ID 422: MonjaMonja is the sadly lost and forgotten Tangela pre-evolution, found in Spaceworld ’97 but not elsewhere. Monja’s cute, a good extension of the themes of Tangela, and the only case of the team trying to make a single-stage Pokemon--Tangela--into a triple-evolutionary line. Whether related or not to this unique fact, Monja was also one of the very first to go when the team restarted development in early 1999: by the earliest data we have from that year, Monja was already completely erased from the roster. I’ve spoken before about the design philosophy of the Era III baby Pokemon. While earlier parts of the Korean Index sport baby Pokemon either designed from popular, cute Pokemon or repurposed unused Generation I as new baby pre-evolution, the babies in Era III tend to be designed around underused and outright unpopular Pokemon from Generation I. The purpose here might have been to find a way to make these Pokemon more interesting or usable; conversely, the purpose may have been simply to experiment with any Pokemon that conceivably had space in their evolutionary lines for a previously unseen family member. Tangela fits the profile of an "underused and unpopular" Pokemon to a T. Despite all the love Brian David Gilbert has recently thrown towards Tangela, Tangela is almost completely absent from Generation I. Barely any trainers use it, and the player can catch it only in one particularly obscure field of wild grass just south of Pallet Town, requiring Surf to even find. And even if you did catch Tangela, there’s no real purpose to using it. It starts with the weakest physical move in the game (Bind), it doesn't distinguish itself from the other grass Pokemon at all, and has middling stats. The only thing speaking to Tangela is that it’s the only pure-Grass Pokemon in that game, because for some reason almost every other one has Poison as a secondary type (I think this is a holdover from the development of the type system, but that’s a story for another day). (Credit to Chaoslindsey!) Giving Tangela a baby, then, makes sense: maybe by introducing Tangela as a more common Pokemon, earlier in the game, Tangela would find some more use, and in turn get more love. Going further than that, the team also decided to give it a third, evolved form: The fearsome Jaranra. By giving Tangela these two forms, Tangela could potentially be useful throughout the entirety of the game, making a footnote of a Pokemon from Generation I a potential key player in the sequel. Given how little of these babies and evolutions survived to the final game, it’s probably the case that the design team just had a change of heart about their design philosophy: rather than make Gold and Silver games which would further explore the Pokemon that already existed, the team instead decided to make more room for entirely new species. Given that change in direction, it’s no surprise that Monja didn’t make it to 1999, since Monja is, more or less, the Pokemon that most typifies the babies being created as part of this larger vision. We’ll discuss Jaranra in detail in the next entry, but it is worth pointing out here how Tangela is the only Pokemon which almost got promoted from a single stage line to a three stage evolutionary family. Later games, as they milked more and more possibilities for adding new evolutions of beloved ‘mons from earlier generations, have eventually caused a lot of older families to go from one stage to three stages: Chansey, Electabuzz, Magmar, and Mr. Mime are all examples straight off the top of my head. Tangela could have been the first to have been reinvented like this, and between Monja and Jaranra, I actually really like what the family could have looked like. It's not entirely clear why Tangela, out of all Pokemon, was the one chosen to get a baby Pokemon and an evolved form. For instance, why not choose Farfetch’d to get a baby Pokemon, to further fill out its family? Or Chansey? Given that the team was giving Chansey the evolved form of Blissey, why not also give it an earlier stage, like the team decided to do in Generation IV with Happi? I don’t really have an answer here, except that maybe the designer of Monja and Janranra had good ideas for what a baby and supersized Tangela would look like, and just didn’t have the same inspirations for others. Certainly, I can’t think of an obvious baby design for Farfetch’d, and the team clearly was having trouble coming up with a design that worked for Blissey. Of course, this might have been Monja and Jaranra’s undoing as well. Most of the babies—especially from Era III—didn’t make it into the final games, presumably because they took up a lot of Pokedex spaces that could have been used for entirely new, more interesting species. It would be bad enough that Madame was taking up a spot that could be used for Wooper; but these Tangela evolutions were taking up two slots in the Pokedex, for a Pokemon that wasn’t even that beloved in the previous games. If you’re looking for Pokemon to cut, Monja and Jaranra are easy first choices. Monja’s design is both reminiscent of Tangela’s, and interestingly different in some key ways. First to note is the clever wordplay of its name. Tangela’s Japanese name is Monjara; that means that Monja’s name follows the conventions they’d come up with for baby Pokemon by removing one syllable of the name. However, as TCRF points out, Monja’s name could also be a corruption of “mojamoja,” or unkempt hair (to be fair, Tangela's Monjara could also be a corruption of this). Monja also reflects the themes of Tangela, by showing a clever progression. Monja goes from messy hair to Tangela, which is completely covered in hair, to Jaranra, which is almost nothing but hair and a creepy smile. On the other hand, compared to Tangela, there’s some interesting differences. First of all, Monja’s a cyclops, while Tangela grows two eyes. Jaranra’s got none. This makes for an interesting play on the Sphinx’s riddle: What has one eye in the morning, two at midday, and none in the evening? It’s Tangela! I