ID 413: SmoochumID 413 is Smoochum. It’s another baby Pokemon, and an interesting one too: Smoochum is one of the few baby Pokemon from Era III to survive until the final game (4 out of the 10 do), it’s one of the few which evolve into an existing single-stage Pokemon, and it also marks the moment when the design team decided that Elekid would be a baby Pokemon, and part of a trio of baby Pokemon. Like Betobebii, Smoochum is another example of the team experimenting with babies for unpopular or underrepresented family lines from Generation I; unlike Betobebii, it doesn’t feel like there was even much of an attempt to make Smoochum cuter than the original Pokemon. Smoochum is the baby form of Jynx, from Generation I; as a result, it has the same origins as Jynx. It's worth talking about those origins, since they're so controversial and such a part of what Pokemon is in popular culture. The most direct influence for Jynx is the Yuki-Onna, a mythological Japanese ghost which resembles a beautiful woman with black hair and blue lips. A Yuki-Onna is composed of snow or ice, and in many stories she dissolves when exposed to warmth. Magmar and Electabuzz were both based on pretty well-known Japanese Yokai, and while Jynx wasn't originally part of that trilogy, her design shared a lot of similarities with them. Given the look of Jynx (though Jynx has blond hair, and not black) and its otherwise pretty random Ice-typing, Yuki-Onna has to be one of the first things the designers were thinking. However, the other origin for Jynx is, of course, the tarbaby. Tarbabies are old, racist toys for child that resemble black-face characters from back when that was acceptable. While tarbabies—and blackface in general—has become seen as horribly offensive in the United States since the Civil Rights movement, in other countries—Britain and Japan in particular—blackface never had quite the same offensive connotations for a large proportion of the population. As a result, Japanese media, especially in the 90s, often used blackface imagery when depicting black people. Dragonball Z is one of the most obvious examples, but there are a lot of others out there. (Sorry, I'm not using a picture to demonstrate this) Of course, Jynx also resembles an opera singer, and there are arguments that she’s supposed to resemble the Japanese fashion of Ganguro, which is a type of darker makeup used by women as a type of rebellion against traditional Japanese standards of beauty. These could also be involved in Jynx’s origins, but its unlikely they were the main inspiration. Anyway, this article does a good job of summing up the entire controversy, and it’s worth checking out to learn more about the topic. Smoochum is just a smaller Jynx, and unfortunately that makes its resemblance to a tarbaby more obvious and the other inspirations (opera singer, Ganguro) more tenuous. In the original version, it had a black face and large lips, just like Jynx. However, by June 1999, the team had changed Smoochum to have a purple face, like the modern Jynx. You’d think this was because of the controversy over Jynx, wouldn’t you? I did, but for whatever reason, the timeline doesn’t match up. First of all, the accusation that Jynx was a racist caricature was made first (as far as I can tell) in an article by Carole Boston Weatherford, published in the Greenboro News and Record. In that article, Weatherford argued, “"The character Jynx, Pokémon #124, has decidedly human features: jet-black skin, huge pink lips, gaping eyes, a straight blonde mane and a full figure, complete with cleavage and wiggly hips. Put another way, Jynx resembles an overweight drag queen incarnation of Little Black Sambo, a racist stereotype from a children's book long ago purged from libraries." But that article was published January 16th, 2000; Smoochum’s appearance was changed to purple in June 1999, if not a few months earlier. As far as I know, this accusation hadn’t been made in a mainstream forum before Weatherford’s article (please let me know if you know anything predating this), so Smoochum couldn’t have been changed in response to the accusations of racism. Furthermore, it’s also relevant that Jynx wasn’t changed in June 1999; in fact, Jynx still has the racist blackface sprite in the final game, which was released November 21st 1999, also before Weatherford’s article. So what’s going on? It’s unlikely the team recognized that Smoochum was a racist caricature on their own. If they did, why didn’t they change Jynx’s design at the same time? But on the other hand, why would the artist who made Smoochum purposefully make her skin color different from Jynx’s in 1999? All the other babies match their adult form’s palettes, but Smoochum doesn’t. Maybe the team just thought purple looked better? It would be quite a coincidence. Anyway, I don’t know the answer here; and I think its unlikely that Smoochum’s palette change had anything to do with censorship, unless there's an earlier accusation I'm missing. Beyond the palette, Smoochum also underwent a few other interesting design changes. First of all, Smoochum went through three different names. First, it was known as Rippu, which is a Japanese transliteration of the English word “Lips.” Given that Smoochum’s Pokedex entries mention that it uses its lips to feel everything it comes into contact with (a little creepy, in my