ID 432 Kingdra Late into the Korean Index, the Pokemon team decided to add Gold and Silver’s new Dragon-type Pokemon into the roster: Kingdra. Kingdra’s neat, and an obvious addition, given how few Dragon type Pokemon were in the first generation of games. While it’s too bad that Kingdra is locked behind a trade evolution in the final games—another example of how, for some reason, Game Freak really didn’t want people to experience their new Pokemon—Kingdra was a fine addition, and I’m pretty confident that from the moment it was designed, it was a lock for the final roster. My guess is that Kingdra was inspired by Steelix. Era III has demonstrated that it’s difficult to make an evolution of a Generation I Pokemon and still make it interesting enough to justify a spot in the Pokedex; Madame and Jaranra were probably removed because they were more or less superfluous, as they were just copies of their pre-evolutions with slightly higher stats. I suspect Blissey and Porygon2 were also on the chopping block for most of development for the same reason. On the other hand, Steelix did something really interesting with a Gen I evolution because the Steel type fundamentally changed how Onix worked. Plux and Scizor were later changed to match this concept, and I suspect Animon was created with a similar idea in mind. So Kingdra was an attempt for lightning to strike twice, and to develop another Gen I Pokemon in a completely new and interesting direction. I like Horsea and Seadra, but they’re pretty forgettable Pokemon in Generation I, because they kind of get lost in the myriad of Water Pokemon available in those games. Kingdra changes the game: now Horsea and Seadra hide a secret power only hinted at in their current forms. Let’s talk about the Dragon type for a second. Dragon was one of the last three types added to Generation I, alongside Bug and Ghost. In the internal data, Bug and Ghost appear at the very end of the used physical types and Dragon is at the very end of the special types. This heavily suggests they were the last added to the game. There are also a lot of other clues that suggest they were late additions. First, note that Bug has only four moves of its type in Generation I—String Shot, Pin Missile, Twinneedle, and Leech Life. All of them are very low power, suggesting a lack of time balancing or developing them, and Pin Missile and Twinneedle are both more or less signature moves for Beedrill, meaning that Leech Life is the only damage dealing bug attack learned by bugs that aren't Beedrill (Jolteon also learns Pin Missile, so it's not technically a signature move). None of this makes a lot of sense and strikes me as a rush to add a few bug moves at the last minutes of development. Likewise, Ghost only has three moves—Confuse Ray, Lick, and Nightshade—and only Lick does Ghost damage (Night Shade does set damage and ignores type resistance). Dragon, of course, has only one move—Dragon Rage—which does a set forty damage, meaning that Dragon-types have no way of taking advantage of Dragon’s type advantage in Generation I, a bizarre choice. In addition, Ghost was clearly created in a hurry: in the early data we have of the move list, all three of the Ghost moves were given the Ground type as a placeholder. On top of all of this, Ghost type was incorrectly programmed in Generation I so that it would be do zero damage to Psychic Pokemon, despite the anime expressing saying that the only way to beat Sabrina was to bring a Ghost type to beat her Psychic Pokemon. No one really noticed this mistake, because Lick was the only move affected by this mistake and it does almost no damage, so it was unlikely to be used against Psychic Pokemon. In Generation II they fixed this mistake and made it effective against Psychic, strongly suggesting this was how it was always meant to be. As an aside, I have my suspicions that both Ice and Rock were also created pretty late in development. These were both the moves right above Ghost/Bug and Dragon in the Physical and Special Internal type list, which suggests they were made before Ghost, Bug and Dragon but after the other types. But furthermore, notice that there are no pure Ice-types in Generation I—even Jynx is Ice/Psychic—and that every other Ice Pokemon is Water-type? Also, in the early data for the move pool, Aurora Beam was a Water-type move, and Haze and Mist were both Normal, not Ice like in the final. Without these, Ice would have only had two moves—Ice Beam and Blizzard—and those could easily have been Water earlier in development as well. Rock is even more suspect. It only has two moves in the final game: Rock Throw and Rock Slide. Neither of these were Rock-type in the early moveset data we have: Rock Slide was a Normal move (and possibly something else entirely, since its power and accuracy were also changed) while Rock Throw was a Ground move. Ground also only has four moves in the final, and all but one of which strangely do 100 base power: Earthquake (100 power), Bonemerang (50 power, hits twice), and Dig (100 power, takes two turns). If Rock Throw and (maybe) Rock Slide were originally Ground moves, it would give Ground much more diversity to its moves, but as it is, both types feel very underdeveloped. My guess is that very late in development, those two were split up for some reason. In splitting the Rock type from the Ground type (despite leaving most Rock types also with a secondary type of Ground), the team needed to switch around the typings of the gym leaders. It's worth noting that Giovanni was originally a flying type Gym leader (even his badge in the final looks like a feather!) and all the Pokemon in Brock's gym are Ground type. This suggests that before the Rock/Ground split, Brock was a Ground-type gym leader. Anyway, that’s a long tangent, but let’s get back to Dragon. If it was such a late addition, why was it added? My guess is that these last three types—Bug, Ghost, and Dragon—were added to fit certain gameplay and story purposes as the team was developing the games. Bugs were probably added as an early game, extra weak type, to give the player Pokemon to fight they generally had a type advantage to. Thus, the Vidirian forest could be a tutorial that could teach how type-effectiveness worked. They probably also united the early Viridian Forest encounters by giving