5/19/2022 15 Comments 382 to 387: Unknown to UnknownCounterparts: ID 382 & 383 versus Spinarak and Ariados (All the above artwork is thanks to @RacieB) The next set of counterparts are two competing evolutionary pairs. On the one hand, the team developed a bagworm Pokemon that would transform into a moth; on the other, they had the option of a spider and... a bigger spider. It’s pretty clear from these two families that the team wanted to introduce new bug Pokemon for the new games. As I’ve shown, the preceding 82 designs in the Korean Index have a ton of water Pokemon and more bird Pokemon than you’d ever need. However, bug Pokemon are completely absent. If the team wanted to emulate Red and Green’s use of bug Pokemon as weak early-game Pokemon which can showcase evolution, then they’d need to introduce at least a couple more, to make the early game seem distinct from Red and Green's Viridian Forest. It looks like the team came up with two evolutionary lines based on bugs the first game didn’t use. Bagworms have a unique silhouette and a iconic look, while Spiders are probably the best known “bug” that wasn’t used in Generation I. Either one could have been a good candidate to fulfill this gap in the new lineup. The team decided on the spiders. We can’t know why for sure, and there are probably lots of reasons, but I have at a few theories. 383 looks very similar to both Venomoth and Butterfree, and the team might not have wanted to retread that same ground. Likewise, 382 is very similar to the Generation I pupae Pokemon, and again might have been too close to previous designs. As well, I wonder the team had an easier time designing a moveset for the spiders than for the bagworms. While 382 and 383 would probably share a lot of the same moves with previous bug Pokemon—at least Harden seems like a given—spider Pokemon presented the potential for moves based upon web spinning. Which we did in fact get: even though it’s awful, Spinarak and Ariados got a signature move of Spider Web, allowing the team to create a new, flavorful move to make the new bug distinct from the old. As we’ll see, Lebyda comes up soon in Period 2c, so clearly the team felt they had room for two new bug families by the time Lebyda appeared on the scene. This could mean that for a short time the team used both bug families, and that Lebyda and its evolution eventually overwrote 382 and 383 as stronger designs. Even if that was the case, it seems like Lebyda’s existence suggests that the team failed to include 382 not because they didn’t have the space for an extra bug, but because there was enough wrong with 382 to discard the design entirely. ID 382: ??? 382 is a bagworm Pokemon. Bagworm moths are a particular type of moths which make bags of natural materials as a cocoon when they transition from a worm into their adult moth form. While bagworm moths can be found just about everywhere in the world, they are especially noticeable in Japanese, which has some particularly large species native to the islands. They have a very distinctive look and stand out immediately as an interesting inspiration for a bug Pokemon. One interesting trait of bagworms is that they make different types of cocoons based upon the types of materials they're presented with. As you can see, the one of the right, made of sticks, looks a lot more like 382 than the picture on the left. For whatever reason, these little guys are really popular in Japanese popular culture. You’ll find them all over the place in Japanese popular culture and video games: (All colorizations in this article thanks to @OrangeFrench) In addition to being a bagworm, 382 has a couple of other interesting features. First of all, notice his white beady eyes; to my knowledge, no previous Pokemon designs in Gen I or II have this type of eyes, and it suggests to me that 382 was designed by a new designer, perhaps the same person who gave us Period 1e. They almost look a little unfinished: would the eyes have gotten reworked in future drafts? On top of that, 382 has some strange ear-like protrusions coming from the side of its body; we see from 383 (and Morph Moth, above) that they are actually the moth's antenae poking out from inside the cocoon? You can also see a little string on the top of its body, where the Pokemon is presumably attached to the tree branch it’s hanging from. Speaking of this worm's bag, notice how the four top twigs under the eyes look a bit incongruous, like they were drawn on top of the sprite. It seems that this guy got redrawn at least once while the designer was coming up with its look; while there’s no real evidence for it, I wonder if the “antennae” were also added to 382 after its evolution was sprited, to create continuity. There are good reasons for Game Freak to decide on a bagworm as an inspiration for their new bugs in Generation II. As I mentioned, bagworms are common in Japanese popular culture, and have a distinctive look that is well suited to the Pokemon aesthetic. Given that the initial map for Gold and Silver was a map based closely on a map of Japan, the team might have been able to use 382 in places which were known for bagworms hanging from the trees. Likewise, bagworms are known, more than anything, for their transformative properties as they become moths. Like Metapod and Kakuna before it, the metamorphosis that cocoons go through is a perfect inspiration for evolution in Pokemon games. At first, I also thought that 382 might have been designed to show off the new catching mechanic from headbutting (or lathering honey on) trees. Given the flimsy string holding it up, and a bagworm’s penchant for hanging from trees, this seems like a natural connection to make. However, that mechanic wasn’t actually designed yet, and even by Spaceworld ’97 isn’t usable. It could be the case that the team were thinking of using this mechanic but hadn’t yet implemented it, but it’s