think there’s something more interesting about this eye, however. If you look at Tangela, the implication is that the eyes are hidden so far back in its hair that you can’t see what its face looks like (Diamond's Pokedex entry even makes this interpretation explicit: "It is shrouded by blue vines. No one has seen the face hidden behind this growth of vines.") Tangela could technically be anything under its hair; personally, I always imagined the Bill Clinton Tamagotchi: Monja, however, has a black, featureless body under its hair, suggesting that we actually had seen under Tangela’s hair, and that the black-featureless void of its face wasn’t because it was a mystery; that’s just how Tangela looks (maybe Monja's body is a seed, hence the visible body?). Which, personally, I think is a more boring interpretation of the sprite. The other main difference worth noticing are the sprites themselves: Obviously, Tangela stands out like a sore thumb. Not only is its palette completely different, but the art style also feels really distinct from the other two. There’s not a whole lot to say about this, except that this is probably because the sprites for the original 151 Pokemon were being handled completely differently from the brainstormed designs of the new additions. Monja and Jaranra were probably created by someone else besides Tangela’s original creator or the person who did the spritework for Tangela in Spaceworld ’97 (which, interestingly enough, was reused for the Japanese version of Pokemon Blue, whose updated front sprites were later used in the international versions of Pokemon). Monja and Jaranra have the same moveset as Tangela, but there is one unique change to Tangela’s moveset in SW'97 that I think is worth commenting on. In Spaceworld ’97, the Tangela family learns Night Shade (albeit at a very high level), a move that used to be the signature of the Ghastly family. It's, of course, a Ghost move, something very out of character for Tangela. In Spaceworld ’97, the team seemed to be experimenting with giving Night Shade to a more diverse set of Pokemon: in addition to the Tangela line, Spinarak and Ariados can learn it, and Norowara and Kyonpan can also learn it (Natu and Xatu get Night Shade in the final). Norowara makes sense because it’s the only additional Ghost Pokemon added to SW'97, but my sense is that the Tangelas and Spinarak’s got it because the team thought Night Shade could go to anything with a "creepy" aesthetic. And Jaranra, Tangela’s third form, certainly has “creepy face” vibes. Like I said above, Monja doesn’t appear after Spaceworld ’97; the evidence we have from the Scratchpads suggests that Sentret took its spot in the Pokedex, though it isn’t clear if Monja was dropped for Sentret, or if Sentret just took an already empty spot. We do know that Sentret was one of the earliest additions to the roster after the reboot of development in 1999. Not only does Sentret appear fully formed in the earliest 1999 data we have—it even has a full set of stats by April 1999—but Sentret also has its final palette already in place by June 1999 and its sprite is almost complete by that point as well. It’s evolution, Furret, is still using the palette of Gyopin, which it replaced, which suggests that Furret was a slightly later addition, but Sentret’s completeness suggests that Monja was one of the first SW ’97 Pokemon removed. And maybe Monja wasn’t that much of a loss; after all, a baby Tangela wouldn’t have added all that much to the gameplay of Generation II, and Tangela itself works well enough as an early game Pokemon. Monja looks cute, but I can understand why it was expendable. It’s nearest relative, on the other hand… (Thanks @Raciebeep!) ID 223: Jaranra Monja’s big sister, Jaranra, is a much more significant loss. Jaranra completes the Tangela family, replacing the dopey and kind Tangela with a monstrous adult. Jaranra, unfortunately, never made it into Generation II, but it left a legacy: Tangrowth, in Generation IV, seems to have some relationship to this lost design. (By the way, I have no idea what Jaranra's name might mean in Japanese, except that it's a further play on Monjara. If you have any idea, let me know!) Jaranra’s really cool. If Monja just has long hair, and Tangela’s is a mess, Jaranra’s design shows that she finally learned how to style the hair: no longer is it unkempt, but it now flows down Jaranra’s face like the “hime” (princess) hair cut that has been popular from time-to-time in Japan. Jaranra has bangs, flowing locks, and has its back hair done-up into a bow, reminiscent of some traditional haircuts associated with Geisha. I really like this detail; together, the hair on these three guys tells a story. (Notice the shortened front locks used to frame the face, and the longer hair behind it. Thanks to @Raciebeep for the art of Jaranra!) Jaranra’s hair, despite being styled, is still long; even longer than Tangela's. The hair now covers its body so much that instead of just two eyes peeking out, all you can see of Jaranra is its creepy, slightly hungry looking grin. It definitely is based on some sort of Yokai in Japanese folklore: to me, Jaranra looks most similar to a kuchisake-onna, a female spirit with a demonic grin. The Kuchisake-Onna has slits cut into its cheeks to make its smile extra large. If you meet one, it’ll ask you if it’s beautiful; if you answer no it’ll kill you, and if you answer yes, it’ll cut slits in your own face to make your smile resemble its own. Not only does Jaranra share the same creepy grin as this yokai, but traditionally, a kuchisake is depicted with more traditional Japanese hairstyles, like Jaranra's. Overall, it’s a pretty creepy origin story for Jaranra. (Credits: Left Isaac Huiza, Right Samice) If you want a slightly less nightmare-inducing origin, Jaranra’s smile also remind me of Noh Face from the Hayao Miyazaki movie Spirited Away. It’s definitely isn’t the inspiration, since Spirited Away came out a year after Gold and Silver were released, but if there was a traditional smiling