them a singular type and teaching the player that certain Pokemon follow different patterns: Bug types, for instance, evolve very quickly! My guess is that Caterpie and Metapod were initially normal types, and Weedle, Kakuna, and Beedrill Poison, Poison, and Poison/Flying respectively. I have a suspicion (without proof) that Venomoth was initially a Flying/Psychic (Or Poison/Psychic) Pokemon, hence its odd inclusion in Sabrina's otherwise Psychically-inclined team. Ghost types were probably added because the Lavender Tower didn’t feel unique enough without the Ghost-type: it wouldn’t make sense that you can’t spot the Ghosts there without the Silph Scope if they were just boring Poison-types. And Dragon-type was probably created explicitly as a “boss” type to make the Lance battle even more intimidating—notice that Dragons are strong against all three starter types, which means the player needs to rely on new Pokemon they’ve caught along their journey. Lance’s two Dragonair wouldn’t be nearly as intimidating if they were water type and Venusaur could just rip through them. Of course, making Dragons super-rare boss mons used by the coolest trainer in the league made the typing super popular. But it was extremely underdeveloped, and the Pokemon team probably knew that they needed to develop it further when they decided on making a sequel. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t make even more Dragon Pokemon beyond Kingdra, though if the team thought of Dragon as a “boss” type than they may not have wanted to saturate the games with Dragons, to make them all the more intimidating when the player did face them. In the final games, the team also came up with the Larvitar family, which is strangely not a Dragon type despite being pseudo-legendary and only appearing in the end game. They also made Kingdra the signature Pokemon of Claire, which has the nice effect of distinguishing her from her cousin, Lance, who just uses Dragonite. The team also added two new Dragon type moves in Gold and Silver, allowing players to realize their power fantasies of…having a Dragon move that does damage? Honestly this feels like a no-brainer to me: Twister was added as a weak 40 power Dragon move that causes the opponent to Flinch (based on Japanese myth that dragons could fly in circles and generate tornadoes), and Dragonbreath was a stronger Dragon-move that could also paralyze. They also added Outrage, which was...just Thrash but Dragon type? It got better in later Generations. Interestingly, Twister was the signature of the Dratini line in Spaceworld ’97, while Dragonbreath was a signature of the Horsea line (hinting at their inner nature). In the final game, they took Dragonbreath from Kingdra and made it into a TM exclusive move, presumably because they wanted Claire to give the player something of value after wasting their time in the Dragon Den. I think it’d be much cooler if it belonged exclusively to Kingdra though. Finally, lets talk about Kingdra’s sprite, as well as some early flavor that got dropped. Kingdra, as you can see, originally looked a lot more like a Dragon than it does in the final game. In the final, Kingdra really doesn’t look dragon-ey. It’s been redesigned as a type of Seahorse known as a Sea Dragon, which is cute as an idea but doesn’t really translate into an imposing design. It’s a strange change, and it seems like a last minute one, since the Dragon-ey design lasted until Spaceworld ’99, just a couple months from the final. I think we can pretty much guess what happened here though. The early design of Kingdra is a classic Nishida sprite, and I’m positive she originally drew it. However, very few of Nishida’s early designs lasted into the final game without major or minor tweaking: See, for instance, the Hoppip line, Politoed, Marill, and maybe Sneasel. My guess is that by the time the team had gotten to Spaceworld ’99, her original sprite just didn’t quite fit the art style of the final game anymore, and she was asked to redraw it. You can tell that, at the very least, it needed to touched up at least a bit, since the old SW ’97 sprite didn’t really work with the new Gameboy Color style coloring (look at how weird its outline looks, for example). I bet Nishida was busy with other things, and so she let Sugimori redo the sprite. And since he was doing redrawing it, he decided to start from scratch and completely re-did the design. The final design is also pretty much exactly Sugimori’s art style, so my guess is not that they didn’t like Nishida’s dragoney sprite, just that if Sugimori was going to touch it up, he was going to try his hand at a new design rather than just work with someone else’s idea. One interesting note about this is that the scratchpads have an unfinished in-between version of Kingdra on them, which features a mix of the features of both Kingdra flavors. This could have been a sketch done by Sugimori right as he started to redo the design; maybe he wanted to see what his sea-horse like design looked like on Nishida's existing sprite. Below, FrenchOrange actually reconstructed this sprite, to show what it would look like finished: As a quick note, I also find the early Silver sprite pretty interesting. It’s not done by Nishida—its outline is completely black unlike the main sprite, as one indicator—but it’s clearly done by someone trying to match her original design. They also chose a pose for Kingdra very reminiscent of Seadra’s pose, making me think that this sprite was done by a more minor member of the team. Probably someone created the sprite to fit in with what else already existed. One interesting consequence of this late-in-the-day change is that Kingdra lost its ability to blow ink out of its nose. Though it’s hard to tell, in the early Nishida sprite, the mustache-like black lines may have supposed to have been ink! You can tell because it’s early Pokedex entries explicitly reference this part of its lore: Early Gold: It lives deep in the ocean. It makes itself unidentifiable by shrouding itself with self-made ink. Early Silver: It always covers its body with the ink it spits out, so no one has been able to confirm what it looks like. In addition to that, the early moveset for the Horsea family includes Octazooka, the signature move of Octillery. At first I thought that was