opinion), this feels like a fitting name, if a bit simple and on the nose. By the rebooted production of the games in 1999, Smoochum’s name was changed to Kisukisu, which means…Kiss Kiss. Again, it’s a pretty fitting name, if a bit on the nose. But then, right before release, the name was changed one last time, to Muchuuru. Bulbapedia thinks that this name—which they transliterate into the bizarre Muchul romanization that the official website uses (a much more natural English transliteration would be Muchuu or Muchur)—is a combination of the Japanese word for a daze or trance, and “chu,” which is used as an onomatopoeia for kissing in Japan. This is a weird last minute change, but it is easily explained. We know from other production materials that the last minute changes to a lot of localization names were after the team found out the names couldn’t be copyrighted. I think it’s fair to say that’s probably what happened here too. Kisukisu is a fine name and an apt descriptor of this Pokemon, but it was probably too generic. Thus, the team came up with the more bizarre “Muuchuru,” which was distinctive enough for the copyright board. Probably more interesting than the naming changes are the ways Smoochum’s visual design was changed. Smoochum’s final design is notably less cute and lackadaisical than its 1997 design. In Spaceworld ’97, Smoochum has a smile on its face, and it is lifting its arm up as if to reach for a snowflake; in 1999, the same Smoochum now glares directly at the camera which a threatening look, and its hand is in the shape of a fist, as if it’s getting ready to punch your lights out. What was once a (albeit racist) cute design has now been turned into a bully that beats up the rest of the baby Pokemon. I'm not sure why the team made this change; Smoochum’s name and Pokedex entry don’t hint anywhere at its malevolent anger. It’s possible a new designer just didn’t like all the baby Pokemon being cutesy or innocent, and thought that by giving Smoochum an attitude, it would make it stand out a little more. My best explanation is that Game Freak had clearly wanted the Elekid/Magby/Smoochum trio to be a bit different from the other babies. All three of them, in the final game, learn most of their evolved form's moveset, and they all have better stats than the other babies. They also evolve later than other babies. I think the team wanted to characterize them as older children that were more dependent, and able to fight back in their own right. While I have no idea why that involves Smoochum seemingly making a rude gesture at its enemies, I bet the changes to its design was to make it look less like a child and more like an adolescent. As for Smoochum’s gameplay, there’s two minor changes from Spaceworld ’97 to the final to note. First, in Spaceworld ’97, Smoochum is just an Ice type, only gaining its Psychic type upon leveling up. This could have been a simple oversight, or there could have been an idea that, as a baby, Smoochum might lack the Psychic powers it eventually grows into. We’ve seen this once before, in how Staryu gains a Psychic type after evolving into Starmie, but that was the result of a stone-evolution, which can often add an extra type to the evolving Pokemon (see Poliwrath, Nidoking, Nidoqueen, and the Eevees). While Smoochum isn’t a stone evolution, we do see the same phenomenon in Baririina, the Mr. Mime baby that didn’t make it to the final game. Mr. Mime is a psychic type but his pre-evolution is only Normal type and presumably hasn’t yet learned to control its powers. There’s also one notable change to Smoochum’s moveset. In Spaceworld ’97, the baby Pokemon all had identical movesets to their evolutions, just learned at a lower level. This makes perfect sense, since it was the pattern mostly Generation I mostly followed: 1st stage Pokemon learned the same moves as their evolutions but more quickly. By the final, however, many of the new baby Pokemon lost most of their movesets, instead learning one or two moves that the adult version didn’t, giving them a small reason to exist (other than for breeding moves). For instance, the final Pichu moveset lost almost all the moves that Pikachu could learn, but gained Sweet Kiss; Cleffa was the same. Smoochum, Elekid, and Magby, in the final, were the exception to this: they still learned the full moveset of their adult versions. This was probably because, conceptually, these babies were older and stronger than Cleffa, Pichu, or the other babies. Smoochum, Magby, and Elekid were fulled fledged first forms for Magmar, Jynx, and Electabuzz, and thus they deserved having the entire moveset. Except…Smoochum doesn’t learn Lovely Kiss, Jynx’s signature move. It did in Spaceworld ’97, but in the final, this move is conspicuously absent. It also doesn’t learn Ice Punch, another move that is closely associated with Jynx; because Smoochum evolves at level 30, and Jynx learns Ice Punch and Lovely Kiss before that, a Smoochum that becomes a Jynx will always be strictly worse than Jynx herself. Again, I have no idea why the team made this choice; it’s even more nonsensical given that Smoochum’s sprite looks like it’s about to punch you in the face. Most baby Pokemon are only, very narrowly, useful for breeding moves the adult wouldn’t otherwise have. Why have a baby that is can't learn some of the adult's best moves? There are no