that meshed well with the concept of weak infant Pokemon you needed to take care of. In addition to these baby Pokemon, friendship was used to evolve Golbat into Crobat, and Eevee into Espeon (in the day) or Umbreon (at night) after they removed the stones that Eevee previously would have used. Except, originally, Umbreon and Crobat didn’t evolve via high friendship; they evolved with low friendship. This is very flavorful design, and I love the implications: that to get a mean, angry Pokemon, you had to treat it badly. Except, as you probably are already thinking, this didn’t work for both gameplay and thematic reasons. Most importantly, in a game where you are learning to travel the world with your Pokemon buddies, why would the game encourage you to mistreat your friends? It seems immoral at the very least, and antithetical to Pokemon’s ethos as a series. But also, even if we ignore that, it wouldn’t really work as a gameplay mechanic. Just walking around with a Pokemon in your party raises its friendship, as does using it in battle and giving it items. Thus, just by having your Golbat hang out with you, you are fighting a losing game against it falling in love with you. To fight back the tide, you’d constantly have to get it knocked out in battle, over and over, doing exactly the opposite of what the game wants you to do: win battles. It was probably quickly discovered how annoying a low-friendship evolution was, and so they switched the method to high friendship. This loses a bit of flavor, but it’s probably worth it for the trade off of actually being able to evolve a Golbat at all. Golbat’s move set is more or less the same in Spaceworld ’97 as it is in the final, owing to the fact that it just copies Golbat’s move set, like any evolution would. The main way they differentiated it from Golbat was by pumping speed into its stats. At first, the only difference between Golbat and Crobat was that Crobat had an extremely high speed stat, but Game Freak eventually went back and buffed all its other stats as well. Clearly, those extra two wings aren’t just for looks. Other than that, Crobat was Crobat. A good design that didn’t need much work put into it. ID 338: Stantler (Odoshishi) Stantler’s a huge oddity in the Korean Index, and on the face of it, the best counterexample against my hypothesis that the Korean Index is roughly chronological. Everything about Stantler needs to be explained, since at first it doesn’t seem to follow the patterns we’ve seen established through the rest of the list up to this point. Saying that, I don't think Stantler disproves anything at all, and in fact, I think Stantler's special case can tell us some really interesting things about the development of Gold/Silver and the organization of the Korean Index. Let's start with what's problematic about Stantler. First, and most importantly Stantler’s not in the Spaceworld 1997 demo, but it is in the Korean Index. In fact, other than Elekid (which is its own weird situation), Stantler’s the only Pokemon in the Korean Index that appeared in Gold/Silver after Spaceworld ’97. Now, the Korean Index is dated six months later than Spaceworld ’97, so the obvious conclusion is that Stantler was designed in that intervening period. Except, that doesn’t make sense. Stantler’s early in the Korean Index, at ID 338, and not far away from Pokemon we know predated Spaceworld ’97. Ho-oh, which we have evidence was in a pre-Spaceworld ’97 build, is after Stantler in the Index. So on the face of it, Stantler should be later in the index, probably at the very end. But it isn’t. Does that mean the Index isn't in chronological order? This isn’t the only thing weird about Stantler. In the Korean Index, Stantler has a drawn front and back sprite, both very close to the final sprites (again, a signature of Sugimori’s designs is that they didn’t change much over time). But in the June 1999 data—which is the first time Stantler appears in the game—Stantler is using the backsprite for Shibirefugu, not its own. In fact, the backsprite we see in the Korean Index isn’t used in any of the later data we have: by the time Stantler has its own backsprite in Spaceworld ’99, the backsprite has an updated design for the antlers. Again, this doesn’t seem to make sense: if they had a backsprite already drawn, why did Game Freak use Shibirefugu’s instead? One explanation for all this is that Stantler was created after Spaceworld '97, in the intervening time between November 1997 and May 1998, when the Korean Index is dated. This was my first explanation. If this was the case, Stantler simply overwrote another Pokemon that was already in ID 338, which would explain why it's seemingly out of order. Unfortunately, there are a lot of reasons to doubt this explanation. First, nearly all the other Pokemon in Period 1d were used in Spaceworld ’97 and most made it to the final: it’d be very strange that there was an unused and overwritten design sandwiched between all these others. To