strange, but I realized it was a gameplay mechanic meant to mirror how Kingdra can fire ink; after noticing that, it made a whole lot more sense! However, Sugimori’s version of Kingdra clearly lacks any ink-related capabilities, so the team had to change its Pokedex entries, and its move pool, to match. It’s a weird change, but one that seems to line up with everything else going on with Kingdra. I would have really preferred more Dragon Pokemon in Gold and Silver: Kingdra’s cool, but it certainly feels disappointing for new Dragons to be so rare and basically unusable in a normal playthrough. Here’s another place where I think they really could have dropped Magby or Elekid in favor of some other Dragon family to hunt down. ID 433: Riifi (Leafy, Leafee, Leafeon) The next three entries in the Korean Index are three new evolutions of Eevee, adding to the Flareon, Jolteon, and Vaporeon trio of Generation I. This is another very obvious idea; while it perfectly fits the larger sensibility of Era III to expand on existing Generation I Pokemon, I’m honestly surprised it took the team all the way until now to come up with this idea. If Slowpoke got an alternate evolution way back in Era I, surely it must have crossed the minds of the designers to give Eevee more evolutions are well? There’s a deceptive amount of changes that happened to these three Eevi (plural of Eevee) between Spaceworld ’97 and the final games. Not only did the design team cull this new trio from three to two, they also decided to completely change the type and moveset of one of the surviving two. In doing so, they went from a near triad of rock-paper-scissors types (Psychic is good against Poison, is good against Grass, but unfortunately Grass is not good against Psychic…) to a dyad of two types designed to be rivals (Psychic and Dark). So let’s first talk about Riifi, the one that got away. Riifi (which would almost certainly have been localized to Leafeon, so I’m going to use that name from now on) is the Grass-type Eevee evolution that we’re lacking from Red and Green. It’s got roots running from its legs and feet, it's cute, it's adorable; what else can you ask for from an Eevee evolution? Generation I didn’t include a Grass-type Eevee, but instead went with an Electric/Water/Fire triad of evolutions. Though this is at odds with the main triad of the games—Fire, Water, and Grass—as we’ve discussed before, Generation I was originally developed around the Electric/Water/Fire triad and only late in development was it switched to feature Grass instead; in fact, before we had a “Special Stat,” Pokemon just had a “Fire”, “Water”, and “Electric” stat, which maybe was their special defense to those three types, or maybe their proficiency with those types (or maybe both). It’s anyone’s guess why the team changed to focus on Grass instead of Electric (my guess is that it makes more sense for Fire to burn Grass than to burn…lightning?) but through most of Generation I’s development, the team had created triads that included Electric instead of Grass (and sometimes Ice instead of Water). Eevee was designed simply too early for it to have had a Grass evolution. But with the increased prominence of Grass, a Grass-type Eevee was all but obvious for the sequel games. From the sprite design, it looks like Atsuko Nishida designed this Eevee (Fujiwara designed the originals). She likely designed Umbreon and Espeon as well, which means these were probably all created together. I’m unsure, however, if they were ever considered to be a new trio, or if Nishida was just brainstorming new types for Eevee. It's possible that the latter was the case, because even though Leafeon was present for Spaceworld ’97, it already looks like the team was considering dropping it. Unlike Espeon and Umbreon, which were found right next to each other in the Pokedex, Leafeon is found at the very end in slot 251. The Pokemon surrounding Leafeon (Snubbull, Togepi, Aipom, and Sneasel) were all clearly shoved into the Pokedex at the last minute and hadn't yet been properly organized yet; unless Leafeon was supposed to be the Mew of the sequel games (unlikely, since Eevee can just use a Leaf Stone to evolve into it), that its Pokedex number is obviously a placeholder, and its placement suggests it was added to the Spaceworld '97 build at the very last second. This all seems to indicate that Leafeon, by Spaceworld ’97, was already the team’s least favorite of the three. And lo and behold, Leafeon doesn’t appear at all after Spaceworld ’97. Instead, in this slot is a placeholder sprite in June 1999 (interestingly, it still has a green palette; Celebi didn’t initially have a green palette, but Leafeon certainly did before it was removed from this slot). This placeholder was then, late in development, replaced by Celebi, which was designed by Yoshida, a completely new designer who was brought in to fill some unused slots while the rest of the team was busy with other tasks. There's probably no relationship between Leafeon and Celebi, other than that they shared the same slot. Why was Leafeon the least popular new Eevee? There’s probably no way for us to know, but we can speculate. We know that the Psychic type came out of Generation I as the most popular type: there are quotes from the development team that they designed Lugia to be a Psychic type because all the best Gen I Pokemon were Psychic, for instance. So that probably means that Espeon’s place in the new game was assured. My first guess is just that, if the team already liked Espeon, they may have felt like Grass didn't fit alongside Espeon--after all, Psychic feels like a rarer, more advanced typing, while Grass is common, like the original trio of Eeveelutions. Maybe this was why they eventually changed Umbreon from Poison-type to Dark. Or, maybe Nishida just wasn’t as happy with the design as she was with the other two. That’s easily as likely. Leafeon’s moveset is mostly what you’d expect from a Grass-type Eevee, but there are a few anomalies. First is that Leafeon’s got Morning Sun, that weird move that heals more if it’s used during the morning hours of the day. I talked about this in detail when we discussed Sunflora, but in Spaceworld ’97 the Chikorita line and Sunflora also have the move, while in the final, it’s basically unused: Espeon is the only Pokemon