unlikely. However, it is worth noting that Pineco, which may be a spiritual successor to 382, is mostly found by headbutting trees in the final version of the game. Even though bagworms may be distinctive in real life, in the Pokemon world, I suspect that 382’s similarities to Kakuna and Metapod probably doomed it before it got very far in development. With two cocoon Pokemon already extremely visible in the Pokemon world, adding a third one to the lineup would have been, at best, a very strange choice. Maybe 382 would have worked if the team had found something unique about it that could differentiate its gameplay from Kakuna and Metapod. Generation II introduced the move Protect, so maybe it could have learned that instead of or in addition to Harden. But it isn’t likely 382’s moveset could have been significantly different from the bugs preceding it, making this a dead end as well. Not to mention that bagworms transform into moths in real life, and the first generation of games already had Venomoth. There just doesn’t seem to be a niche for 382, given what had come before. Some people think that 382 is just a very early design for Pineco. Even though 382 didn’t make it into Spaceworld ’97, it could have been heavily redesigned, and brought back once the team had created the headbutting mechanic, as a signature Pokemon that could demonstrate the new mechanic. Pineco does have a number of similarities to 382: it’s a bug Pokemon, its body has the same general shape as 382, and although its primarily based on a pine cone, Pineco is also called “the bagworm Pokemon” in the final. So the idea isn’t farfetched. They do have a strikingly similar shape and "pose" (if you could call it that). However, if we look at the history of Pineco’s development a little, it becomes unlikely that these were ever related. Pineco started development as a single-stage Grass-type Pokemon; at first, it wasn’t a bug at all! While Pineco gained its bug typing later, the timing heavily suggests Pineco started life based off a different concept: it was probably a pine cone before the team realized it looked like a bagworm and also made it a bug. 382 on the other hand, was obviously a bug from the beginning. Maybe they noticed the similarity because the team had already considered a bagworm for inclusion. Whatever happened though, Pineco probably started as a completely separate design. If anything, Pineco's evolution, Forretress, draws more inspiration from this cut Pokémon than Pineco. Namely, here was have the idea of a bagworm which now uses steel chunks to make up its shell, instead of twigs. Moreover, both Forretress and 383 share the design trait of eyes poking out of their shell. But Forretress's sprite is still extremely rough even a few months before the final game, which suggests Forretress was also a new design created from scratch. The much more likely connection is that 382 is a very early idea that would eventually get reworked into Burmy in Generation IV. We know that Pearl and Diamond drew a lot of its ideas from Generation II’s rejected designs: Tangrowth, for instance, obviously has some connection to Monjara, the rejected Tangela evolution from Spaceworld ’97. While Burmy doesn’t look exactly like 382, it has enough similarities to note a passing resemblance, and it is clearly based on a bagworm, just like 382. What really convinces me is that one of Burmy’s evolutions, Mothim, is not only a moth, but closely resembles 383. But what makes Burmy work in Generation IV, if 382 so clearly didn’t have spot in Generation II? The main difference is that while Generation II included Metapod and Kakuna in early routes, by Generation IV the team had made the decision to make some Pokemon from earlier generations unavailable. Instead, by Generation IV, the design philosophy was to create new Pokemon that fit the same niche in-game: so for instance, most generations have a counterpart to Pidgey, an early game bug Pokemon, a Pikachu clone, etc. With the decision made to not use Metapod or Kakuna in Generation IV, the team had a gap that they needed to fill with a very similar bug design. What better design to use than one rejected from Generation II for being too similar to Kakuna and Metapod? The second reason Burmy could find a home in Generation IV but not in Generation II was because the team found a gimmick for it that made Burmy unique enough to be memorable in its own right. Rather than simply being a bagworm Pokemon, Burmys are interesting in that they collect different materials for their cocoons based on the environment: a Burmy looks different based on the last place it battled, which in turn makes it evolve differently based on what its cocoon was like. It’s a really cool mechanic, one that’s very flavorful given bagworms and one that make Burmy into something more than just a Metapod lookalike. It’s also something that probably couldn’t have been done in Gold and Silver, which in turn probably makes it a good thing that 382 never got off the ground until much later. My gut instinct is that 382 was rejected pretty early on in favor of the Spinarak family: both 382 and 383’s sprites look very rough and probably needed multiple drafts to bring them up to standard. The concept was a good one, and it makes me glad that the team was eventually able to reuse it on Burmy: it shows that bagworms were a good idea, they just hadn’t found their place yet. ID 383: ???383 is pretty obviously the evolution of 382. Unlike most other case in the Korean Index, we don’t really have to speculate about its connection to 382, because the two designs share so many common traits. The same materials that covered 382’s cocoon are still visible on 383’s body, though now it has little black arms poking out. 382’s strange ear things are now seen to be the antennae for 383. They both even have oddly white pupils, though 383’s now look more natural and are a part of a wide grin. The connections are obvious enough to see that 383 is simply the butterfly or moth that has emerged from 382’s cocoon. 