yokai inspiration for Noh Face, than that might have been the shared origin for both it and Jaranra. Like Monja, Jaranra didn’t survive until the 1999 reboot of development. Unlike Monja, it left no trace at all in any of the files we have, which suggests that Jaranra might have been discarded even before it’s baby alter-ego. If Jaranra’s origins are the Kuchisake-Onna, than that might explain why it was so quickly discarded. First, we know that—due to the international popularity of Pokemon—the team was instructed halfway through development to make Pokemon more accessible for international audiences by downplaying particularly Japanese influences. That’s probably part of the reason Norowara, Kyonpan and Shigerufugu were discarded, and it probably played a role in how drastically Sneasel was redesigned. Secondly, there also seems to have been a push after 1999 to move away from darker, scarier designs and replace them with cuter Pokemon; Jaranra is not only kind of creepy herself, but she also has quite the scary backstory. Both of these could be the reason Jaranra was discarded, instead of the many final evolutions of Generation I Pokemon that accompanied it in Spaceworld ’97, such as Madame, Blissey, Tsubomitto, Belossom, Steelix, Scizor, and Plux. While all of Jaranra’s counterparts in Era III either made it into the final or were only discarded a month before the end of development, Jaranra is the odd one out by being such an early discarded design. Clearly, unlike the rest of Era III’s final evolutions, the team was most unhappy with Jaranra. These origins seem like the most likely reason. What really makes me despondent is that when Tangela did get an evolution, in Generation IV, the new design the team used was just so…awful. Jaranra, as I noted above, was a clever design that both showed development from Monja and Tangela and also added it’s own really unique twists on the design (most notably the smile). Tangrowth, is, well, a giant, fat, ugly version of Tangela. None of the subtleties of Jaranra’s design are present; whoever designed Tangrowth just took what we already had in Tangela and made it worse: I'm really just aghast that Tangrowth’s design is so bad while the team already had such a good design from years earlier. It’s likely a completely new designer took up the creation of Tangrowth; its unlikely that designer had access to the earlier design, or if they did, they clearly didn’t draw from it. It makes sense that a new artist would want to create something uniquely their own, rather than riff on a design some other artist made years ago, that wasn’t good enough even back when it was first created. I get that. They were probably told to create something that evoked nostalgia for Generation I, which Tangrowth, admittedly, does better than Jaranra. I just wish the new designer hadn’t created something so bad when there was such a homerun that escaped us. This discussion of Tangrowth connects to a larger conversation we need to have: the connection between Generation II and Generation IV. While Ruby and Sapphire were conceived of originally as a pseudo-reboot of the series—with an almost completely new roster and a bunch of Pokemon like Feebas that served the exact same in-game role as a Generation I counterpart—Generation IV was designed on purpose to appeal to the player’s nostalgia for Generations I and II. As a result, a lot of the new Pokemon added to Generation IV were evolutionary relatives of favorites from the first two generations. Mime Jr, Happiny, Munchlax, Magnezone, Rhyperior, Lickylicky, Electivire, Magmortar, Glaceon, Leafeon, and Porygon-Z were all new additions that evolved from Generation I Pokemon. For Generation II, the team introduced Ambipom, Mismagius, Weavile, Honchrow, Bonsly, Mantyke, Togekiss, Mammoswine and Yanmega. Since the moment Spaceworld ’97 was leaked, there has been speculation that the Generation IV throwbacks were actually designs reused from Generation II’s development. There are a number of parallels that make this convincing. First of all, Tangrowth and Lickilicky are evolutions for Tangela and Lickitung, the very same Pokemon that Jaranra and Nameru were designed to evolve from. On top of that, Leafeon closely resembles Riifi from Spaceworld ’97, and we know from other information (the internal filenames of Pokemon Battle Revolution) that Leafeon’s beta name was the exact same as Riifi’s. The Generation IV Pokemon that evolve from Gen II mons have less connection to anything in the Korean Index, but still, we have evidence that the Generation II team had briefly considered an extra evolution for Piloswine and Yanma (which Mammoswine and Yanmega now fill). In addition to this, there are a number of Generation IV Pokemon that have uncanny resemblances to some of the Korean Index designs that were dropped before Spaceworld ’97. As I’ve mentioned, there’s reason to suspect Chatot, Burmy, Mothim, and Cherrim might have been redesigned from some of the unused Korean Index mystery sprites. As fun as it is to speculate that Generation IV drew from all these designs, I have to say I’m skeptical. I don't think Lickilicky and Tangrowth have anything to do with Nameru and Jaranra, at the very least. Though it is absolutely possible these are just heavily redesigned versions of Nameru and Jaranra, there are a number of reasons to be suspicious. First, like I’ve said before, I have a hard time believing that the team would go backwards to failed designs so many years afterwards: while Generation III’s creation nearly overlapped with the development of Pokemon Crystal, Generation IV was released six years after Gold and Silver. How often do you go back to your creative projects six years later, especially ones you deemed not good enough the first time around? I also am deeply skeptical that the same designers who worked on Jaranra, Lickilicky, and Riifi worked on their Gen IV counterparts. Part of the reason is that their silouettes are completely different; in addition, the inspirations for each seem completely