obvious answers for the choices that were made with Smoochum. Sometimes, research into development doesn’t yield new insights, only more questions. ID 414: HinaazuOur next extry is Hinaazu. Hina means princess on its own, but it's probably short for Hinadori, which means baby bird. Azu means...something; I'm not entirely clear. But as far as I’m concerned, this baby version of Doduo would’ve been named Doduno. It fits the same naming scheme of Doduo and Dodrio, it rolls off the tongue, it’s cute…this guy’s Doduno. So that's the name I'm going to use. Doduno is our third baby Pokemon in seven entries, and it follows some of the same patterns as the other two babies. Doduo and Dodrio weren’t particularly cute or popular Pokemon, so we have another case of an underserved family getting a baby. As a commenter also pointed out, the babies in this stretch of the Korean Index tend to be added to mid or late game Pokemon from Generation I with relatively late evolutions: Grimer, for instance, evolves at level 38 and Doduo evolves at level 31. So these might have been chosen as candidates for babies simply because they were late game mons and there was room for a hypothetical earlier evolution. Doduno didn’t late very long, like most of its adolescent compatriots, and there’s a glaring reason why: its visual design doesn’t make any sense. If Doduo has three heads, and Dodrio has three, most people are quick to point out that Doduno should have one. Not three. Which it clearly has. Not only does this not follow the gimmick of the family line, but it also brings up lots of questions. What happens to the third chick? Does it die on evolution? The problem with creating a Doduo baby is that the design team was kind of drawn into a corner. If they followed the pattern that Doduo and Dodrio set, then Doduno would look like a regular, one-headed chick. It’d be very difficult to find any way to distinguish it from a real-life animal: ...Hardly an inspired design. If the goal was to make Doduo more popular, giving it quite possibly the most boring pre-evolution would hardly solve that problem. On the other hand, if the team tried to capitalize on Doduo’s gimmick, they’d end up with something weird that didn’t quite follow the pattern. Obviously, the designer chose to go the latter direction and gave Doduno three heads to make it stand out. None of this was insurmountable. For instance, if the team went with the one-headed version of Doduno, they could have made exaggerated its features and given it a goofy look, maybe a bit in line with the dicarded ID 313 (the strange Kiwi Bird). This could have been put alongside a Pokedex entry which explained that Doduno was uncoordinated and confused without two heads to take over different tasks. Or if the team had kept the three-headed version, I could imagine a Pokedex entry that explained that the chicks divided into three different creatures before they evolved into Doduo. Or something. My point is, I don’t think the current design is good per se, but I don’t think it was unworkable. Like we see with the majority of these baby Pokemon, Doduno did not make it to the final game, or even to June 1999. By June 1999, the Pokemon team seem certain that they wanted to use this slot for a second stage evolution for Marill, but the team hadn’t quite figured it out. They went through multiple designs for Azumarill, and for much of this period, he simply has a copy of Marill’s stats and a placeholder name (Mitei 04, which means “Pending 04”). In June 1999, future-Azumarill was using Doduno’s backsprite as a placeholder for its yet to be drawn backsprite, and until the very end of development, Azumarill actually used Doduno’s leftover palette, which they hadn’t bother to change (it even uses Doduno's palette as its shiny palette in the final!). So in a weird way, traces of Doduno surived almost to the very end of development, even though the team knew they weren’t using him for a pretty long stretch. My hunch is that he wasn’t removed from the roster because of his design problems; Betobebii, Puchikoon, Pudi and Koonya all have better designs and yet all of them were removed at roughly the same stage in development. I think Doduno was removed as part of the larger purge of baby Pokemon. As we’ve discussed before, the purge was probably because babies simply weren’t useful for the gameplay of Gold and Silver and their Pokedex slots could be better used to build diversity to the lineup. Saying that, I think there’s an alternate world where the babies could have worked. In Red and Green, Doduo first appears midgame, after the fourth gym leader; Grimer appears even later, while Jynx, Electabuzz, and Magmar are rare encounters that are found right before the 7th gym leader, if at all. You could extrapolate this to Tangela and Mr. Mime as well, as they’re two Pokemon that are more or less absent Generation I except in a few cameos. Imagine that in Johto, all of these Pokemon were found in early routes: make Doduno and Monja (Tangela’s baby) available right after beating the 1st gym; make Baririina the first available psychic Pokemon instead of Abra or Drowzee; give out Elekid and Magby as early electric and fire types right before the gyms where they would come in handy. It would create a completely different play experience, since the player would be using Pokemon they’d barely have