be fair, there is one example of this in Period 1d: ID 334, the viking boat design, which didn’t get used. But then, why didn’t Stantler overwrite #334? Furthermore, Stantler’s sprite is very clearly a Sugimori design, like all the designs surrounding it. If Stantler had overwritten an earlier design, wouldn't it be more likely it’d be out of place artist-wise as well? None of this is proof, but if this hypothesis was correct, I’d expect to find Stantler in a less ordered place in the Index, like in the midst of Period 1e (ID 349-360) where almost none of those Pokemon were used in Spaceworld ’97, and there were lots of choices for Pokemon that they could scrap. I think Stantler was always in this slot, and I think the reason it appears here in the index is because Stantler was a redesigned version of Deer, the unused deer/moose Pokemon from Red/Green. Once we make this assumption, I think most of the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Deer, if you are unfamiliar, was one of the lost Pokemon from early in the development of Red/Green. Despite its uninspired name, Deer had a pretty distinctive design. It’s antlers looked more like moose antlers than a deer’s, and its body was covered in a sort of spiky armor that just might be bamboo (but might not be). The only picture we have of Deer was from the internal popularity poll, and it was marked “needing improvement.” It clearly did "need improvement," because it got cut before the final game. If Stantler was Deer, it would explain why Stantler was so obviously an “Animal+” design (Deer plus eye antlers), even when most of Sugimori’s other Gold/Silver designs are more nuanced than that. You could make the argument that Girafarig is an “Animal+” design, but its much more complicated for that, in my estimation: Girafarig has an evil-twin concept and a palindrome concept involved, a far cry from “a seal with a spike on its head” or “deer with funny antlers.” Because Stantler originated from Red/Green, it inherited an earlier design philosophy when the team made less abstract and nuanced Pokemon designs. Stantler, unlike Girafarig, fits right in with Gen I’s development. There are lots of reasons to think that Deer and Stantler are related. First of all, consider Stantler’s Japanese names. In its earliest incarnation, Stantler was named “Mejika.” This is an ambiguous name, and could mean two things. Mejika, on its own, means doe, or female deer. If you break down the word into “me” and “jika,” it instead means “eye deer,” which fits Stantler’s concept as a deer with eye-shaped antlers. Either way, naming a deer Pokemon either “female deer” or “eye deer” isn’t far away from the original name, “Deer.” After Mejika was abandoned as a name, Stantler got its final name, Odoshishi, which is a pun on Shishi Odishi, a Japanese term that loosely translates to “Scarecrow” but literally translates to “deer scarer.” Shishi Odishi are commonly used to make sounds to scare birds away from crops, or to resemble the eyes of predators. The most common form of Shishi Odishi are bamboo water fountains that move as they pour out their water, much like a drinking bird toy. There are less common Shishi Odishi that are made from balloons and designed to look like giant eyes, to unnerve birds. Stantler’s antlers, of course, are modeled after those. Thus, its final name is a pun: rather than a “deer scarer” we have an actual deer that scares things! The reason I go into such detail about Stantler's name is because some people think that Deer’s initial design is of a deer made out of bamboo. I can definitely see what they’re referring to. Look, for instance, at Deer’s segmented neck, and notice how much that neck could be the same bamboo rod that pours water out of a Shi Shi Odishi. If that’s right, then we have a name connection to Stantler, given that both are, in some way, based off of Shishi Odishis. Of course, your mileage may vary, and it’s very possible that Deer’s sprite is more spiky and armored than it has anything to do with bamboo. Any similarities could be coincidence. But if you’re skeptical about that, consider the movesets of the two. Deer, suprisingly, actually had a moveset in the Red/Green leaked data, and comparing it to Stantler’s brings up a lot of similarities: (Highlighted blue moves are ones that Stantler learns; red moves are moves that Stantler learns by TM) Some caveats: the early movesets we have are weird and may not be 100% correct. In these early Red/Green movesets, Pokemon tended to learn way more moves than in the final, and many of them are learned in a weird order. Notice, for instance, Leer and Quick Attack, usually early moves, learned at the very end of Deer’s moveset. As well, remember that a lot of time has passed between these two move sets, and that the team learned a lot about balance in that intervening time. Deer's movelist could be as early as 1995, and Stantler's comes from the final, in late 1999. So there are bound to be differences.