to have it, and Espeon learns is at a very high level. As I said before, it was likely replaced with Synthesis on most Pokemon because Synthesis interacted better with the move Sunny Day. I think it’s very likely that if Leafeon had made it to the final game, this move would have become Synthesis (not to mention that the Leafeon from Gen IV learns Synthesis at a similar level). It’s just a bit odd that Morning Sun, a move designed for Grass Pokemon like Leafeon, became the signature move of Espeon by the final. The other strange aspect to the moveset is that Leafeon learns Wrap at level 56, 7 levels before it learns its final move, Solarbeam. This is, frankly, bizarre. Wrap is a very weak move, made even weaker by changes in Generation II that prevented it stopping the other Pokemon from using moves. Wrap is one of the first moves a lot of Pokemon learn, not the second-to-last. The other Eeveelutions (in SW’97) all tend to learn an supporting move at this level, or a move that supports a secondary strategy for that ‘mon: Vaporeon learns Mist, Umbreon Smokescreen, Espeon Light Screen, Flareon Rage, and Jolteon Pin Missile. Wrap does fit vaguely into this pattern, but it’s much blander then these other moves. My speculation here is that the team threw a move into this slot without much thought, demonstrating how Leafeon was either added last minute or was getting less attention from the designers than the others. Leafeon also has placeholder stats, like most other Pokemon in Spaceworld ’97, but we can be pretty certain what its stats were supposed to be. Each of the Eeveelutions had the same stats, shuffled around. They are were defined by one stat they excelled at and had 130 Points in. Vaporeon had a high HP, Flareon had attack, and Jolteon Speed; in Generation II, by the final, Espeon has high Special Attack and Umbreon has high Special Defense. The only stat left after those, of course, is Defense. So by process of elimination, Leafeon would have had 130 Defense and middling states in everything else (except Special, which would have been 110 like the original Eevee trio). In fact, we know this to be the case, because in Generation IV, Leafeon got reincarnated! Behold: On the Cryptodex, I’ve had an ongoing debate about whether cut Generation II Pokemon inspired Generation IV Pokemon, and I’ve mostly said that I’m skeptical of any direct connection. Leafeon’s the only exception. They don’t look identical, but they're pretty close, and the main differences can probably be put to the differences between Generation II and IV’s art styles. In addition, Nishida probably designed both of them, and it seems impossible to me that Nishida wouldn’t at least have her old design in the back of her mind as she created Leafeon. Their movesets are vaguely similar as well, though since there’s so much distance in time between the two games, it’s hard to draw too many similarities. On the other hand, how many different ways can there be to make a Grass-type Eevee? It’s going to look like a cat/rabbit/fox, it’s going to be green, and it’ll probably have leaves or roots on its bodies. So it’s pretty inevitable that, as long as the team set out to make a Grass Eevee, it was going to look pretty similar. I’m not sure there’s much difference between “Nishida brought back her old design from Gen II and improved on it,” and “the team designed a new Leafeon and it just happened to share similarities with the cut Pokemon from Gen II.” But I am glad we eventually got a Grass-type Eevee. Now, if only we get the Bug-type and the Ghost-type Eevees, we’ll all be able to die happily. ID 434: Espeon Now it’s on to Espeon, which is my personal favorite Eeveelution (everyone has to have one, right?). Espeon’s a neat concept, and one of the most recognizable Pokemon from Generation II; I’m sure it’s probably one of the more popular versions of Eevee as well, due to its typing. Espeon went through the least changes of the three Gen II Eeveelutions, but there’s still a bunch to talk about. Let’s start! First of all, let’s talk about what’s up with it’s name. Espeon’s Japanese name is officially romanized as “Eifie” (I've used "Eefee" above) which is very close to the Japanese name for Eevee, “Iivui”. I’m not really sure what they were going for with that name. It’s English name is much more clever: Espeon is a play on ESP, or extrasensory perception, which sometimes gets used as “Esper” in Japanese (ESPer, or someone who uses extrasensory perception, or is just generally mystical). I really like the use of ESP as kind of a play on words. Bulbapedia has a lot of explanations for what Espeon’s based on, very few of which make any sense to me. It claims that Espeon is likely based on a Nekomata or a Bakeneko, two Japanese yokai that are essentially intelligent, trickster cat spirits. I don't see a ton in that connection, but Nekomata are supposed to be tricksters which grow a second tail after living a long time; that's clearly where Espeon's tails came from. A Nekomata and Bakeneko, respectively Bulbapedia also suggests a Sphinx cat, which is more likely in my eyes, since there’s some similarity there. The inspiration that seems most obvious to me is the Dungeons and Dragons monster, a Displacer Beast, which looks like a purple panther with tentacles and a long lithe figure. Final Fantasy redesigned these as "Coeurls" and it's likely the Game Freak team knew the monster from there. While Espeon doesn’t have the tentacles of a Displacer Beast, it shares psychic powers that allow it to attack the minds of its enemies. A Sphinx Cat and Espeon. Of course, there's one more explanation: the mythical creature Carbuncle from South American lore. While I doubt the team was too familiar with myths about Carbuncles, the creature was used both in Yugioh and Final Fantasy; it shares Espeon's general body type, ears, and the crystal on its head. Espeon’s sprite doesn't quite look like any of these, and is notably golden in its initial design. This was probably because early on in Pokemon's life, the color gold was associated with the Psychic type: Sabrina's gym badge in Japanese is the "Gold Badge," and both the Abra line and the Drowzee line were primarily Golden. Though Espeon mostly kept the same shape and design, it went through multiple rounds of refining. Its earliest form is