383 faces all the same problems that 382 did. If 382 was too close to Kakuna or Metapod, 383's design is far too close to Venomoth and Butterfree, two notable winged bugs from Generation I. While 383 is probably a moth, given that bagworms are a type of moth, its wings have a very similar shape to Butterfree’s, and would be nearly identical if not for the added dots on 383’s tips. Change a few things, and they’re the same Pokemon. Looking at them there, with the three different palettes, I can't help but imagine them as the three legendary bugs, Butteruno, Venodos, and Mothitres. In other ways, however, 383 is surprisingly off brand for a bug Pokemon. Venonat, Butterfree and Beedrill all have compound eyes, along with mandibles in the place of their mouths. Meanwhile, 383 has a cartoony grin. Again, this is probably evidence that 382 and 383 weren’t made by the designers who made the bulk of Pokemon designs, and it’s also probably an indication that this guy would probably have gone through a couple more drafts if he wasn’t abandoned pretty early in the process. And while it’s certainly pretty innocent in this case, I’m sure after the Jynx incident the team would probably make sure 383 didn’t have a completely black face by the time of the final. More in general for the moment, I wonder if the team was having trouble coming up with more bug Pokemon. As I’ve mentioned, there are tons of water and bird Pokemon in the Korean Index, but barely any bugs: just the used Spinarak family, the Ledyba family, and the 382 family. There’s also almost no new bug moves in Generation II: just Fury Cutter, a Scyther and Scizor signature move, and Spider Web, which was made with Spinarak in mind. Including the Generation I bug moves, this brings us to a grand total of five bug moves. So what gives? Why so little love for bug Pokemon? In part it could be because it’s difficult to come up with new bug archetypes. All the obvious ones—bees, moths, caterpillars, butterflies—were already used in Red and Green. Worms, Slugs, Snails and Spiders are probably also obvious, but worms are functionally very similar to Weedle and Caterpie, while the other three (which are technically not bugs anyway) did find their way into the final version of Gold and Silver (as Spinarak, Slugma, and Magcargo). In addition, three other bugs—Shuckle, Pineco, and Foretress—made it into the final game but look almost nothing like a normal bug archetype, demonstrating how hard it may have been to come up with new original bugs. Combined with Heracross and Scizor, the final game did eventually end up adding nine new bug types, so the final games are hardly wanting for bugs. But at least this early in development, Game Freak seems to have been struggling to find new ways to iterate on the bug Pokemon formula. However popular the design of 383 was, the invention of Ledyba just a little bit later in the Korean Index may have put the nails in the coffin of this design. If the team already had the Spinaraks, Ledyba easily filled any other bug-shaped gaps the early roster might have needed. Given how derivative 382 and 383 are, it’s no wonder they weren’t worked on much more, and didn’t appear in Spaceworld ’97. ID 384: SpinarakLet’s talk about Spinarak. The most obvious choice for a new bug Pokemon was a spider, which was conspicuous in its absence from the first generation of games. There’s nothing too major about Spinarak’s development, but by looking at Spinarak we can see why this design worked, as opposed to the proto-Burmy line above. Spinarak’s cute; his original name, Kokumo even means “baby spider,” while his final name, Itomaru, probably means something like “Thread kid” or maybe “Thready,” since the ending is a diminutive for a young boy, like “Johnny” would be for “John.” The sprite is tiny, and yet it’s elegant: using just a few pixels, we have a very clear idea of what this Pokemon is, what it does, and what we can expect from its evolution. This is mostly signaled by the face on its back. Based on how real life tarantulas often having markings on their bodies to confuse other animals, or make them look scary to predators, Spinarak has a spots that form into the shape of a face. In particular, Spinarak has a sad face, while the early versions of Ariados transformed it into a frightening monster. Notice the faces? The one on the left is even called a "Hawaiian Happy Face Spider." Spinarak’s design didn’t change very much from Spaceworld to the final game. Its face went from neutral to sad, and it changed its pose, to look less like it’s hanging from a web and more like it’s crawling. One consequence of this change is that its face is deemphasized in its final design, making Spinarak look a little more like a generic spider. This would make sense as the team reworked Ariados to lose the two-headed theme, but in my opinion it is a shame, since it makes Spinarak lose a bit of its overall distinctiveness. In Crystal, Spinarak went through its most drastic change: it became green! There’s actually an interesting story to this. Helixchamber noticed something interesting: that on the original Gameboy Color hardware, Spinarak’s specific purple would actually appear to be a greenish yellow very similar to its Crystal palette. On an emulator we lose this effect so it’s been easily missed. The Crystal palette might have been changed to match the color that Spinarak actually shows up as, or, Helixchamber suggested, Spinarak’s official art could have been colored incorrectly because it was based on an artist viewing the sprites on the hardware. Thus, Crystal’s sprites were then changed to match the official art. It’s hard to say if this is for sure, but it’s an interesting, overlooked mystery. On the other hand, it's possible that Spinarak's purple color was