been able to touch in Generation I; furthermore, this wouldn’t work without these babies, as Pokemon like Grimer or Magmar don’t learn any moves at low levels so you couldn’t just insert low-leveled versions of them into early encounter tables. Honestly, I think this would have been really cool: it would allow the player to see the Pokemon world at a completely different angle, and would allow the reuse of older Pokemon in a fresh light. Of course, if they had gone with this idea, than babies couldn’t have been connected to breeding; they’d have to be available in the wild as a substitute for their evolved forms. And they’d have to learn the entire moveset of the adult, like they did in Spaceworld ’97, rather than just part of it, like most of the surviving babies in the final. And there’d be a tradeoff: this change would mean more Generation I Pokemon being used overall, and less space for new designs, especially because this would encourage players to use the fully evolved forms in the endgame. In the data we have from Spaceworld ’97, Mikon—the Vulpix relative—is actually found in the wild, which leads me to think that the team actually considered this alternate world. While no other babies are found in this encounter data, the encounter tables feel very sketchy and incomplete, which means it’s possible more would have been added as they finished the design. However, it was not meant to be. Design halted sometime in early 1998 and when it resumed the new additions to the design team had their own ideas they wanted to explore. If the team had ever considered using baby Pokemon like I’ve explained, the team soon decided that babies couldn’t be both encounters and linked to breeding, and for whatever reason the team decided that they were better suited as obscure easter eggs for players experimenting with the Daycare. In this world, Doduno no longer looked like he even could serve a purpose. It was never a big loss, because honestly there were better designed Pokemon that got the cut. Still, one can’t help but feel sad for these screaming chicks. (Credit to @RacieBeep) ID 415: ???ID 415 is unused but looks like it could have been. Easily one of the most polished sprites in the Korean Index, 415 has a good pose, completed shading, a backsprite that perfectly matches the front, and has an interesting concept. As far as I can tell, this guy was probably slated for use right up until Spaceworld ’97. Either he was deleted just to make room for one of the last few Pokemon inserted into the game, or he was part of an evolutionary family and was taken out when his relative was removed as well. There’s a lot going on with ID 415’s design. First, it appears to be based on an ankylosaurus, which is known for the armor on its back and the club on its tail. There are seal-like characteristics to him as well, though I think a plesiosaur or another type of swimming dinosaur is the most obvious inspiration for the body shape. And then on top of that, the armor on his back seems strange, almost artificial. If you compare it to a xylophone, the screws on the end of his armor look very similar to the ends holding the pieces of a xylophone together as well. Given that he has a long tail with a club looming over his armor, it’s very plausible that this guy was also meant to be a xylophone crossed with an ankylosaur. (Colorized by @OrangeFrench) We don’t have much to go on here, but it seems like ID 415 would definitely been a Water-type, and possibly a Rock or Steel type, depending on how much the armor on its back was emphasized. Iron Tail, interestingly was a new move invented for Generation II that happened to be Steel-type and could have fit really well on this guy. In Spaceworld '97, it is otherwise only found on the Onix and Manbo1 families. Could this guy have been the original reason the team created this move? The big question about 415 is whether it was a single-stage Pokemon, or if it was designed to be part of an evolutionary line. On the one hand, most of the discarded designs in the Index were one-off designs unconnected to any other Pokemon; on the other, remember that almost all of Era III was designed to connect to another Pokemon in some way. Thus, it’s odd to have five of the ten Pokemon in Period 3a be disconnected to anything else. So while it could be a single stage Pokemon, I think it’s worth considering what could have been its evolutionary relative. The first, and most plausible theory is that 415 is an evolved form of 412, the proto-Dunsparce from Period 3a that also didn’t make it into Spaceworld ’97. Consider the case in favor of this: -Both of these designs are very close together in the Korean Index, and so they might have been made at the same time with the same idea in mind. -Both of them have very similar shading, and similar style eyes. I’d go so far as to say that I’m pretty confident they were sprited by the same artist. -Both even have the same pose! If you look at them, 415’s head is in the same position as 412’s, and both have a tail that curves above their body. It’s an unusual pose, and yet the artist decided to use it twice. Viewed together, it gives the impression 415 is a grown-up and chunkier version of 412. The case against these two being related is simpler. As much as the two might look visually similar, their concepts couldn’t be more different! 