really rough. The most obvious rough part is the tails: look at how awkwardly one of them is bent, and how it has a weird outline where the tail joins with Espeon’s rump. Honestly, looking at the sprite I’m a little bit suspicious that second tail was added in a revision, and there was an earlier Espeon sprite with only one tail; they probably added the tail to make it look more otherworldly, it to match the long whiskers on a Coeurl. The way that second tail is just sort of overlayed on top of the other and squeezed in to fit the border of the sprite feels like it could have been added separately. iAnother thing to note about this version of the sprite is Espeon’s two extra ears. Yes, those protuberances on its head are actually a third and fourth ear! An early Pokedex entry confirms it: “By using all four of its ears, it can sense everything going on around it even when its eyes are closed.” By the final version of that sprite, those extra ears have been turned into tufts of fur. That’s a little bit odd, since Espeon’s whole thing is its ability to sense extremely well, and having an extra set of ears would convey that idea pretty well. The team could have decided extra ears are kind of weird or creepy, but my guess is that the final sprite was touched up by someone other than the original artist, and they just misinterpreted the sprite. Poor Espeon lost her ears because someone wasn’t paying close enough attention! After that first SW’97 sprite, the sprite was given new shading to match the Gameboy Color, a new bluish-purple palette, and the sprite was touched up to fix the weirdness with its tails (though they still don’t look perfect). Finally, right before the game was finalized, the sprite was completely redrawn, though it kept its basic look: Espeon was now taller, you could see under her ears, and overall the sprite felt much more refined. If I had to guess, I think three different people worked on this sprite. The original Spaceworld ’97 sprite was probably Nishida’s—not only did she do the other two Eevees in SW’97, but in interviews she’s been credited with the creation of Espeon. However, I bet that someone else—probably one of the more minor spriters who didn’t create their own sprites but just touched up existing ones—added the new shading, palette, and tails to the 1999 sprite. Not only did the outlining style change—Nishida’s SW’97 sprite had yellow flecks in its outline while the new one was solid black—but the initial Silver sprite looks incredibly poorly done while also appearing to be an attempt at mimicking the Gold sprite’s proportions from a different angle. Nishida is a better artist than that sprite suggests, and the way the head looks so close to the Gold sprite but just rotated makes me think it was someone mimicking her style, not the real deal. The final sprite, on the other hand, seems to have been done by Sugimori: it has the proportions of a Sugimori sprite and in general has the high level of polish that his sprites tend to exhibit. It was probably the case that the team knew Nishida’s sprite was old and not up to the level of everything else in the final game, and it seems to be the case that Sugimori spent the last couple months updating a number of the older sprites that had come that far. Given how late in the day this final sprite was created, it’s another example of a sprite that was tweaked for Pokemon Crystal. Espeon didn’t undergo as radical of changes between Gold and Crystal as say, Sneasel, but it did gain a deeper purple palette, which has been its signature color ever since. In the realm of gameplay, there were a few subtle tweaks from Spaceworld ’97 that, overall, made Espeon into a much better Pokemon than it was originally conceived to be. For instance, originally Espeon was conceived of as the Eeveelution with High Special Defense. It’s original moveset matched this focus on defense, in that Espeon got to learn both Reflect and Light Screen and lacked strong attacking moves until high levels. Espeon didn’t learn Psybeam in the original Spaceworld ’97 moveset at all (it learns Psybeam at 36 in the final, a reasonable level that gives it a lot of use), and learned Psychic at level 63, much later than in the final, where it learns Psychic at 47. Consequently, Espeon’s best attacking move would have Confusion for most of the game, and it would have had relatively low Special Attack with which to use Confusion. Overall this would have made Espeon relatively weak. Also strange is that the original version of Espeon learned Bite; it wasn’t yet a Dark-type move during SW’97, but it’s pretty clear why the move was removed by the final. As mentioned above, in the final, Espeon gets Morning Sun as its final level-up move. In fact, Espeon’s the only Pokemon which learns Morning Sun, even though it really doesn’t fit Espeon all that well. My guess is that the team wanted Morning Sun used somewhere in the game, since they programmed it in, but because it didn’t really work with Sunny Day, they didn’t want it to be too common and confuse players. So they gave it to Espeon, made Espeon learn it so late that you’d probably not run into it in a normal playthrough, and called it a day. Update (Thanks to GoldS_TCRF for this added info!): In fact, Espeon didn't get Morning Sun in its moveset until very, very late in development: August 23rd, or six days after Spaceworld '99. It seems that one of the last things the team did was to give moves that were completely unused to various Pokemon, so that the moves weren't in the data for no reason. At the same time, Misdreavus got Pain Split--originally given to Jigglypuff, Chansey, and Norowara, though it really only fit Norowara--Pineco and Forretress got Spikes--Which was originally Murkrow's signature--and Sneasel got Beat Up--a move only put into the game very late in development. So my instinct that Morning Sun was just sort of thrown onto Espeon seems to have been correct. Espeon also originally had a different evolutionary method. Because friendship evolutions didn’t yet exist in Spaceworld ’97, the three new Eevi all evolved with Evolutionary stones, just like the initial three. Espeon used the mysterious Heart Stone, which was also used by Politoad and Natu (but doesn’t actually work in this demo); Leafeon used the Leaf Stone; and Umbreon used the