Era III is remarkably focused in its intent: unlike the earlier parts of the Korean Index, virtually everything in Era III has an evolutionary connection to an existing design. Period 3b was the perfect example of this: not only is every slot in 3b an evolution (plus or minus Turban), but all of them are evolutionarily related to Generation I Pokemon. Like Period 3a, 3c isn’t quite that focused; however, there’s a definite theme to this group. Nine of the ten Pokemon in Period 3c are extensions of existing lines, which makes it similar to Period 3b. What distinguishes this set of designs is that seven of those ten designs are evolutions of Pokemon found earlier in the Korean Index, not Pokemon from Generation I, like Period 3b. Of the last three that aren't extensions of Generation II families, two are throwbacks to Period 3b, and one—Togepi—seems to be added last minute as an anime tie-in. What this could mean is that, as the team was nearing closer to Spaceworld ’97, the last few Pokemon they added had the purpose of filling in the last gaps in the roster; mostly, giving stand-alone new creations an evolutionary relative. This was probably a very quickly designed section of the Index, mostly meant to make the roster for Spaceworld ’97 as complete as possible before they made the demo. ID 439 (Flaaffy) to ID 443 (Nameeru)ID 439: FlaaffyThe opening Pokemon in Period 3c is Flaaffy, the middle evolution between Ampharos and Mareep. Flaaffy’s a weird looking Pokemon: it’s a pink, two legged sheep with a name that’s clearly a pun on the way sheep “Baa.” Its design feels oddly unnatural: it doesn't look much like a sheep or Ampharos, and it certainly doesn't have a lot in common with any real-world inspirations besides a sheep. In fact, you get the sense, looking at Flaaffy, that it was designed purely around the prompt, "design a linking middle design between Mareep and Ampharos." Which, honestly, was probably exactly the reason it was created. So first, let’s backup and remember what we know about this evolutionary family. Ampharos was created early in Gold and Silver’s development. Really, really early. Atsuko Nishida probably made it as one of her first Pokemon, and it was clearly a hit, because it barely changed over development. Though Ampharos had a distinct sprite from 1996 that predates the Korean Index, it’s design is remarkably similar in that sprite to the SW’97 sprite, which is in turn very similar to the final sprites. Someone clearly liked this guy and decided not to mess with perfection. It's unclear if Ampharos, originally, had anything to do with sheep, or even electricity for that matter. It certainly doesn't look like a sheep, even in its final design. Our earliest reference to Ampharos, in The Pocket Monsters Official Fanbook, speculated that Ampharos might have been from outer space, and wondered if its name (Denryu) implied that it was an Electric Dragon. It’s unclear if the Official Fanbook had gotten some sort of information from Game Freak about Ampharos, or if they only had the sprites and were just speculating. Still, the Japanese name Denryu doesn't have anything to do with sheep; instead, it means something like like "Electric Dragon." This makes me wonder if this Pokemon was originally designed with a background very different than the one we now take for granted. Maybe it was supposed to be dragon adjacent? After all, years later when the team created Mega-Ampharos, it gained the Dragon-type. Mareep, on the other hand, was always a sheep. From the beginning, it seems that the prompt for Mareep was to create a sheep Pokemon, something that had been obviously lacking in Generation I. Given that Mareep appears in the Korean Index relatively late, in Period 3a which specialized in creating evolutionary relatives, it’s likely that Mareep was designed with it's relationship to Ampharos in mind, but that's hardly certain. It’s strange, for instance, that Mareep is the only Pokemon related to a Gen II Pokemon between ID numbers 398 (Twinz) and 439 (Flaaffy), and that could be an indication it was created as a one-off idea one of the designers had. Really, it's placement in the Korean Index could lead to either conclusion, though I'd say the evidence leans towards Mareep being designed as a evolutionary relative. Saying this, it is interesting that Mareep doesn't really work as an Ampharos relative, does it? Mareep’s face and tail look a little like Ampharos’ design, but it has a completely different palette, body type, and Ampharos is importantly lacking the wool that Mareep not only has but also pretty much defines sheep. If these were supposed to ever work as a two-stage family, it’s a pretty unconvincing one. Let's give the team the benefit of the doubt and show Ampharos and Mareep with the same palette: (Yellow palette done by OrangeFrench) Mareep doesn't have this yellow palette in SW '97; instead, it has the pink palette seen below. But if you adjust its palette to match Ampharos, you can sort of see the family resemblance. They share the same tail and facial shape, most prominently. Hypothesizing that Mareep may have originally had this palette, I can see the family resemblance if I know it's supposed to be there. But there's such a drastic difference between the two, that I doubt the designers would have been happy with this as a two-stage line. Which is probably where Flaaffy came in. Flaaffy looks like it was supposed to bridge the gap between Mareep and Ampharos. It’s two legged, like Ampharos, but it still has the wool that characterized Mareep. Flaaffy’s got the same palette as Mareep, but has a sillouette much more similar to Ampharos. It still has recognizable sheep-like characteristics, but now also looks like a baby Ampharos. Maybe Flaaffy is originally where Mareep's SW'97 pink palette came from, rather than the other way around? The team may have liked Flaaffy in pink (It's kind of a little fairy creature this way). Then they may have thought that since Flaaffy bridged the gap between the designs, making Mareep pink would help Flaaffy fit in better as a transitional stage. Who knows for sure, but if this was their thinking, the team had a change of heart by the final game and decided that Mareep should, in fact, be yellow. Flaaffy's not a bad design, but I’d argue it really suffers from filling the role as the middle child in the Ampharos family. There are a lot of second-form Pokemon in Generation I that seem like they were just awkwardly designed to bridge the gap between the first and third forms. Charmeleon is the most obvious Generation I Pokemon that suffers from this problem; Pidgeotto and Gloom also suffer a bit from this. But Flaaffy really feels like the zenith of this designs style. Flaaffy spends so much of its design effort making the relationship between Mareep and Ampharos seem natural that it doesn’t really have an identity of its own. I mean, what is it supposed to be? The best Pokemon are designed so that they embody a clever concept on their own in addition to fitting aesthetically into a larger family. Flaaffy means nothing except in context of the other two. A question remains: was Flaaffy designed as an ad hoc fix, once the designers realized that Mareep and Ampharos weren't close enough, design wise? Or was the Mareep family always envisioned as a three-stage line (at least after Mareep was created) and Flaaffy was always going to be part of it? In favor of the second hypothesis, Flaaffy is very close to Mareep in the Korean Index, suggesting that the two were conceived of a nearly the same time. If this was the case, someone came up with Mareep first, knowing that they'd have to also create a middle stage to link Ampharos to Mareep. The gap between Mareep and Flaaffy in the Index could just be because it took awhile to come up with a concept that links the two together; Flaaffy's unsubtle design could be a consequence of the team running out of time before Spaceworld '97 to conceive of a design that worked. Alternatively, this last section of the Index seems to have been made very quickly; the designers could have just been working on lots of designs at once and didn't get to Flaaffy until after the intervening designs. The second possibility is that Mareep was designed first to be part of a two-stage family with Ampharos, but that the developers quickly decided it wasn’t working. Thus, Flaaffy was created at the last second, as an improvised solution to the problem. I lean very slightly to this explanation for two main reasons. First, if Flaaffy’s design was created in a hurry, it helps explain why it’s such an obvious meld of Mareep and Ampharos. Secondly, in general there’s a very “last-minute” sort of vibe going on with a number of the Period 3c Pokemon: for instance, look forward to when we talk about Togepi or Ledian. Many of the Period 3c may have been made to fill a gap in the roster at the last minute, and Flaaffy certainly feels like it was made to fill a gap. Once Flaaffy was created, however, it stayed relatively stable. You can tell that the Spaceworld '97 sprite was touched up, but the pose and the anatomy of Flaaffy stayed exactly the same, though the international release touched up the backsprite so that its neck was no longer visible, in line with how the anime portrayed Flaaffy. As soon as it got stats, those also stayed pretty much identical. And while the whole family's moveset changed a bit from Spaceworld '97 to the final, it remained remarkably stable. Between the two builds, Flaaffy lost Hypnosis, Swift, and Thunderbolt--unfortunately losing the link