412 is a Tsuchinoko, a Japanese mythological snake creature; a xylophone/ankylosaurus/seal has almost nothing in common with this concept. I doubt they’d even be the same types: final Dunsparce is normal, and Proto-Dunsparce could easily have been that or possibly Poison type. But I don’t see any way 415 isn’t Water type, and without them sharing a type, I doubt they could be related. Maybe the artist used the same pose to try out a completely different concept; maybe the pose is a coincidence. The second theory is that 415 is related to ID 344, the Viking ship Pokemon design from Period 2a. Though these two are further apart in the Index, and they’re more visually distinct, they at least seem to have the same typing, and it's possible to see 415’s armor reflected in the black lines on 344’s top. Given the way 344 is sandwiched between a bunch of other used Sugimori designs (and was potentially designed by Sugimori), it seems very likely to me that 344 was under heavy consideration for Spaceworld ’97, so it would have been a prime candidate for the team to reference back to in Era III. Plus, while the pose isn’t exact this time, they both still have flippers and a long tail hanging over their body. Saying that, if I were to guess, I think it's more likely 344 already had an evolutionary relative in the Index: 351. 351 shares the headress and the black stripes of 344, and they're a lot closer in the Index. On the other hand, 351 was part of Period 1e, which looked likely to be throwaway designs, making it less likely it was connected to something else in the Index. It's hard to say for sure, but for my money, the family resemblance between 344 and 351 is far more convincing. Of course, none of these theories could exclude the rest. For instance, Proto-Dunsparce could have been the first-stage of the family, Xylophonesaurus the second, and Viking Ship the third. Or 351 could have been the first stage. While still just as unlikely, it’s not like 415 has to be only connected to 412 or 344 and couldn’t connect to both. Like I said in the entry on Proto-Dunsparce, the relative placement of ID 415, the spritework itself, and the way five Pokemon were, at the last minute, shoved into the last few entries of the Pokedex makes me think that this guy was probably one of the last Pokemon cut from the Spaceworld ’97 Pokedex. Depending on the relationship between 415 and 344, that could also be a hint that 344 was cut late as well. It's pretty enticing to think we could have had a name and a moveset for this guy, if only Game Freak hadn't shoved in Togepi or Snubbull at the last second. Unfortunately, we’ll never know. This guy holds mysteries; but this is all we get out of him. ID 416: SatoWell, next up, we've got one of the more bizarre designs in the Korean Index. Feast your eyes on a dumbstruck, ugly looking, fish with bird wings. It's certainly something. Whatever I may think about the design, Sato is quite interesting. Sato breaks all the rules for what we know about the discarded designs in the Korean Index. Most notably, of course, we know the name of this flying fish. There’s some strange stuff going on here, so we’ll deal with it all in turn. In slot #416, the Korean Index treats us to this odd sprite. His eyes goggle at the viewer, and his big lips take up most of his face and make him look even stranger. He certainly doesn’t look much like a Pokemon; at best, he seems like he better fits the undercooked unused designs of Periods 2d and 1e than he does 3a. At least his concept is pretty clear: he’s a literal interpretation of the idea of a “flying fish.” What’s unique about Sato is that we have more information about this guy than we usually do. In a trash folder in the source code that contained the Korean Index, there’s a few deleted sprites that were thrown away by the designers; most of them with things like the Generation I fossil sprites, which were probably deemed unnecessary in Gold and Silver. However, one of those trashed sprites was an earlier version of ID 416. This is one of the few chances we have to see an earlier version that predates even the Korean Index, so it’s exciting! Except, well, all it was was a fatter version of what we had: I wish it were more exciting, but this is what we got. More important than its sprite was the filename, which named the back sprite “SATO” and the front sprite “SATOF”. That’s super interesting, because it seems like this could be this guy’s actual name! That’s far more than we know about a lot of these, so having a name is pretty neat! It’s even a name that makes a lot of sense with its design: as TCRF hypothesizes, “Sato” could be a portmanteau of “Sakana” (fish) and “Hato” (dove). Saying that, this isn’t the only explanation. First of all, “SATO” could be an abbreviation. It’s hard to tell, since the other sprites found in the source code tend to be named with a different schema than this one. Usually they’re named “PM2F_” followed by their Korean Index number, but sometimes, as with the early Ampharos, they have something other than the index number (in early Ampharos’ case, PM2F_DEN). This is simply an abbreviation for “Pocket Monsters 2 Front”; the “DEN” for Ampharos are the first three letters of its Japanese name. For whatever reason, the old Sato sprite doesn’t use this formula, which is odd; instead the front sprite seems to use four letters to spell out