different. For instance, Tangrowth’s inspiration seems to be a bulky caveman (it and the other Pokemon that evolve upon learning Ancient Power take on prehistoric characteristics); that’s a completely different inspiration than the Kuchisake-Onna. While Jaranra has feminine features and clearly has learned to comb its hair, Tangrowth lacks any feminine features and its hair has just gotten more unruly. While I’d expect a Pokemon, redesigned after six years, to be almost completely different from its original appearance, I would also expect it to share the same design inspiration, just featured in very different ways. If they started from completely different origins, then I just don’t see any evidence one was iterated from the other. We’ll cover this as well when we get to Nameru and Riifi; for now, let’s just say that their original inspirations seem equally distant from the inspirations for their Gen IV counterparts. The design philosophy of Nameru and Jaranra is also completely different than the philosophy that animates the designs of Tangrowth and Lickilicky. In the case of Jaranra and Nameru, the designers seemed to want to find a new creature or idea that they could use as an inspiration to build on the features of the original Pokemon. For Tangela, a Kuchisake-Onna is a completely new concept unrelated to its Gen II origins. It works, however, as a base for Jaranra because it allowed the designers to style Jaranra’s hair in a way that was distinct (and showed growth) from Tangela’s. In the case of Nameru, Lickitung has absolutely no connections to a snake charmer, while Nameru was clearly modeled on the idea. The concept of a snake charmer, however, allowed the designers to play around with Lickitung’s most distinctive feature: it’s tongue, which now resembles a snake. But the design philosophy for Tangrowth and Lickilicky are entirely more boring. The designers seemingly wanted to capitalize on nostalgia for their first stages, by just making bigger, more exaggerated versions of the originals. Tangrowth doesn’t have much of a new concept (any swamp monster inspirations are very sublte); it’s just fundamentally a bigger version of Tangela. Likewise, Lickilicky takes the two characteristics of Lickitung—it likes to eat and has a long tongue—and exaggerates them, such that Lickilicky is now fatter than Lickitung and Lickilicky has a longer tongue. Jaranra and Nameru were designed to do something new; Lickilicky and Tangrowth were designed to exagerrate what was already present. Furthermore, if Generation IV did draw so heavily on the discarded designs of Generation II, why don’t we see more of them? Tsubomitto, Plux, and Madame were cut literally moments before the final build of Generation II, while Jaranra, Riifi, and Nameru were cut much earlier. Surely, if the designers were reaching back into their previous designs, they would’ve started with the designs that were almost good enough to be finalized, rather than revive the designs they had thrown out much earlier. I’d be more receptive to the connection between Generation II and IV if we saw a new Farfetch’d evolution, for instance, but as it is, the evidence seems thin. So why then do we see Tangrowth, Riifi, and Lickilicky in Generation IV at all? I think the answer’s pretty obvious: if the team was trying to extend some evolutionary lines from Generation I, Tangela and Lickitung are two of the most obvious candidates left from Gen I that still didn't have an evolution. After all, besides Farfetch’d and Weepinbell, how much more candidates really were there? They gave Rhydon, Electabuzz, Magmar, and Magneton all new evolutions as well; maybe Jynx, Persian, Dugtrio, and Lapras are all good candidates, but I have trouble believing any of those were as tempting as the one-stage and mostly-useless Lickitung and Tangela. As for Riifi: while I see some similarities, I think the idea of doing a Grass evolution of Eevee is more or less the most obvious Pokemon design idea in the world, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that both the Gen II and Gen IV designers independently came up with it. Yes, they do look similar, but how different do you really think two takes on “Grass-type Eevee” can look? So, in general, I think the similarities between Jaranra and Tangrowth (or Nameru and Lickilicky) are coincidences. Two different Pokemon design teams, separated by more than six years, happened to identify the same Generation I Pokemon as worthy of an evolutionary relative. At best, Sugimori or Nishida could have remembered that the team had tried and failed to create Tangela and Lickitung evolutions before; when they were brainstorming Pokemon to bring back for Generation IV, it’s very possible that one of the senior designers could have assigned the new developers to develop a new evolution based on a memory that they’d tried this idea before but weren’t happy with the result. I doubt those new designers even saw Jaranra and Nameru, but Sugimori or Nishida might be the connecting tissue. That’s not to say there’s no connection between Gen II and the returners from Gen IV. Like I’ve said before, I’m suspicious of a number of the Korean Index designs that didn’t get used at all: in particular, I’m almost positive that 382 and 383 are early versions of Burmy and Mothim, and I’m pretty suspicious about the Pokemon that may have become Cherrim as well. Likewise, it’s clear from development that the Gen II team wanted to give Piloswine and Yanma an evolution, but either didn’t have ideas for it or just simply didn’t have the space; I can very easily buy that they designed Mammoswine and Yanmega to fulfill the ambitions the earlier Gen II team was unable to meet for those two families, though the designs are probably dramatically different from how they would’ve looked in Generation II. And maybe Riifi was a straight redesign; we’ll discuss that when we get there. But I’m almost positive that the only connection between Jaranra and Tangrowth (or Nameru and Lickilicky) is that they were both attempts