between counting sheep to fall asleep and Hypnosis--but it gained Thunderwave--a better choice for a create that generates static electricity with its wool--and Thunder. Clearly, the team was happy enough with Flaaffy's design that it wasn't really a priority to overhaul. There’s not much more to say about Flaaffy, except for one oddity about the trainer rosters. If you examine the trainers you battle in Gold and Silver, you’ll notice that those trainers don’t really have many Generation II Pokemon; this very likely a consequence of how rushed the development of the games was. If many of the new Pokemon were in flux up to the very last months, then it would have been hard to playtest the games: deciding that Kingdra or Pilowine, for instance, should have an extra twenty Special Attack or a new learned move might have the domino effect of making the gym leaders Pierce or Claire much more difficult. Keeping new Pokemon off most trainer rosters was probably a way to give the team more flexibility in what they could tweak. Frustrating, I know, but I can at least see the logic. Strangely, even though Ampharos has a prominent role in the story—as the keeper of the lighthouse—an Ampharos never shows up on a trainer’s team anywhere in the game. You could go the whole game not knowing what Ampharos was supposed to look like, except for that overworld sprite! Mareep is the same way: no trainer deigned to use the fluffy electric sheep. But Flaaffy does show up on the teams of two late game trainers. Both of these trainers are in Kanto: one is a disciple of Lieutenant Surge, while the other is a random picnicker on Route 4. This probably doesn’t say anything revelatory about Flaaffy’s development; they probably use Flaaffy both because those trainers are so late game that they weren’t programmed until Flaaffy was relatively finished, and the team decided on Flaaffy and not Ampharos because it was a better fit for the level they wanted the trainers to be at. Don’t ask me why, in the post-game, gym trainers are still using unevolved second-stage level 33 Pokemon. It’s just another mystery of Generation II. Flaaffy’s fine, in my estimation. If you have to connect Ampharos to Mareep, Flaaffy’s about as good a design as you’ll get. Saying that, there’s nothing really inspiring about it. Like a lot of Period 3c, Flaaffy exists to solve a problem, not because it’s particularly novel. ID 440: BerurunBerurun is the long awaited evolution to Rinrin, a cute Dark-type cat Pokemon that was created way back in Period 2a, probably six months to a year back in terms of development time. Rinrin didn’t make much sense as a single evolution—it was a cute kitten after all—and so the team was likely planning on giving it an evolution since it was created. Given that we’re almost to the end of the Korean Index, and thus very close to the Spaceworld ’97 build, the team probably decided that there was no time like the present, and added Berurun in at the last second to complete the Rinrin line. Comparing the two, Berurun has some notable changes. No longer a cute kitten, Berurun’s more developed and now resembles an adult cat; its legs are lithe enough that it can now stalk its prey on all fours. No longer just sitting passively; Berurun is ready to pounce! Berurun's also replaced the jingle bells that Rinrin had around its neck and on its tail with a handbell. No longer making a high pitched jingle, you'll now be able to hear a chime as Berurun gets close. Berurun’s also got a moon-crescent on its head, making it look like a particularly fierce type version of Luna: Obviously, Rinrin and Berurun are based on the old folklore that a black cat is bad luck; given that these two cats were the first Dark-type Pokemon created for Generation II, it's fitting that they're related to bad luck. I also wonder, however, if the bell theme has something to do with the practice of domestic cats having bells on their collars to prevent them from being able to sneak up on prey. In the case of Berurun, this trait is subverted: instead of giving the prey time to escape, I suspect the bell on its tail is there to announce it's arrival as it gets ever closer to pouncing. If Rinrin was just an onomatopoeia for the ringing sound a bell makes, Berurun's name seems to be a mix between “Bell” and the phrase “runrun,” which according to TCRF is an onomatopoeia for humming. Localized, my bet is that the name would turned out “Bellmoon” or “Bellrune” to make reference to the moon shape on its head. Most of what we said about Rinrin goes for Berurun as well. Rinrin was probably initially created to show off the new Dark-type, and notably it learns Faint Attack, one of the few Dark-type moves available in Spaceworld ’97 (Bite and Crunch were not yet implemented as Dark-type). It also had