the name (SATO) and then an F to designate that it's the front sprite. That could be an indication that this is the full name, but the fact that the normal naming scheme uses four letters before indicating the Index number could also indicate that “SATOF” is only the first four letters of its name, like Denryuu was abbreviated to "DEN". All I’m saying is that the name could be longer than Sato. One of my earliest hypotheses for this guy was that “SATO” was short for “Satoshi,” which could refer to Satoshi Tajiri or another developer with that name. If that were the case, my guess was that this guy was never actually considered for inclusion in Gold and Silver, but the sprite was some in-joke about Tajiri (or someone else) that we simply aren’t privy too. It was such a weird sprite, and I hard a hard time believing it was taken seriously by the team. Plus, we already know that Snorlax was a joke about Morimoto, so maybe Sato was a joke about something Tajiri had said about fish, or about his physical features? Maybe they revised the sprite to make it less tubby as a way of apologizing to Tajiri? That’s very unlikely; I still wanted to cover it just in case. If I spoke Japanese, I might also be able to find other words or plausible names that start with “Sato,” but as it is, I don’t have any. Sato could also be referring to the sprite artist, rather than the name of the Pokemon as well, giving us a clue who some of those mystery designers were. I’m pretty sure none of the new Pokemon designers had a name that included “Sato” in it though. There’s also the question of why this sprite revision was found in the trash folder, while none of the other Pokemon in the Index were found there. This is, honestly, a mystery. The obvious answer is that this was the last revision done to the Korean Index before the team moved over to their second system of assigning sprites (After May 1998, the team seems to have found a way to directly add sprites to the game from the scratch pads, making the intermediate step of adding them to the Index obsolete). So Sato could be the last Pokemon they worked on before discarding the index, and that slightly-thinner Sato the final design worked on. But that seems to defy logic in a lot of ways. We have good reason to believe, for instance, that the Elekid sprite and the Stantler sprite were both edited post-Spaceworld ’97, and so if any work was done on the Korean Index, certainly it should have been one of their older sprites we found in that trash folder. The most logical hypothesis was that this Sato sprite was from before Spaceworld ’97, since it didn’t appear in that build of the game—if it had already been discarded by SW’97, why in the heck did the designers continue tweaking his sprite into mid 1998? Furthermore, this Sato sprite is incredibly rough, and is far from the style of the other Pokemon that made it into Spaceworld ’97. That suggests that it’s older and wasn’t worked on as much. And yet, here we are, with evidence that it was touched up after most of these other sprites. Like I said, maybe this sprite was a joke; it got touched up because someone got bored at work and they decided to tweak it a little bit. Or maybe the way their computer system worked was weird and it somehow preserved this sprite but deleted other sprites left in the trash. Or, more plausibly, Sato could have been added to the Index only after Spaceworld ’97, erasing something else that used to be in this slot. It’d be a weird addition, but that would explain why it was being worked on so late in the day, and it would also explain why this guy and not Stantler was found in the trash folder. This theory could also explain both why the sprite looks so rough, and why it seems to be in a style dissimilar to the rest of Period 3a. If it was worked on after Spaceworld ’97, then the sprite might have been relatively new before the team stopped using the Korean Index; thus, we could have a very early sprite for it. And if it was added in to the Index after SW’97, then the artist who added it in might have been completely different than the artists who mostly worked on Era III (in fact, this could be a late addition, by the artist who did 1e and 2d). Maybe that means that Sato's the far, far removed early concept for something that got added to the game after development restarted in 1999? I wonder: in a world where Sato got reworked and completed, what would he look like? Maybe something like Goldeen, with wings? Or maybe a version of the SW’97 design of Mantine? This guy looks about as threatening as a Pidgey—could this have been an early game Pokemon like the birds on the first couple routes in most games? Or, given that Sato would have definitely have been a Water/Flying Pokemon, could this be an extremely early idea that eventually morphed into Wingull? Who knows. A literal flying fish is a cool idea, and definitely one that the team could have worked with. The design clearly wasn’t figured out here; but it could have been only a matter of hard work and iteration. ID 417: SunfloraThe final Pokemon of Period 3a in Sunflora, the walking, talking sunflower. It's the second-to-last Pokemon in the Korean Index that doesn’t have an evolutionary relative; everything else except Togepi is related in some way to another Pokemon! Funnily enough, Sunflora did get an evolution in the final game, making it one of only four Pokemon who gained an evolutionary relative between Spaceworld ’97 and the final. 