Poison Stone (which also didn't work in the demo). Eventually, of course, the designers got rid of the Poison Stone and the Heart Stone, leaving just a Sun Stone as a new evolutionary stone. I assume that by that point in development, the designers wanted Espeon and Umbreon to be paralleled, so letting Espeon evolve via the Sun Stone was off the table (what stone would Umbreon use?). Instead, the team decided on letting Espeon evolve via High Friendship, and Umbreon via low friendship. We’ve talked about friendship evolutions before, when we discussed Blissey and Crobat in particular. The friendship mechanic was probably first invented for Pokemon Yellow, and given that the two games were being developed simultaneously, an idea that worked well for Yellow probably seemed like a good candidate to import to Gold and Silver. However, friendship in Yellow had an obvious purpose: since your Pikachu was the star of the show, friendship could be used to change how the player got along with the Pikachu. It was much less clear how friendship would have any effect in Gold and Silver, but it looks like the team settled on using it as a new evolution requirement. Friendship didn’t quite fit the pattern they’d done with other new evolutionary methods—all other new evolutions used a method that wasn’t available in Generation I to give the illusion that those evolved Pokemon always existed, you just didn’t have the right item. While friendship as a mechanic technically didn’t exist in Generation I, there was nothing stopping the player from doing all the things that would make an Eevee happier, like using it in battles and walking around with it in the team. But it was close enough, I’m sure, to fit the criteria for a new evolutionary method. It’s highly likely that Espeon and Umbreon were the first two Pokemon to experiment with this evolutionary method. The data we have shows that by April 1999, four Pokemon evolved via friendship: Blissey and Espeon by high friendship, Crobat and Umbreon by low friendship. Because of the parallel nature of Umbreon and Espeon, I think it’s more likely that this evolutionary method was conceived in the first place to create a mirror between the two of them, and then applied to Blissey because, well, its name is BLISSey, and Crobat, which gives off an angry vibe and needed a new evolutionary method. On top of this, when the two were given these friendship evolutions, their moveset was also changed so that Espeon's final ability was Return (higher damage with higher friendship) and Umbreon's was Frustration (higher damage with lower friendship). So for awhile, the team was really thinking of using Espeon and Umbreon to show off the friendship mechanic. (Thanks GoldS_TCRF!) Of course, like I mentioned in Crobat’s entry, a low friendship evolution is a terrible idea, gameplay-wise. In order to get minimum friendship, you’d have to purposefully knock out your own Pokemon again and again, which really goes against the spirit of Pokemon and the idea that these creatures are your friends. It would also be frustrating, because walking around with your Crobat or Umbreon would naturally raise its friendship, making it difficult to actually get its friendship to minimum numbers when you evolve it. There’s a brief period in development when both Umbreon and Espeon evolve with High Friendship (which probably wouldn’t have worked, given that you’d have to cancel the evolution your Eevee to ever let it evolve into the second Pokemon), but the team quickly figured out another, even more flavorful way to parallel the two Pokemon. In the final, of course, Umbreon evolves at night and Espeon in the day. Not only does that match Umbreon’s flavor incredibly well, but it also makes great use of the game’s day/night cycle, a mechanic the team was very excited to use. Like I said in the last entry, my guess is that Espeon was the most popular of the three new Eeveelution designs, and the only one that was certain to be included in the Pokedex. If that’s right, Espeon probably exerted inertia on the other two designs; once a Psychic Eevee was decided upon, any other Eevee’s in Gold and Silver would have to have some interaction with it. With that thought on the top of our minds, let’s move onto Umbreon. (Thanks to SeviYummy for the art) ID 435: Umbreon Umbreon’s also one of the coolest Eevee designs, and the second of the trio found in SW’97 to make it to the final game. However, unlike Espeon, which stayed more or less the same throughout development, Umbreon had a complete rethink of its entire concept! Let’s take a look. As I’ve hinted a bit in the last two entries (and I’m sure many of your know), Umbreon wasn’t initially a Dark-type Pokemon! Instead, it was a Poison-type. As weird as that seems in retrospect, it actually makes more sense as a trio of Eevee’s with Espeon and Leafeon. In the original trio, the three made an almost but not perfect rock-paper-scissors of weaknesses: Jolteon zapped Vaporeon which demolished Flareon, but Flareon was neutral against Jolteon. Likewise, in SW’97, Espeon could rock Umbreon’s world, Umbreon was great against Leafeon, but Leafeon didn’t do anything to Espeon. So at least initially, I can understand why the team decided on a Poison-type Eevee. Once you know that Umbreon was initially Poison type, a lot of things about it make more sense. First of all, consider its final Pokedex entry from Gold: “When agitated, this Pokémon protects itself by spraying poisonous sweat from its pores.” It doesn’t make a lot of sense that a Dark type would secrete Poison from its body; however, it makes perfect sense if Umbreon was Poison type! In addition, ever wonder about those rings on its body? They’re a direct reference to the blue-ringed Octopus, one of the most venomous creatures in the world! Because Umbreon was conceived as a Poison type, it’s move pool from Spaceworld ’97 was obviously almost completely different from its final move set: It’s interesting that Umbreon learned Acid Armor, since that was an extremely rare move in Generation I: only Vaporeon and the Grimers could learn it (and really, who out there used a Muk and managed to level it up to 60 when we were kids?). Otherwise, it learned the whole gamut of typical Poison-type moves, even Smokescreen, which was eventually given to Flareon. In the