simply a holdover from its earliest design when it was purple. The team probably never questioned that palette under their tight deadlines; only once they had a chance to breath did they decide to change Spinarak. Just on the basis of looks, Spinarak is already a far superior design to 382 and 383. It looks distinct from any other bug Pokemon, it has an instantly recognizable design as a spider, and it has an easily graspable quirk: the Halloween face on its back. The other thing that makes Spinarak work is that its (and Ariados’s) designs already hint at what exactly their movesets are going to look like. Here it is, for reference: First of all, because they’re spiders, with fangs, Spinarak are Ariados are pretty obviously signaling to players that they're part Poison-type, explaining Poison Sting. In addition, as a spider we’d expect to see a “web” move, which, predictably, was created to be a signature move in "Spider Web." Not only that, but Scary Face seems a shoe-in given Spinarak’s design. It doesn’t have the move in Spaceworld ’97, but of course it learns it by the final. In addition, you’d expect a spider Pokemon to be able to tie up the opponent—in SW97, it has Bind, and in the final, Constrict—and you’d expect a spider to either bite with its fangs or suck blood, which it does. Also, given its menacing theme, Night Shade feels like an interesting and logical addition to its moveset: it was previously only the signature of the scary ghost line, and many people find spiders scary. While I would be hard pressed to come up with a moveset for 382 and 383 that was distinct from Metapod and Butterfree, Spinarak’s design more or less builds a moveset all on its own. No wonder it was chosen while 382 and 383 were dropped. Spinarak’s might look a little like Weedle, but Spinarak has the benefit of learning its whole moveset without first going into a pupae stage. It’s most similar to Venonat, in that they both share Psychic and Leech Life, but Venonat’s heavily balanced towards using status ailments, whereas Spinarak is more designed around more solid offense, with Nightshade giving it a nice way to deal with type resistance. Spinarak’s movepool, importantly, carved out a niche unique in bug-pokemon-dom. As an aside, I’ve always been a little confused about exactly why Spider Web was designed to be so bad. It’s a move that prevents the defending Pokemon from switching out, an ability that does almost nothing in the regular game and is only moderately useful in multiplayer. And that’s all it does. It doesn’t lower speed or other stats, it doesn’t do any damage, it does nada. Now, sure, some moves have to be bad, but why make a signature move, a move that’s supposed to define the flavor and playstyle of a Pokemon, so crappy? Two ideas present themselves to me. First, the team had never tried out the trapping mechanic before. Since they didn’t know if it might turn out to be powerful, the developers may have been cautious in how competitive it was. As it’s a new ability, they may have also wanted the move to be as simple as possible, to show off the effect without anything else. Or, secondly, maybe the move was developed purely around the flavor of a spiderweb: what does it do, except trap someone? The team may not have been thinking at all about balance when they designed its effect, just what a spider web would logically do. Either way, it kind of sucks; I can’t imagine why anyone would keep Spider Web on their Spinarak, despite it being the defining move of the family. Another thing to notice about Spider Web is that it’s only the fourth new move in the move index for Gold and Silver, after Triple Kick, Sketch, and Thief, and right before Mindreader. I’ve previously discussed whether or not the move index might correlate to creation order when we discussed Smeargle, and my conclusions are inconclusive. Though some of these moves look like they correlate to the Korean Index, some—like Triple Kick, which is the signature move of the last Pokemon in theIndex—don’t correlate at all. So this could be an indication that Spider Web was created early, in close coordination with the development of Spinarak, or it could not. Saying that, Spider Web is surrounded by Thief and Mindreader, two other moves that have unique effects not seen in Generation I. It could have been the case that these three moves were designed to try out new ideas before the team had a clear roster, and then Pokemon were designed around the moves later. If this is the case, then 382 may never have been in strong competition with Spinarak, as Spinarak was already designed to fit an existing move. One more aside about Spinarak’s movepool. What’s the deal with Spinarak learning Psychic? Nightshade makes sense given its association with creepiness or fear, but why is a spider all of a sudden able to attack the opponent’s mind? The only other bug to get this move is Venonat/Venomoth, but they also learn Psybeam, and there’s reason to think they were partly psychic in an earlier build of the games. Moths also have an association with Rorshach tests, with hypnotism (“moths to the flame”), and other ideas loosely connected to psychiatry, so this association almost works. But spiders have none of that. Maybe the idea is that the creepy face on their abdomen plays mind games on the opponent? I can only speculate. In the final game, Spinarak was made a version exclusive counterpart to Ledyba, and was also made exclusive to nighttime, to show off the day/night cycle and to differentiate it more from Ledyba, a daytime only 'mon. This hints that the design purpose of both the Spinarak line and 382/383: they were originally designed with the plan of being early game introductory bug Pokemon. And Spinarak certainly hits that design goal. It’s a simple design that also has a lot of depth. Spinarak shows what happens when the team hits on a good design: almost everything else flows