19 Pokemon actually lost an evolution as the games underwent revisions! Sunflora is arguably the most obvious Grass Pokemon design out there; when Game Freak designed the menu icon for Grass Pokemon in Generation I, after all, they made it a flower with eyes. I’m honestly surprised Sunflora wasn’t a holdover design from Generation I’s development, since it feels like such low-hanging fruit; surprisingly, Generation I didn’t have a flower Pokemon, though Bellsprout and Bulbasaur get close to the idea. But if the team was trying to use Era III to round out the game, then adding Sunflora at this point makes sense. Up until this point in the Korean Index, only the Hoppip family, the Chikorita family, and five unused designs—all of which were likely to have already been discarded by this point—show any potential to be Grass types. Given that the Index is literally overflowing with Flying and Water types, this seems like quite an omission, somewhat addressed by Sunflora. (The entirety of Grass-type designs up to this point: Whatever that discarded snow bunny line was supposed to be, Hoppip, Chikorita, this tree guy, and Sunflora) Beyond just being another Grass design, Sunflora was probably also inspired by the new day/night system in Gold and Silver. It was initially named “Sanii” or “Sunny,” which only makes this connection more obvious; and though you can’t catch Sunflora directly in the final games, its pre-evolution Sunkern can only be caught in the daytime. Furthermore, Sunflora’s Pokedex entries focus very closely on its relationship with the sun: Sunflora’s Gold entry states, “It converts sunlight into energy. In the darkness after sunset, it closes its petals and becomes still.” Like the rest of Era III, this isn't a new innovation. We already saw a few experiments with the day/night cycle mechanic, most notably through the creation of Hoothoot. Since Hoothoot, however, there hasn't been much use of this mechanic; any other Pokemon that were connected to day and night were only done so incidentally, not as part of their design. If Hoothoot was supposed to demonstrate a type of Pokemon which could be captured only at night, then it makes a lot of sense to expand upon the idea by making one heavily connected to the day half of the cycle. Sunflora’s movelist also, sort of, reflects this focus on sunlight and daytime. It obviously learns Solarbeam as its final move, but in Spaceworld ’97, Sunflora also learned Morning Sun, an interesting move that recovered more HP if it was used during the morning hours. Otherwise only learned by the Chikorita family and Leafeon, it’s a perfect move for a daytime-themed Pokemon, and it makes me wonder if maybe the team considered having more daylight-only moves in the game, possibly ones that interacted with Sunflora. My guess is that they figured that if they added moves that worked better in the daylight, they’d have to go back and change how things like Solarbeam and Growth worked for consistency. And since that would have been confusing to players and a pain to change, the team eventually settled on the idea that moves like Sunny Day. While the day/night cycle was an older idea, weather effects like Sunny Day (or Rain Dance) are a new idea, something that was probably only decided upon right before the Spaceworld '97 build. A weather move, to be clear, is a move that creates an ongoing weather effect that changes how certain moves work: Rain Dance creates rain which makes water moves more powerful and fire moves weaker; Sunny Day creates harsh sunlight that makes fire moves stronger and makes it so Solarbeam only takes one turn to use. Rain Dance and Sunny Day are the very last regular moves in the Spaceworld '97 movelist (the moves after it are either HM moves or moves that weren't fully programmed in). While I discussed the oddities of the movelist's ordering in the Smeargle article (the short version is that it looks somewhat chronological but a lot of moves were probably shuffled around or repurposed), this makes me think these moves were ideas that the developers implemented very close to the Spaceworld '97 build. This is further confirmed by the fact that Sunny Day is fully programmed into the game but no Pokemon learn it (Rain Dance is learned by a number of Pokemon, on the other hand). Sunflora doesn't learn Sunny Day in SW'97 (nothing does!); instead, it learns Morning Sun. Morning Sun is also late in the movelist, only five spaces before Sunny Day, which makes me think it was also made late in the process (with the caveats I mentioned in the Smeargle article). It's my guess that Morning Sun was an early experiment that got made obsolete by weather moves: maybe the developers felt it was too arbitrary for moves to do better or worse depending on when they were used, or maybe they didn't like how this interacted with multiplayer battles. Whatever the case, Morning Sun is almost completely absent in the final game. In the final game, Morning Sun is bizarrely, is only learned by Espeon and nothing else, despite it still fitting Sunflora’s aesthetics perfectly. Instead of Morning Sun, most Pokemon (not Sunflora, unfortunately) learn Synthesis, which does the exact same thing as Morning Sun, except it interacts with weather effects while Morning Sun