final, Umbreon’s moveset is of course designed to trap Pokemon with Mean Look or punish them for switching with Pursuit; it’s a Pokemon much more designed around debuffing the opponent and otherwise tanking them. Which is another difference from the final. Like I mentioned above with Espeon, originally Espeon and Umbreon had switched stats (not identical, mind you, but close). While Espeon was originally the Eevee specializing in Special Defense (making it, honestly, not very good), Umbreon was originally a frail, slow, Special Attacker. Which would also have been much worse, since in its Poison form all of its most powerful moves were Physical moves, and even in when it was changed to Dark-type its moves were, on the whole, weaker than the moves Espeon got. Switching their stats around was definitely for the best for both of them: Espeon became a speedy Special Sweeper, and while Umbreon was still slow, Defense was made its secondary stat, making it good at receiving hits. It also gives Umbreon an interesting identity. Most Dark-type Pokemon are either speedy or attackers; Umbreon fills a niche as a powerful tank that happens to use Dark moves. Part of me thinks the design team made this stat switch because they realized how useless Special Attack was on a Poison Pokemon. Unfortunately, the timeline doesn’t quite match up: Umbreon was already a Dark-type Pokemon before they swapped the stats of Espeon and Umbreon. Maybe the old stats originated from before we have data, back when Umbreon was still a Poison type, and they decided to change its stats at the same time they decided to make it Dark type, but got around to changing the typing first? It's possible, but less likely that they simply decided to change the stats well after Umbreon had become a Dark-type. UPDATE (Thanks GoldS_TCRF): It turns out that the team actually experimented with giving Umbreon back its Poison moves well after it became Dark-type in the 1999 reboot. By Spaceworld 1999 (in August), the team had replaced Frustration with Toxic (which would be quickly replaced with Moonlight by the final) and Thief with Acid (which would become Confuse Ray in the final). This didn't last long (they changed their minds by next week), but this moveset change suggests the team might have briefly had a change of heart. If they weren't sure whether Umbreon would be Dark or Poison type, they may have changed it to be the Special Defense Eevee just to leave their options open (again, because Special Attack would do nothing for Poison moves). Also possible: the team had come to the realization that in order to make the Psychic type fair, Psychic types should probably have weak defenses. Making Espeon’s defenses weaker necessitated it being the “Special Attack” Eevee, which in turn probably led to swapping Umbreon for sake of consistency. By making Umbreon Dark type, there was another strange consequence. I’ve mentioned before that Game Freak, whether to make their new types scarce on purpose or just because the Pokemon of those types were designed too late to balance, made basically all Steel and Dark types unobtainable before the post-game. As frustrating as that is, there was one single Dark type available before the Elite Four in Gold and Silver: Umbreon! It’s a bit annoying that to get Umbreon you have to make a choice between it and Espeon, but it’s really interesting that Umbreon was essentially the ambassador for the Dark type. For most players of Gold and Silver, Umbreon was the only Dark type they’d played with at all. Last thing I want to mention about Umbreon concerns its sprites. Interestingly, if you put Espeon and Umbreon’s sprites side by side, they follow a similar pattern. By June 1999, both were using a touched up version of their SW'97 sprite with a new palette; both also have similar body proportions. Take a look: Both sprites are definitely Nishida sprites, or at the very least drawn by the same person, given the similar proportions. Of course, Espeon got an updated front sprite in the final, while Gold's Umbreon sprite is still this same one. Seems like the team had time for Sugimori to go back and refine Espeon's sprite, but he didn't get a chance to do the same with Umbreon's, so they just settled on using the updated Spaceworld '97 sprite. Except it looks like Sugimori did redesign Umbreon's sprite for the final, just not the Gold sprite. The Silver sprite, on the other hand, has the same proportions and detail as Espeon's final Gold sprite, suggesting they were done by the same person: Compared to the previous sprites above, it's clear that one set was done by the same artist, and the other set was done by a different artist. My guess is that Sugimori focused on the Silver sprite for Umbreon because no one had made one yet, and they left the Gold sprite alone because he just didn't have time to do two new sprites for Umbreon. This is more or less confirmed by Crystal, which used the Silver sprite instead of the Gold sprite, signalling that the team thought the Silver sprite was the better (or more refined) of the two.
I know this is all really minor, but it once again drives home how close to the wire the team was in finalizing Gold and Silver. I also wonder if they kept the reference to blue-ringed octopi simply because they didn't have time to rethink Umbreon after they changed it to a Dark-type; that's certainly why its out-of-date Pokedex entry was used in the final. Umbreon wasn’t completely neglected, like some other designs that didn’t get changed until the last minute (Delibird, or Misdreavus, for instance). But who knows what the team could have done with it if they had had an extra month to touch it up? Still, Umbreon’s cool. One of my favorites. Maybe it would have been even cooler as a Poison type? What do you think?
21 Comments
Paul
6/14/2023 02:55:21 pm
My adoration for this series has grown tenfold after learning that Espeon's your favorite Eeveelution! A couple nitpicky points: Clair is Lance's cousin, and Gen II also introduced "Outrage" (as far as new Dragon moves went). Thanks, as always, for all the food for thought!
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Asmorano
6/14/2023 07:52:43 pm
Outrage! How could I have missed that? Great catch, I'll amend this. And I didn't really Claire wasn't his sister; I'll change that as well.