the signature move “Bell Chime,” which was an early name for “Heal Bell,” a move that removes status conditions. And both Rinrin and Berurun have a number of ways to inflict status ailments—Lovely Kiss, Sweet Kiss, and Attract—which plays into the developing identity for the Dark-type as a type of Pokemon which fight dirty with status conditions. Rinrin was pretty unique in Spaceworld ’97, in that unlike pretty much every other Pokemon, Rinrin did not have placeholder stats. It was a relatively speedy first stage (with 70 speed) and weak defenses (40 HP, 40 defense, 50 Special defense). Why it had stats and so many other Pokemon didn’t is anyone’s guess, but I think it’s likely that since Rinrin was designed to show off the Dark-type, it was given stats so they could test the strength of a Dark-type Pokemon against some of the trainers they already programmed. Berurun, on the other hand, doesn’t have unique stats; just 50 in all its stats like most other Pokemon. While this is typical, it also speaks to Berurun being a later addition than Rinrin, such that the team didn’t bother with stats. Another hint that it was a late addition was its Gender Ratio: while Rinrin is a 100% female Pokemon, Berurun has the default 50/50 male to female ratio. Which is an obvious oversight: if all Rinrins are female, then it’d be pretty difficult to get a male Berurun! Though we don't have stats for Berurun, it's not difficult to get an approximation. Since the Houndour/Houndoom family fits a pretty similar spot in the final game that Berurun probably would have, we can compare how much stats Houndour gains when it evolves, and do the same to Rinrin's stats. Thus, I bet we'd get something like this:
Essentially, Berurun would be an improved Persian. It would be a little slower than Persian, but have much better Attack and Special Attack, and comparable Defense, Special Defense, and HP. Berurun’s sprites are also a bit odd. Rinrin was created during Period 2a, which is dominated by Sugimori and Nishida designs, and Rinrin looks a bit like something that Nishida would have created, though it’s a bit rougher than her other designs. Berurun could also be designed by Nishida, but its sprite looks even less refined than Rinrin did: look, for instance, at the odd thickness and angle of the tail, the eyes that seem to need a bit of refining (they look muddy and oddly shaded as is) and the extremely basic coloring and pose of the backsprite. Also notice that Berurun is facing directly towards the camera, something that you don’t see in many Pokemon designs at all. You see it rarely on sprites like Kingler’s, or the strange ninja-squirrel-maybe-Sentret from earlier in the Index, but its not common and usually suggests that it was drawn by one of the more minor designers. Maybe Berurun’s sprite was designed by someone else, as kind of an emergency measure to get it ready? Berurun did survive the 1999 reboot of Gold and Silver, unlike so many other Spaceworld '97 designs, but not for very long. We know it was worked on at least a little bit because it got a new Palette that seems designed for it: by June, it’s using a purple and yellow palette. This palette fits it really well: it accentuates the bell on its tail and the moon on its forehead with a bright yellow, and the purple of the palette really complements its black fur. I mention all this because this indicates Berurun's sprites weren't just used for placeholders. While it could have just been assigned a random palette or a palette for whatever was set to replace it, that's not what the team did: this yellow/purple palette seems designed for Berurun. In fact, Dunsparce--which eventually replaced Berurun in it's slot--still uses this palette, indicating that it inherited its coloring from Berurun, not the other way around! If Berurun survived the 1999 reboot, it was only for a brief moment. Even though Berurun’s sprites and palette survived, even by April 1999, Berurun’s typing had been changed to Rock/Ground and Shuckle now evolved into it, indicating that though the sprites still existed, the team had already decided to replace it with an evolution for Shuckle. While the idea to give Shuckle an evolution didn’t last long, Berurun didn’t make a triumphant return. Instead, the team tasked the new designer Yoshida to create something new to fill in this gap in the Pokedex, and he got to work creating Dunsparce. Rinrin's back sprite, at least, still appears after the 1999 reboot as well, but by June 1999, while Berurun's palette is still intact, Rinrin is using a weird purple and green palette, and its front sprite was already replaced by the early Cyndaquil sprite from the Korean Index. The palette doesn't fit Cyndaqil either; it's clearly a palette designed for Larvitar (and the same palette was