Saying all that, it is very interesting to me that one generation later, a ton of balancing work, and a whole set of new Gen II moves, Stantler’s moveset still heavily resembles Deer’s! Three out of Stantler’s moves were learned by Deer, one of Deer’s other moves (Roar) can be learned by TM. Furthermore, there are other similarities in the remaining moves. In the early data, Tackle was a lot less universal as a starter attack than in the final, and Jump Kick was plausibly given to Deer before it was decided on as a signature move of Hitmonlee. It's very plausible that as Game Freak got to Stantler, they chose something more appropriate for its early physical moves, like Tackle and Stomp. Also note that both Deer and Stantler have an early Psychic move: Deer has Confusion, which could confuse its targets, while Stantler puts an enemy to sleep with Hypnosis. And while Deer has Supersonic, Stantler has Confuse Ray, a move that does the exact same thing but more reliably. The only move of note that Stantler lacks is Thunderwave, which makes sense since Thunderwave is pretty much only learned by electric Pokemon. If Stantler was Deer, we can explain a lot of the problems with Stantler's placement in the Index. Stantler was early in the Korean Index, but this section was filled with old designs which were reworked and brought back to use in Gold/Silver: Kotora and Raitora are only five slots early than Stantler, and Politoed is only 12 slots away. We know that Sugimori designed the original Deer, so it makes sense that he’d be the one to rework it for Gold/Silver, hence why it appears in Period 1d rather than earlier in 1c. Once we acknowledge Stantler as a Deer rework, all of a sudden Stantler’s placement in the Korean Index makes sense. But, then, if Stantler fits in this part of the index, why didn't it appear in Spaceworld '97? My theory is that it wasn’t designed after Spaceworld ’97, but before, and taken out of the SW'97 demo at the last minute. As I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, Spaceworld ’97's map was based far more closely on Japan, and the city of Nara is closely associated with deer. It’s easy to imagine that Deer was brought back from the grave and put into the game so that they could have them around the Pokemon version of Nara. However, just before Spaceworld ’97, Stantler was cut. Eventually, they decided to revive Stantler and put it back into the game, and from there it made it into the final. So, in my hypothetical, what Pokemon replaced Stantler shortly before Spaceworld ’97? My original hypothesis was Twinz, the Girafarig pre-evolution, simply because Twinz and Girafarig have such an incomplete moveset. Taaban could also be a possibility: its evolutionary connection to Slowking hadn’t been programmed into Spaceworld ’97 yet, which could be a clue that it was added in at the last second. Likewise, we know that Sneasel was added into the game last second given its weird placement in the Spaceworld ’97 Pokedex, and so it or the Eevee evolution Riifii could be the potential culprit. There are a lot of possibilities. However, I think it was either Togepi or Shibirefugu are our best bet. Togepi and Shiburefugu are at the very end of the Korean Index (IDs 445 and 446 out of 448) which means they were created right before the Spaceworld ’97 build was finished. In addition, Togepi is misplaced at the very end of the Spaceworld ’97 Pokedex, incongruously next to legendary Pokemon, suggesting that it was put into the game at the last second, as a replacement for something else. On the other hand, Shibirefugu was located right next to Qwilfish, its evolutionary relative, in Spaceworld '97, but that location just happens to also be at the beginning of the Gold/Silver Pokedex, where a lot of early game Normal Pokemon are otherwise located, a role Stantler could easily fill. Furthermore, when Stantler was added back into the game, it replaced Shibirefugu, which implies that Stantler could have been in its slot earlier, and simply got readded in when they decided Shibirefugu was unnecessary. If Stantler was replaced by Togepi, it was probably because Game Freak knew the anime was going to use Togepi soon (it first appeared on May 28th, 1998, six months after Spaceworld ’97) and they wanted Togepi in the demo to potentially show it off. It’s also noticeably incomplete: it’s a baby Pokemon inside a shell, but it doesn’t grow into anything. If Stantler was replaced by Togepi, they must have quickly rearranged the Pokedex and stuck Togepi at the end. If Stantler was replaced by Shibirefugu, it was because Stantler originally had the slot right after Qwilfish and they cut whatever was right after Qwilfish in order to fit Shibirefugu there. Either is a good bet. It doesn’t matter which Pokemon replaced Stantler, just so long as we think it is feasible Stantler was replaced. And while this doesn’t explain perfectly why Stantler was using Shibirefugu’s backsprite for a bit (maybe they were just using outdated assets and hadn’t gotten around to porting over Stantler’s real backsprite?) it would explain why it already had a backsprite in the Korean Index that wasn’t used. It was used, just in a build before the one we have. Of course, all of this requires a lot of speculation, and I could certainly be wrong about some, or all, of this theory. Saying that, given all the other evidence that the Korean Index is chronological, my hypothesis seems to explain the existence of an early Stantler better than any other theory I can entertain. And if I’m right, then we’ve learned a lot about the development of Gold/Silver. Not only do we now know about what happened to Deer, but we also learned a bit about how Pokemon were moved in and out of the actual game before and after Spaceworld ’97. And if I’m correct that Togepi or Shibirefugu were the Pokemon replacing Stantler, we also can explain a bit more about the rushed aspects of their designs. All because of Stantler, the deer Pokemon with scary antlers.
3 Comments
shytende
8/8/2021 02:57:29 pm
So, it may be a coincidence but Deer's movepool also correlates extremely well with another deer Pokemon introduced many generations later : Sawsbuck.
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Asmorano
8/9/2021 10:19:13 am
That is interesting! It's also got Double Edge, which Deer learned at a high level. I don't think the correlation is quite as close--Sawsbuck doesn't learn any of those Psychic moves that Deer's got, but it's certainly notable. I think it's probably coincidence, as Gen V was made so much later, but it's worth knowing. My knowledge of Pokemon in Gen V-VII is basically none existent and I can only fake a working knowledge of Gen III and Gen IV, so correlations like this one I'm bound to miss.
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Kris
8/10/2021 12:12:50 am
I love the idea that Deer is made of bamboo because it seems perfectly suited for great localized names like Bambee or Bamboose.
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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 Archives
October 2021
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