to give Tangela and Lickitung an extra form. Don’t get me wrong; Lickilicky and Tangrowth are so awful, I wish there was more of a connection between them and Nameru/Jaranra! Unfortunately, we’ll never see Jaranra, because Tangrowth took its place. Jaranra was obviously too interesting to make it into Pokemon canon. ID 424: Scizor Now let’s look at a final evolution design that DID make it to the final! At first glance, Scizor should’ve faced the same problems as Jaranra and Madame: it’s an evolution for a pretty obscure Generation I Pokemon, and one that doesn’t do much new or different. However, unlike those two, the team was able to modify Scizor into something interesting. By giving it the Steel type at the last minute, Scizor went from a tired design to a fascinating evolution almost overnight. Scizor is another "upgrade" design: An evolution for a single-stage Gen I Pokemon, probably meant to make that Pokemon more usable. Unlike Jaranra or Madame, Scizor had an advantage that made it more likely to survive until the final stage of development. While those two were evolutions of pretty obscure Pokemon, Scyther was a dark horse fan-favorite. Despite being also pretty obscure in Red and Green, Scyther had a pretty cool design (a vicious preying mantis with scythes for hands!) which made it popular. It also appeared prominently in an early episode of the anime—Dark City, which aired April 1998, right as development was paused. This probably put Scyther in a position where it had enough fans--both in Japan and in the design team--that when the team was putting the finishing touches on the roster, Scizor stayed, while its closest relatives on the list—Plux, Jaranra, Madame—didn’t quite make it across the finish line. To make Scizor work, however, the team made a number of drastic changes to its design late in the day that set it apart from Madame or Jaranra. Originally, Scizor was just a simply, straight upgrade to Scyther. It had identical typing, got 20 more Attack, 15 more speed, and 5 more special defense. Stat upgrades alone aren’t that interesting, and probably one of the reasons Madame never made it to the final; but even beyond that, these are very small upgrades to Scyther, making the original version of Scizor kind of a dud. The team may have known this, because by 1999, the development team changed everything about Scizor. Scizor gained a new palette, typing, and move set, making it a much different Pokemon than it started. The fundamental problem was that Scyther, as cool as it was, was a pretty bad Pokemon in Generation I. It had good stats, but Bug/Flying is a pretty poor typing, and it learned very few moves, including no STAB moves at all, even with TMs. My guess is that, given how cool Scyther was and how much more prominent it was—the second Gym leader, Bugsy, even had a memorable and difficult Scyther—the team was motivated to make Scizor strong enough that Scyther could overcome its fundamental weaknesses. So, possibly inspired by Steelix, the team decided to change Scizor’s typing to Bug/Steel. Instead of having five major weaknesses--as Scyther did--that small change made it so Scizor only had one weakness, to Fire. Scizor got slower—again, probably inspired by Steelix—but it gained attack and defense, overall a good trade for a much more defensively oriented Pokemon. The team then fixed the learnset by giving Scyther Wing Attack and Scizor Metal Claw, so now both of them had a STAB move. Finally, to bring it into line with Steelix—and because the design team wanted to make Steel extremely rare before beating the Elite Four—Scyther’s evolutionary requirements also changed. Instead of evolving after a certain level, Scyther now evolved the same way as Steelix, through being traded while carrying a Metal Coat. Basically, the team pasted what worked about Steelix onto a new Pokemon and called it a day. The sum total of this was to make Scizor way better and much easier to use. All of this was done late in develpoment: the change to Steel type was at the end of July 1999, right as the team had just given up on Madame and decided to give its slot up to Wooper. It’s clear that the team was struggling to make some of these final evolutions interesting enough to keep, and it’s likely that while they tried to find a reason to keep them, someone noticed how successful Steelix was and grafted the same idea onto Scizor. Steel was a new and cool typing; if the new evolution of Scyther was Steel-type, that was just enough of an innovation to make it interesting all on its own. Not to mention that Scizor got a complete overhaul in its looks! It became red instead of green like Scyther, and once it got the Steel-typing, there were changes to its sprite to make it look more metallic and robotic. Yes, the sprites stayed similar, and this was a touch-up more than anything. But with all the changes Scizor underwent just a few months before the final build, it’s fair to say Scizor was almost a complete rework. Comparing Scizor to Madame highlights just why Scizor was successful and Madame was not. Either could have been removed at the last second, but only Madame was, and I think the reason for that is because Madame just didn’t have enough of a hook to make it an exciting evolution to Farfetch’d. Even Blissey, another similar case, had a distinctive edge to Madame, in that Blissey had the maximum possible HP Stat and so was interesting in that regard. I suspect that had Madame stayed into the final game, the team would have found something to make it a more interesting evolution, whether a type change, a non-typical stat change, or something else. I would leave it there, but there’s one last weird oddity with Scizor’s development worth quickly commenting on. Notably, the early version of its Gold Pokedex entry is more or less identical to the final. But an early Silver Pokedex entry is just bizarre: “Since it prefers to spend its time by the waterside, it's conceivable that this Pokémon is related to Krabby.” What is heck is this? My first instinct was