directly out of that initial concept. ID 385: Ariados In contrast to Spinarak, Ariados had a much harder time finding its niche. Ariados went through many redesigns throughout development as the team tried to get its look just right. While I’m convinced that they dropped the ball with its final look, it’s clear that the team were trying to make a menacing spider befitting Spinarak, and were struggling to figure out exactly how to make it the right balance of menacing and lovable. In Spaceworld ’97, Ariados—then named “Tsuheddo” which translates to the extremely on the nose “Two-Headed”—was the perfect evolution of Spinarak. The small neutral face had been replaced by a demonic smile, showing the Pokemon’s true colors as a predator, not just a cute lil boi. While Ariados’s early head isn’t all that exciting to look at, the face on the back exudes character, making Ariados instantly iconic. Saying that, something is off about its backsprite. Don’t they look like completely different faces? On the front sprite, the face is smiling, joyful and ready to strike! On the back, it’s frowning, with two teeth protruding from its mouth. It's a different expression entirely! It's also interesting to me that when you flip the backsprite, it looks almost exactly like an unrefined and cropped version of the front sprite. Maybe the backsprite was simply a cropped version of an earlier sprite with a different face? Either that, or initially in conception Ariados’s abdomen face wasn’t just a series of spots, but could move and show emotion. That would be a really cool take, and give him a lot of character: the spider itself might not be able to emote, but its other face could show it reacting to things. In fact, that's apparently exactly what the anime did with Spinarak, so it's not all that farfetched! So it's backsprite face is either a reflection of this, or like I said, it could be an earlier version of the same sprite. Or it's just a simple inconsistency; who knows? It’s probably nothing, but I can’t help but notice we’ve had a lot of menacing, smiling faces featuring on Pokemon in the last few entries. I’d say it’s a sign that maybe the last five entries in the Index were by the same creator, but the other parts of 382 and 383’s spritework are too different from Mantine and Ariados to match. Still, I’m still curious if whether the face on the back on Mantine in some way inspired a creator to base an entire Pokemon design on the face, leading to the Spinarak line? It seems possible given the similarities of the faces. Anyway, after Spaceworld '97, the team decided to heavily rework Ariados' design. By June 1999, its head stayed the same, and its basic pose is the same, even though it was redrawn to have a little more perspective in the pose. But the abdomen is completely redrawn: instead of looking like a menacing grin, its abdomen looks a bit more realistic, has lines down it almost like a Jack O’ Lantern, and a sad, gaping face. I’m not sure what the point of this change was, because the old face looks much better and the new abdomen doesn’t really add anything. Maybe Sugimori asked the artist to make it look more realistic? Or maybe the artist was explicitly trying to evoke a Jack O’Lantern and they thought the new face looked more fitting for a carved face? We had a Christmas themed Pokemon in Delibird, so maybe this was a deliberate attempt at a Halloween Pokemon? There are two more intermediate sprites on the Scratchpads that give us more of a picture of what Game Freak was trying to do here. At first, I thought they were both permutations of a sprite after Spaceworld '99, right before the final's rework, but when OrangeFrench colorized them for me, he pointed out that one of these sprites was clearly made for the Super Game Boy palettes that Spaceworld '97 used. Notice how the left-most sprite looks way better in the first palette, and the second one looks more natural in the second palette: As you can see, the dithering on the left sprite looks too white and out of place with the Gameboy Color Palette of the final, but it fits the style of the earlier sprites. Which means that Ariados's sprites were probably designed in this sort of order: So what it looks like is that the team briefly tried out a new pose for Ariados, before deciding it didn't work and going back to the old pose. Even so, as they went back to that pose, they gave its face two teeth on the bottom row (potentially to look more like a Jack O' Lantern?). Then, in the fourth and fifth sprites, the team considered getting rid of its fangs almost completely, before moving back to the old pose they tried and then completely overhauling it. The reason they spent all this time reworking its sprite is obvious: the new Ariados with the sad, Jack O' Lantern face doesn’t look at all like it deserves to be a final evolution. Evolved Pokemon are often designed to be imposing or dangerous looking; a clear upgrade to what came before as a reward to the player who put time into raising them. The SW’97 version of Ariados certainly succeeded at this, mostly due to the way the evil grin was a natural upgrade from the tiny spider before it. But once the team replaced that grin with this dopey, sad, Jack O’ Lantern face, the incentive to evolve Spinarak just no longer seemed to be there. If Ariados is sad to be alive, why should its trainer want to use it? In part, I bet that the team was having difficult with Ariados’ design due to the unique problem spiders have in game development. The “spider dilemma” is borne out of the fact that a lot of people have arachnophobia, and a fear of spiders can be acute enough that some players might not like to view them in games. The dilemma is this: do you make your spiders cartoony, or realistic and scary? If you make it too cartoony, it loses all sense of presence, or no longer becomes an interesting enemy to face. At the same time, if you make it