does not. Synthesis also still interacts with the time of day (healing more in the daytime), so maybe, on the other hand, the team thought a move that only worked in the morning was too limited. Like I said, though it is fully programmed into the game, Sunny Day isn’t learned by anything in Spaceworld ’97, suggesting it was programmed so late that the team didn’t have a chance to include it in any movesets. Although Sunflora only learns it in the final, I can’t help but wonder if it was created with this ‘mon in mind; in fact, since Sunny Day is at the end of the movelist and Sunflora's towards the end of the Korean Index, that might indicate they were made in concert with each other. The rest of Sunflora’s moveset changed as well, though not as drastically. It learned Sing and Leech Seed in Spaceworld ’97, while it learns Pound in the final. Honestly, Sing seems to fit the aesthetics of a smiling plant a lot more than Pound. Aesthetically, Sunflora stayed pretty similar through development, with two notable changes. First, its palette changed: in SW'97, it's a bright yellow that kind of obscures its details; in the final, Sunflora has green and a darker yellow in its palette (though interestingly, the yellow was kept for its shiny palette). Secondly, in SW’97, Sunflora has roots for feet, but by the final, its roots have been more clearly differentiated into actual feet for the creature. As I’ve said before, Ken Sugimori takes seriously the question of how these Pokemon would survive in their ecosystem, so maybe he worried that Sunflora should naturally be more mobile than those roots would allow. The last major change to Sunflora’s actual design is that, in Spaceworld ’97, “Sunny” was actually a Grass/Psychic Pokemon, rather than pure Grass. Honestly, the Psychic typing doesn’t make a lot of sense for Sunflora, and the team seemingly knew it, because even in SW’97, Sunflora learned no Psychic moves. There’s something very vaguely “mystical” about Sunflora’s design, so maybe the team had an idea to go with the Psychic typing that never quite came through in the sprite? Regardless of what happened, Game Freak noticed the mistake because Sunflora quickly became a regular Grass creature. The most interesting change to happen to Sunflora didn’t actually happen to Sunflora at all. By April of 1999 (the first data we have since development restarted after the hiatus), Sunflora has a first stage evolution. Interesting, the evolution is named “Bayleef,” but it probably was never Chikorita’s middle evolution, but an early version of Sunkern. However, even by June, the proto-Sunkern didn’t have a sprite, and by July and August of 1999, it has lost its stats; evidently, the team planned to delete Sunkern and use the slot for something else. Sunkern finally did get a basic, sketchy stand-in sprite by Spaceworld ’99, so the team clearly changed their minds; it’s possible they either didn’t have any ideas for its replacement or they simply had their hands full with Sneasel, Wobbuffet, Dunsparce and the other last-minute designs. Maybe, given time constraints, the team just decided to revert this slot back to whatever they had before, which happened to be Sunkern. Some have wondered if ID #404 was the original design for Sunkern, and that it was made to evolve into Sunflora. I think this is unlikely, mostly because the earliest version of Sunkern that appears in the June 1999 sprite collection only has a placeholder sprite; if 404 really was an earlier version of Sunkern, I'd expect to see it there instead. Saying that, given that Sunkern was left out of SW'97, it could be the case that the team just didn't want to go all the way back to discarded sprites from earlier than SW'97. Furthermore, since the team went back and forth so many times on including Sunkern, it could be the case that they deleted this sprite completely from the build earlier than June 1999, before we have any sprite collections. So it isn't impossible that 404 was a very early concept. Sunkern is its own story completely, so we'll come back to this mess once we get to that part of the Cryptodex. But I think it's also worth telling here, because of how it effects Sunflora. Sunflora's stats were shuffled up an down constantly through development in 1999, as the team tried to decide whether it would be a one-stage or a two-stage Pokemon. Furthermore, even in the final game, Sunflora learns some of its moves very early, at an earlier level than you can possibly catch a Sunkern. This shows how close Sunflora was to being a single stage Pokemon; in Spaceworld '99, it's even found in the wild at low levels where Sunkerns would otherwise be found in the final! On top of that, unlike other Pokemon that evolve by evolutionary stones (Sunkern is one of the few Pokemon to use the new Sunstone to evolve into Sunflora), Sunflora continues to learn all its moves after it evolves. In most other cases, like Poliwrath and Clefable, any Pokemon that evolves by evolutionary stone stops learning moves in its evolved form; the fact that Sunflora doesn't follow this pattern demonstrates how it still had a learnset more befitting a single stage Pokemon!
That's all for Sunflora, and for Period 3a! Next time, we'll face a bunch of evolutionary relatives and one of the weirdest mysteries of Spaceworld '97.
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