that this entry wasn’t meant for Scizor, but that it instead was written for another Pokemon, which Scizor overwrote. Maybe there was a crustacean Pokemon, previously unknown, that was briefly in a build between the one’s we have? Maybe it’s an early version of Corphish, which after all was made in Gen III and closely resembles Krabby? But that doesn’t make sense for a lot of reasons. First of all, Scizor didn’t overwrite any Pokemon; it had been in the game since at least the SW’97 build. So there was nothing else in that slot to have a Pokedex entry. Meaning that this entry was probably written while Scizor was in this Pokedex slot. I then thought that maybe Scizor switched Pokedex slots and overwrote something in its slot when they moved it, but that isn’t true either: it was Pokedex #233 since long before the team wrote Pokedex entries. Plus, the Pokedex entries were written pretty late in development, far past the time when Scizor might have been moved around. So the only likely conclusion is that this entry was meant for Scizor. It's weird, but it was probably a joke aimed at Scizor's design. After all, you can start to see reasons to think it fits Scizor. Scizor and Krabby are both red; they both have pincers; they both have an exoskeleton. So there are enough similarities, even though Scizor definitely doesn’t hang out on beaches and isn’t related to Krabby. I’m not sure we’ll ever really know what happened here, but my best guess is that this was a jokey entry written as a placeholder, before the team had thought up something to go into the Silver Pokedex. (Lost evolutionary relatives??) That's it for Scizor, a successful (and popular!) attempt to use a new evolution to put a cool twist on an exisitng Gen I design. Next, let's take a look at Purakkusu (Plux, or Plucks), and wonder why the same idea didn't quite work when used with Pinsir. ID 426: Purrakasu (Plux) And now let’s look at Scizor’s evil mirror universe twin. It’s Plux! The one that got away. We’re going to go out of order for a second here, largely because Plux (Purrakasu) has nearly the exact same development story as Scizor, and so it’s better to group them together. In Pokemon Red and Green, Pinsir and Scyther were version-exclusive counterparts: they were both beefy bug guys, both found in the Safari Zone and nowhere else, and they both had similar movesets. They were even named after a similar convention: Scyther was named after the Scythe, a cutting implement, and Pinsir after…pincers, another type of cutting implement. So when the team was developing extra evolutions for Gen I Pokemon, it made sense to give both these guys an upgrade. Maybe the designers did this to continue the parallels between the two Pokemon; maybe they created an evolution for both so they could decide which one they wanted to use once they had two concepts. Either way, as Scyther got a counterpart in Scizor, Pinsir got a counterpart in Plux. To continue the parallels, both were again named after “cutting” implements: Scizor is of course named after scissors, and Purakkusu was named after the act of plucking something with tweezers. Aesthetically, both were upgrades to the looks of the Gen I Pokemon. Scizor was more armored than Scyther, and replaced its scythes with scissor-like claws, which interestingly have eyes and look almost like they might be independently alive. Plux changed in altogether more interesting ways. It grew a third horn, for one, probably giving it more control over any victims that it grabbed in the pincers. Weirder, Plux gained a nondescript, white face, which looks a bit like a mask. It’s a bit off-putting, both because it looks so much like a blank stare, and because it gives Plux a very small, overtly human, face poking out from its very bug-like body. It terms of changes and tweaks during development, Plux is nearly the same story as Scizor. It had the same stat totals as Scizor throughout development, and it easily survived past Spaceworld ’97 into the 1999 period of development, alongside Scizor. Plux received a new palette in June 1999, just Scizor did, but Plux's palette looks a little bit wrong, probably in part because its sprite was still the one used in SW'97 and it hadn't been reshaded for a Gameboy Color style sprite (Scizor has the same palette problems, but they're less pronounced). Plux was also changed into Steel-type at the same time as Scizor, though unlike Scizor, Plux was never modified to learn a Steel-type move. Both Plux and Scizor also simultaneously changed their evolutionary method to evolve only when traded with a Metal Coat; presumably again because the developers wanted it to be difficult for the player to gain any Steel-type Pokemon before the post-game. They both, likewise, lost speed once they were redesigned as Steel-type Pokemon, with those speed stats reallocated to attack and defense. Up until Spaceworld ’99, both Plux and Scizor were shoe-ins into the final game. Plux even got not one, but two different Pokedex entries written for it, which heavily suggests the team considered it to be part of the final roster until very late. Here those entries are: “It pinches its opponents and flips them over. Its elongated horns contain steel components.” And “Taking advantage of its steel-like body, it lets itself take attacks, then pinches its opponent in its horns and flips them.” I’m not sure anything in those entries is revelatory (I think that’s how we all pictured Plux fighting), but it’s really cool that we have a little bit of lore for the guy. (Credit to @RacieBeep) Plux finally began to meet its end in Spaceworld ’99, where the Pokemon seems to have met a fate similar to Madame. Like Madame, Plux still had its name and typing in this build, and it still has the same backsprite and palette. However, Plux's frontsprite was replaced with a very sketchy first draft of Forretress (just like Madame's was replaced in the same build by a sketchy Wooper). From there, it looks as though Plux was replaced with the evolutionary relative of Pineco. Likely for