too realistic, you flirt with the possibility that some players might just decide not to play your game at all. My suspicion is that the team couldn’t quite find the right balance with Ariados. The team may have toned own the first version to make it less frightening, but the version they ended up with became dopey. Eventually, however, one of the team members started experimenting with the design. As we can see from extra sprites found on the scratch pad, the artist tried changing the pose and experimented with losing the fangs. It still looked dopey. The problem was that Ariados’ abdomen face is pretty silly looking, and the face just wasn’t doing its job of making Ariados look interesting or imposing. They could have gone back to the original face, but for some reason the team hadn't liked it, so they moved ahead in a different direction. Using the last pose experimented with, the artist decided to simply buff it up. The eyes are now mean instead of dots, the pincers are larger, its got a spike on its head, and the legs are thinner to look less chubby and more agile. In doing so, modern Ariados was born. Except…it completely lost the face. The entire concept that the Spinarak line was designed around was discarded into order to make Ariados more extreme. And yet, it still has “dos” in its name. Its original name was “Two-Headed,” so the “dos” must refer to a second head still. But where is it? Maybe the Pokedex entry can shine some light? “It spins string not only from its rear but also from its mouth. It is hard to tell which end is which.” Wait, so its rear is hard to tell from its face? Let’s check those sprites again: …Oh. The team gave Ariados a butt-face. That’s certainly…a choice. But it seems the concept did survive all the way to the final game. I definitely prefer the SW’97 design more than the final, but I can see how a series of decisions led the team to the…strange choices they made by the end. Despite losing the most of its theming, the final Ariados certainly looks a lot more like a final evolution, and something I wouldn’t want to mess with. Before we leave this, I want to just mention one thing I’ve noticed while staring at these sprites. Has anyone else ever wondered why the Spinarak family doesn’t have eight legs? If there’s one thing that defines spiders, isn’t it their eight legs? Maybe eight legs just didn’t look good on the sprites, so just like cartoon people often have only four fingers, the artist deleted one set of legs? My deeper suspicion is that Game Freak deleted one set of legs because, technically, bugs only have six legs, and so if you made a Spinarak with eight legs, it technically couldn’t be bug type. But if that’s the case, why does the final Ariados lose one more set of legs? If I'm not mistaken, doesn't it have four now? I get that maybe the last pair of legs is whatever’s on Ariados’s back, but what the heck is on Ariados’s back? Why would it have two half-legs aimed in the air like that? What are they for, or supposed to be? OrangeFrench has suggested to me that they could be the weird legs of a Peacock Spider. Who knows? Counterparts: 386 versus 387 (Thanks again to Racie B for the above artwork) The next two Pokemon in Period 2b end up both being unused, and so the information we have about them and what design niche they were supposed to fill is very scant. One of them is a bizarre raccoon who seems to be permanently on fire; the other is a seemingly normal looking Koala with rings instead of ears. Who drew these, and what exactly they were supposed to do, is a mystery: even their typing is up for grabs, though I suspect 387 was at least part-fire. My best guess is that the team wanted more woodland creatures to fill the early forests of Gold and Silver, and so they brainstormed these two based on the environment they were going to be located in. 386 is pretty exotic for Japan, so whoever drew it may have tried to find a woodland creature that Japanese kids would find interesting and different. 387, on the other hand, is based on a folktale about a tanuki, so it would fit right into the Japanese environment that the early versions of Gold and Silver more emphasized. There are two reasons I can suggest as to why neither of these were chosen. First, the next set of counterparts—the Houndour and Warwolf lines—were both chosen for inclusion into Spaceworld ’97. If the team liked both counterparts so much that they wanted to use them both, they might have cut something earlier from this part of the index, and 386/387 are the obvious choice. Secondly, 386 and 387 have all the tell signs of being designed by the same mystery designer that created Period 1e and parts of 1b. Almost all of those designs are unused by Spaceworld ’97, and my suspicion is because whoever designed these groups of Pokemon was relatively disconnected from the main group of Pokemon designers. Thus, their designs were different from the house style of Sugimori, Nishida, and Morimoto, and thus were often not Pokemon-like enough for inclusion. As well, whoever this designer was probably didn’t work full time with the monster designers, and thus probably wasn’t around to be an advocate for their own designs as much. For whatever reason, the Pokemon designed by this mystery person were almost never chosen, and 386/387 are no exception. ID 386: ??? 