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GoldS_TCRF
6/14/2023 07:11:04 pm
Some tidbits from Espeon and Umbreon's early movesets:
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GoldS_TCRF
6/14/2023 07:37:59 pm
It's also worth noting that in the 1999 revamp, no Pokemon learned Morning Sun until it was assigned to Espeon in late August. Moves in similar situations include Pain Split (Assigned to Misdreavus c. August 23rd), Spikes (Assigned to Pineco and Forretress in the same time frame) and Beat Up (Which was first given to Sneasel at some time between August 23rd and August 30th.)
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Asmorano
6/14/2023 07:51:42 pm
Wow, this is all very cool info! I'm clearly missing somewhere that's tracked the moveset information past SW'97; do you have a link? If so, this all feels like something I should add to an updated version of the article.
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GoldS_TCRF
6/14/2023 08:32:13 pm
This is all content from a file I compiled when I was working on the TCRF page. I haven't go around to adding this to the article yet. but maybe sometime this year...
Phoenixsong
6/15/2023 01:24:46 am
Hi! First time commenting, but I've been checking in on this site for a long time and love catching up to see your new explanations and theories.
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Asmorano
6/15/2023 11:52:39 am
Thanks for the kind words! I'm really glad you're enjoying the series! I've added in a note about Nekomata, like you said.
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SolemnStormcloud
6/15/2023 02:38:52 pm
You might be on to something with the Rock and Ice types being late additions to Pokémon Red and Green. Brock even used a Diglett instead of a Geodude in the early trainer data revision where Giovanni specialized in the Flying type as a Gym Leader. It can be presumed that Ice was implemented before Rock, based on Ice Beam and Blizzard even being Ice-type at all in the early move data, as well as Lorelei having a mostly finalized team in the aforementioned early trainer data. Though, where this leaves the scrapped Bird type is a mystery, since it's located between Rock and Bug in the internal type index. Maybe a late attempt to make the flightless Doduo and Dodrio not Flying-types, that was quickly scrapped for redundancy reasons? I don't know...
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Asmorano
6/15/2023 03:03:46 pm
Ooh, all of this is really smart; I should have realized the Moonstone exists, duh! You're right about the Leaf Stone too; I don't know what they would have done about that problem had they kept Leafeon to the final. Maybe made it only be able to evolve using the Leaf Stone at high friendship?
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CainNKalos
6/15/2023 06:55:51 pm
Fascinating, I didn't know that about Gen 1's late typing additions. It really sheds light and a new perspective on how much Gen 1 was constantly being changed or modified to the very end, just like Gen 2! I actually tried looking for Leafon's beta Gen 4 sprite, but I can't seem to find it so far. I would be interested to see how different it would be from the finished Gen 4 sprite and if it has any similarities to the Gen 2 sprite.
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Trip
6/16/2023 07:41:10 am
Very, very interesting about the late addition of types in Generation I. I ended up checking on the original typing chart, and if your guess is correct, then the game would have originally had 10 types, 5 each physical and special:
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Trip
6/16/2023 07:47:11 am
And isn't it fascinating that the gym trainer in Brock's gym has a Diglett and Sandshrew, neither of which is Rock type? Definitely adds more evidence to your Brock as a Ground gym leader argument...
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SolemnStormcloud
6/17/2023 09:05:03 am
That, and Brock himself had a Diglett instead of a Geodude in the same early team data that had Giovanni as a Flying-type Gym Leader. That's another piece of evidence suggesting Brock originally specialized in the Ground type.
Asmorano
6/19/2023 07:15:59 pm
This is all great reading, I appreciate you thoughts and analysis here. I especially like your point that the gyms would cover all nine of the original types (except for normal). I hadn't noticed that, and that makes a ton of sense to me. With that in mind, it makes sense why Agatha has such a weird team in the early trainer data (Tangela and the Eevees to cover all four basic elements, or Taurus and two Eevees); there was probably a time in which the Elite Four were not conceived as type themed.
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Alex
6/16/2023 02:27:41 pm
I'm pretty sure that Umbreon got some Poison moves back in Gen 3, I remember using an Umbreon with Toxic in Pokemon Colisseum
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Trip
6/17/2023 10:28:18 am
Every Pokemon that could learn TMs could learn Toxic by TM prior to Gen 8.
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Zach Blosser
6/17/2023 05:22:57 pm
I'm convinced that the Gen II Eeveelution trio was actually created with the original Eeveelution trio (and possibly other scrapped Eeveelutions) in Gen I. When it came to choosing which Eeveelutions to use in the final, they cut it down to the Water/Electric/Fire trio.
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Commenter
6/25/2023 08:28:03 am
Regarding why Umbreon was made into a Dark-type, I have a theory that they felt that it and 440/Berurun's designs overlapped and decided to "combine" the concepts of the two in order to stick to the goal of exactly 100 new Pokemon that they had set for themselves. This would also explain things like Pineco going from a Grass-type pinecone to a Bug-type bagworm like 382, and Sneasel having the Ice type added to it as if to fill in for the removal of 391/Warwolf.
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Asmorano
6/25/2023 11:05:04 am
Huh! I really like this theory! I'm not sure about the bagworm, but there's a some similarity between Umbreon and Berurun for sure. I'll be sure to mention the idea when we get there in a couple of entries.
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ruff ruff
7/5/2023 11:12:51 pm
I wonder why they dropped the neck ruff the whole eevee family had. I'm surprised it's not on any of the early esp/umbreon designs.
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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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