the same reasons as Madame, the team decided this slot would be better used by adding an additional evolution to a new Generation II ‘mon than by giving a Gen I Pokemon and evolution. It's weird that the team decided that they didn’t want Plux, in the end; after all, it seemed locked in place until the very end of development, and Scizor made it into the final game just fine. At first, you might guess that maybe Plux was redundant: since it was so close in concept to Scizor, maybe the team decided they didn’t need two Bug/Steel evolutions. After all, this is probably what happened for them to discard Tsubomitto, which was a counterpart to Bellossom. However, if the team though they didn’t need a second Bug/Steel evolutionary ‘mon, they sure had a funny way of showing it. Because they replaced it with Forretress, a Bug/Steel evolution of another bug Pokemon. I’ve heard some arguments that Forretress was deemed an acceptable replacement because it filled a different niche than Plux: that while Plux was offensively oriented like Scizor, Forretress was more defensively oriented and so filled a more unique niche. And yes, Plux was a bit more offensively oriented. But the difference between the stats of Plux and Forretress are overstated. Though Forretress’s stats are lower than Plux’s, they are very similar in their spread: The only major difference is that Plux had higher attack than Forretress. But defensively, they’re more or less the same Pokemon, and both are equally slow. If we look at their level up moves, they have very different movesets, but the movesets amount to more or less the same thing. Neither have Bug or Steel type STAB attacks, both have moderately decent Normal moves. The main difference is that while Forretress explodes with Self-Destruct and Explosion, Plux gets Guillotine, Seismic Toss, and Swords Dance. So yes, their movesets do make Plux a different, more offensively-oriented type of Pokemon. But it’s easy to overstate that difference, as for the most part, Forretress has a lot in common with Plux and with a little tweaking, either of them could have filled the other’s role. There’s also the matter of Heracross. I wouldn’t be the first to note how similar Heracross and Plux are, both in aesthetics and in concept (fighting stag beetles). Upon first seeing Plux, many fans speculated that Heracross had simply replaced Plux and got transformed into a single-stage evolution. On the face of just the SW’97 evidence, this makes a lot of sense, and I would have bought the idea. Unfortunately, it’s not born out by the data we have from 1999. Interestingly, both Heracross and Plux coexisted in the same Pokedex, right next to each other! They were both also found ordered next to Scizor, implying that at one point, these three were considered to be a buff-bug trio. There’s an early sprite of Heracross that shows it with a much more bug-like face than its final sprite, which has led to some speculation that it was originally meant to evolve from Pinsir. However, that’s unlikely given that Plux was always in the Pokedex, even during Heracross’s early stages. Far more likely is that the team originally made Heracross more beetle like, but thought it could be more personable and likable with a dopey smiley face, like the final sprite. In general, that’s the big thing it has going for it that Plux does not: Plux is weird, kind of creepy, and alien while Heracross is a swell dude. Given that the 1999 phase of development was focused on making cuter and friendly designs, it seems obvious to me why they might have preferred Heracross over Plux. I do think Heracross likely made Plux redundant. Even though they both existed at the same time, the team had to realize that three bugs with similar move pools and similar aesthetics was probably too much, and Heracross is (arguably) the more interesting and superior design to Plux. Heracross also got to be Bug/Fighting, making it distinct from Scizor, and not simply a restatement of the same idea. Forretress might have been similar mechanically to Plux, but I wonder if the existence of Heracross pushed the team to create something that was aesthetically distinct from the other two bugs? We’ll never know for sure, but I think the loss of Plux is much more easily understood than say, Madame. However, both of these two were very close to making it into the final; unlike Jaranra, Plux and Madame were clearly worked on a lot before being discarded. If things had gone slightly differently, just think: we may have been discussing the strange way a popular Pokemon like Scyther never got an evolution even though the more obscure Plux became a Bug/Steel competitive Pokemon champion. ID 425: Magby After Smoochum was created, it was only a matter of time before Game Freak decided to complete the trio. Magby seems almost inevitable as a design: if Electabuzz and Jynx were going to get an early, baby version, then there was no way Magmar wasn’t. Much of what I’ve said about the other two applies to Magby as well, but let’s see what Magby adds to the conversation. As I’ve said before, Magby, Smoochum, and Elekid seem to be have been designed to be a different type of baby Pokemon than the others. Unlike Pichu and Cleffa, which are extra cute, learn much less moves, and are more or less helpless on their own, the Magby trio are all designed to look more like adolescents, all learn most of the same moves as their adult versions, have higher stat totals, and all evolve at a later level. Unlike the rest of the baby Pokemon, the Magby trio are conceived of more like a lost first evolution for Magmar and co. As a result, they function like independent Pokemon, unlike the rest of the babies. They’re weak, sure, but they still serve some battle purpose. Magby, for its part, looks like a smaller and cuter Magmar, just like you'd expect. In its initial SW'97 form, it had a kind of flame crown on its head. It looks good, but its incongruous with Magmar, which doesn't have anything comparable on its head. I can understand why it was removed. The