386 is a Koala hugging a tree branch. At first glance, it’s a pretty standard Koala: the proportions aren’t much different from the real life creature, it’s hanging on what looks like eucalyptus, just like a real-life Koala, and its pose is pretty much what you'd expect from the real life animal. I’ve talked before about the simplest Pokemon designs, in which the designer took a real world animal and put a slight twist on it. I call those designs “Animal+” but that’s almost too charitable here. 386 isn’t “Animal+”, it’s more or less “Animal.” There are two subtle distinguishing features of 386. First, its paws are darker colored and look a little like they’re gloves. More significantly are its ears, which are not what they seem. While at first glance they look like regular ears, if you glance at the backsprite, you can see part of its branch through the middle! That means that the ears are actually rings. It’s easier to see them once the sprite has been colored. (OrangeFrench colorized this sprite, like all the others in this article, but I changed the background to a light blue, to help show you what's significant about the ears.) What does that say about 386, and what it may have done? Not much. Rings kind of remind me of a satellite dish, so maybe 386 would receive messages from somewhere and act upon them. Like a radio-Koala, or a robot Koala. Rings might also be flotation devices, so that 386 could swim. Or they could mean nothing and were put there by the sprite artist on a whim. 386 fits in with a lot of the other simplistic animal designs, especially from Periods 1a, 1b, and 1e. Like I said above, I get the feeling that whoever designed the Pokemon that populate these periods was only probably not one of the main three, and so their designs (whoever they were) were usually not picked up for inclusion in the games. But whoever this designer was, they really liked designing Pokemon around exotic animals. We've seen a lot of this in the unused designs: There is one other Koala Pokemon in the series, designed for Generation VII, years and years later than when the Korean Index was populated. That koala Pokemon is Komala. Komala is a cute, normal type Pokemon, which is described as permanently asleep (despite not learning snore or rest). There are a few similarities between Komala and 386. Most notably, they’re both Koalas, but they also share a pose and are both holding onto a tree. Some people theorize that 386 is an early proto-version of Komala, but this seems very unlikely to me. First, of course, is that Komala was designed 18 years after 386. There’s no way they kept the design around that long and then decided to reuse it; far more likely is that a later designer had the idea for a Koala Pokemon, and they happen to look similar. Sure, both of them are grasping onto a stick of some sort, but that’s hardly conclusive, as that’s more or less the default pose for Koalas. Literally if I google “Koala” the first two images I find are of Koalas in that exact pose: Secondly, 386 and Komala, while they are both the same animal, don’t share each other’s defining features. Komala is defined by its perpetual sleepiness, but you’ll note that 386 has its eyes wide open. Meanwhile, 386’s defining feature is its ring-ears but Komala’s ears are conspicuously not even circular. Essentially, though both of these are based on the same animal, they really have nothing else in common. But even if Komala is unrelated to 386, it can still give us a sense of why 386 never made it past the concept stage. Look, for instance, at Komala’s moveset in generation VII: …It’s really generic, isn’t it? Smogon says that Komala’s main use is its ability, which makes it immune to statuses, and the move Rapid Spin, but otherwise its generally outclassed by other Normal-type Pokemon. Defense Curl, Rollout, Slam, Flail, Thrash: pretty much every Normal-type Pokemon learns these moves. What there reminds you of a Koala? Komala was not brought back in Sword and Shield, the very next generation, which suggests to me it was not very popular and Game Freak didn’t make it a priority. And I think the moveset nicely demonstrates why. It’s hard to make a Koala Pokemon that isn’t incredibly generic. Koalas don’t fight in real life, and their main gimmicks are eating weird leaves, a very stupid sounding scream (listen to it if you don’t believe me) and their ability to carry chlamydia. None of these things makes a good Pokemon hook. Adding the sleeping angle to Komala was a nice try, but it clearly didn’t help the team figure out an interesting moveset. Given the much smaller range of choices Game Freak must have had in Generation II to develop an interesting Koala Pokemon, I don’t blame them for failing to here. Koalas are cute. Koalas are cuddly. I’m not convinced that Koalas make a good Pokemon concept. ID 387: ???Let’s talk about Tanukis. The tanuki is a Japanese animal that is normally translated into English as a “racoon.” It looks superficially similar to a racoon, but is otherwise almost completely unrelated to that animal. The main significant difference is that while racoons are most closely related to cats and bears, Tanuki’s are much closer to foxes and to dogs. Getting the two mixed up is literally confusing cats for dogs! In Japan, tanukis are a common staple of folklore. They’re most often the trickster character that is commonly found in folklore, like Raven in Pacific Northwest mythology, Coyote in Southwestern American mythology, or Brer Rabbit in African American folklore. Tricksters are usually portrayed as heroes, even though they are often selfish, self-centered, and troublemakers: their stories are most often fun because even though they are quite human in their flaws, they mostly make fools of those in power or take advantage of people otherwise seen as oppressors. They’re weak creatures, but clever and sly, which allows them to become champions of people without power in a society. For the Japanese, Tanukis often trick farmers or landlords who have been cruel of selfish. They appear literally all over the place in Japanese video games: Mario dresses up as one in Super Mario Bros 3, the titular Rocky of the Pocky and Rocky games is a Tanuki, the greedy venture capitalist Tom Nook is a tanuki. They also show up a lot in Japanese anime, most famously in Pom Poko, an early Studio Ghibli creation. Tanuki have a range of magical abilities. They can use a special leaf to transform their form into other animals or into humans, or to transform objects into valuables. They also have, strangely, extremely large testicles that they carry around in a sack, often thrown over their backs. Their sack is often said to be the source of their powers, and losing it spells doom for the tanuki. They’re also often depicted as alcoholics and beings that love to trick people just for the fun of it. Most of the time, tanuki are the good guys, but in one particular story, that of Kachi-Kachi Yama, the tanuki is the villain. The story tells of a old farmer who constantly had to deal with a tanuki ruining his fields. The man decided to set a trap, and captured the tanuki, who pleaded to be let free. Eventually, while the man was gone, the tanuki convinced his wife to set him free, but as soon as she unleashed him, the tanuki murdered her, chopped up her body, and made her into a soup. Then, to trick the farmer, the tanuki changed into his wife, fed him the soup, and then taunted him for eating his own loved ones. It’s…kind of dark. Enter a wily rabbit, not unlike Brer Rabbit. The rabbit finds out what happened and promises the farmer to help him get revenge. From that point on, the rabbit pretends to be the friend of the tanuki but instead plays tricks on him to torture him. The most prominent trap the rabbit plays happens when the tanuki is gathering firewood to bring back to his home. While he’s walking back home with the wood the rabbit lights it on fire, but he doesn’t notice because the firewood is packed to high for him to see. He asks the rabbit what the crackling sound he hears is, and the rabbit just tells him it’s the sound of forest creatures. Because he doesn’t suspect a thing, the tanuki is eventually badly burnt by the fire, and the rabbit helps the farmer get revenge. What I’m trying to tell you here is that 387 is the tanuki from the story of Kachi Kachi Yama. Tanukis are a great subject for a Pokemon: they have all sorts of cool magical powers, they’re a staple of Japanese video games, and as a cute mischievous racoon, they have obvious mascot potential. And yet, for the most part, tanukis have never been used as the inspiration for a Pokemon. Zigzagoon is probably based on the real life tanuki, but doesn’t share any of the folklore of the creature. Instead, this is the only time the team tried to make a more traditional, mythological tanuki work. However, 387 clearly doesn’t work. The sprite we have is more or less an action pose: it shows 387 being burnt by the fire on its back, carrying kindling. It’s already hard to naturally explain Pokemon carrying objects: do Farfetch’d always have their green onion? Where does Alakazam get its spoons (are they a part of its hands?)? Is every single Cubone ever wearing the skull of its mother (this implies a lot of childbirth deaths. How does it get the skull? Does it personally remove it from its mother?)?
But 387 is on another level. Does 387 always carry around tinder? Is it always on fire? Is the Pokemon in a constant state of pain, running around avoiding the flames on its back? How does it sleep, or eat? Potentially, this could be reworked as they refined the design: for instance, maybe they could get rid of the tinder and the fire could just erupt from its back, Cyndaquil like, when it gets excited. But as it is, 387’s sprite is showing us a slice from its life, but nothing that actually shows us what its really like. Above all that, there’s a very notable push in the development of Gold and Silver to move away from references only Japanese players would understand. With the international success of the first games, the team decided after Spaceworld ’97 to make the world map less obviously resemble Japan, and deleted or edited Pokemon designs that leaned into Japanese mythology too much. Kyonpan, for instance, was probably removed for being too closely associated with Chinese mythology. 387 didn’t make it even into Spaceworld ’97, before this was a concern, but even if it had made it there, it’s almost certain that it wouldn’t have survived to the final, at least without being heavily remodeled to remove most references to Japanese folklore. Which, in the case of 387, is more or less its entire identity. I doubt this guy ever got farther than a sprite, but it’s fun to speculate about what it could have been like as a more fully fleshed out Pokemon. Would 387 have been a Fire-type, and would it have used the flames on its back to attack other Pokemon? Because it’s a tanuki, would it learn transform? If this guy did get all the way to a moveset (at least a partial one), then I’ve always suspected the move “Thief” was created as a signature move for 387. While, like I said before, the new move index is probably not entirely chronological, Thief does appear third on the list, right before Spider Web (the signature move of Ariados, two slots above this), and two moves after Sketch (the signature move of Smeargle, 38 slots above this one). If these moves were created even somewhat chronologically, then Thief would belong to something around this part of the index, and a mischievous, fast moving tanuki seems exactly the sort of creature who might be stealing other Pokemon’s held items. In addition, in the final game, Thief isn’t learned by any Pokemon, and is strictly a TM only move. That’s weird, and suggests to me that it may have been designed for something that got cut. While that cut Pokemon could have been anything on this list, 387 is my prime suspect. We’ll never know though, because neither 386 nor 387 were chosen, despite being made to fill the same slot. Instead, the next group of counterparts, an Ice wolf and a fire dog, were both so well designed that the team decided to choose them both, taking slots that were probably meant in part for one of these guys. Not a big loss, in my opinion.
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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 |