other big difference in its early sprites was that Magby originally had a more segmented, armor-like, look to its hands and its arms, which seem closer to the design of Magmar than the final. It loses these in the final Gold sprite, but for some reason retained these hands in its back sprite and Silver sprite. This strikes me as a small tweak, done at the last second, and done sloppily enough that the team forgot to re-edit the other sprites. You can see how different the Magby trio is from the rest of the babies by comparing the original Elebebii design to the Elekid design that replaced it. Way back when, when we first discussed these two, I suggested that Elebebii/Elekid were not originally designed as a “baby” Pokemon, but part of the three-part evolution family. The big tip off for this is that they appear too early in the Korean Index, before the baby idea seems to have been invented; instead, they appear in a section where Sugimori was experimenting with different ways to give existing Pokemon a new evolutionary relative. The way Elebebii was discarded in favor of Elekid, and the way that it was later made into a baby Pokemon is, to some degree, a retcon to fit it into other ideas the designer had for Gold and Silver, created later in development. The main reason for the design team to prefer Elekid over Elebebii was probably because while Elebebii fit better as a normal baby Pokemon like Pichi and Cleffa, Elekid looks more independent and grown up, like the designs the team used for Smoochum and Magby. While during Spaceworld '97, the designers may have been using a design that fit better with the round balls Pichu and Cleffa, they may have switched to Elekid after realizing it could fit better with the other members of its triad. Elekid, of course, is not helpless: it sports hands, looks capable in a fight, and is much larger than Elebebii. Magby is certainly the cutest and most childlike of the trio, but it’s still much more grown up and adult than Elebebii was. The team might have made the decision to make this trio different around the time they came up with Smoochum; certainly, they had decided on this direction by the time Magby was created. I’ll never quite understand why this trio gets so much love and attention from Game Freak. Jynx is obviously a terrible design, but Electabuzz and Magmar are not really very good either. Both are ugly and strange looking, and pretty unpopular with Pokemon fandom in general. And yet, out of all the Pokemon in Gen I that could have had pre-evolutions, Game Freak decided that Smoochum, Magby, and Elekid were the ones they were dead set on keeping on the roster. Not Kotora; not Puchikoon, not Koonya, which would have certainly become a fan favorite. For some reason, Game Freak decided that all of these winning designs were superfluous and could be deleted; and yet somehow, wasting three slots in the Pokedex on Magby, Elekid, and Smoochum was essential. And then they did it again! In Generation IV, the team once again decided to create a third evolution for Magmar and Electabuzz. And these were even worse designs than the originals! Why waste valuable space in three different generations on these guys, especially when so many of the discarded Gen II designs were good? Part of this, I bet, can be put down to cultural differences. Magmar, Electabuzz, and Jynx all have roots in particular yokai from Japanese mythology. Magmar resembles as Basan, or fire-breathing Chicken “found” in Shikoku; it also seems to resemble a character found in Japanese theater stories called Hyottoko, which has a strange looking face (usually depicted by a mask) and is sometimes considered to be a God of fire. Electabuzz seems to be a depiction of a generic Japanese Oni, which is something of a cross between a demon and an Ogre. And as I discussed before, Jynx was probably designed to be a Yuki-Onna, or a female ghost that haunts people during the winter months. These sorts of references fall flat for international audiences, but I can only posit that the yokai origins of this trio make them interesting enough that the Pokemon designers have a fondness for them. And thus, taking up three whole slots of the new roster for their babies doesn’t seem quite so bizarre in a Japanese context. I’ve never seen data on the question, but I suspect that Magmar, Electabuzz and Jynx are far more popular in Japan than they are in the west. I also wonder if making these babies more independent, more useful, and more like real Pokemon was their saving grace. Betobebii, Puchikoon, Koonya, and the rest have zero use in battle. All of the babies, the Magby trio included, are extremely obscure--you can only get them from breeding--but at the very least Magby, Elekid, and Smoochum have a use once you do find them. When the design team was looking to cut designs, they may have noted how most of the babies were easily cut because they didn’t add anything to the gameplay of the games, but that Magby and co. at least, hypothetically, did. This one tiny difference in this trio might have been their saving grace. I can’t say I agree with this decision. Magby is the best designed of the three, in that it’s cute, endearing, and looks a bit like Magmar. It isn’t ugly and it doesn't knock you over the head with its theme like Elekid (did you realize Elekid conducts electricity?), nor is it giving the player the finger like Smoochum. But still, these are Pokemon you’d almost never run into in a normal playthrough, and even if you did, you wouldn’t want to. It seems to me that just about every scrapped design we’ve covered up to this point would have been a better fit in the final games than Magby, Elekid, or Smoochum. To me, this is probably the strangest decision the Pokemon team made in designing Gold and Silver.
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AuthorMy name's Aaron George; I'm a Historian, and interested in Pokemon's development as a hobby. Contact me at @asmoranomardicodais Archives
July 2023
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