already being used for Tyranitar) and that this entry was designated for Larvitar, even though no work had yet been done on it. I'll also mention here that while Berurun didn't survive to the final, Berurun's relationship to the moon was inherited by Teddiursa, which has a very similar crescent moon on its head where Berurun had one. I don't know whether or not this is coincidence, or whether the designer who made Berurun liked the idea and put it into Teddiursa. It is notable that Teddiursa was a reworked version of the original bear starter, Honoguma. It's possible that since Honoguma lost its fire-type in becoming Teddiursa, the team felt it needed some sort of elemental gimmick to make it distinct, even if that gimmick didn't inform its typing. If this happened at the same time as Berurun was deleted, the team may have felt that there was an open slot for moon-identified Pokemon. Like I said in the Rinrin entry, I’m relatively certain that Rinrin and Berurun were eventually became Skitty and Delcatty during Generation III's development. Sure, Skitty and Delcatty aren’t Dark-type, but I think that comes down to a fundamental tension in Berurun’s design. Berurun’s meant to be fierce, and being Dark-type reinforced that it's a mean dude you don't want to mess with. And yet, most of Berurun’s moveset is about either kissing the opponent Pokemon (Sweet Kiss, Lovely Kiss), making it fall in love with Berurun (Attract), or ringing its bell to heal status conditions (Bell Chime). There’s a fundamental disconnect between Berurun’s concept—a wicked no-nonsense cat that ambushes you in the alley—and its gameplay—a cutie that loves to cuddle. Skitty and Delcatty, by ejecting the Dark-type, are much more able to wield that moveset without tension. And they do basically wield very similar moves. Rinrin and Skitty share five moves (half of Rinrin’s moveset!) including Rinrin’s original signature move, Heal Bell. On top of that, Skitty evolves by the Moonstone; while this isn’t the method Rinrin used to evolve into Berurun (Rinrin just evolved at level 28) it does acknowledge Berurun’s relationship with the moon that it had on its forehead. I might also suggest that Skitty’s incredible rarity (2% chance to encounter it, on one single route in Generation III) could indicate that it was a leftover that the team dropped into Generation III but more or less ignored (see also how impossible it is to get a Huntail in Generation III, which was definitely remade from Gurotesu in Generation II) because it didn’t fit the new games as much. But that’s very tenuous speculation. Notice as well that though it's subtle, Skitty and Delcatty still have the crescent moon motif that Berurun had! Skitty's face makes a crescent shape, and Delcatty has a full moon on its forehead (though it only appears in the Gen III sprites and was ditched as Delcatty's design was updated in future games). If there was any doubt about a connection here, I think that may cinch it! I like Berurun but it is has obvious problems. Generation II needed to clearly define what the Dark-Type was like, and that didn't leave much room for cuddly cuties. Houndour and Houndoom do a much better job of filling a two-stage Dark-type family in the final games, even if Game Freak made them almost impossible to use. My guess is that the team decided that those Hounds and Murkrow would do a better job introducing the Dark-type, and as soon as that decision was made, Berurun was, unfortunately, doomed. (Credit to @Raciebeep for the artwork!) ID 441: BaririinaPeriod 3c started off by introducing new evolutions to existing Generation II Pokemon. But after doing only two of these, the designers clearly decided that the real gap in the roster was a lack of baby Pokemon. So only three entries in, we get to discuss yet another discarded baby design. This time, it’s Baririina, the baby form of Mr. Mime! Depending on what you count as a baby Pokemon, this is either the last baby Pokemon in the Korean Index (thank god) or we only have one more to go. Baririina is probably a transliteration of Ballerina. It was the original name of Mr. Mime in the early list of names we have from Generation I’s development, though Mr Mime’s name was changed to Bariyado before the games were released. It makes some sort of sense, since a mime is a type of stage performer, and a Ballerina is also a performer. Baririina is probably also a pun on the word Barrier, since Mr. Mime is known for making psychic barriers, though I think this pun works a lot better in Japanese, where “Ballerina” is an exotic English word that doesn’t immediately conjure the image of a woman in a tutu. Instead, Baririina looks more like an Ice Skater: its little legs seem to be in a skating position, with its hands outstretched for balance. Now that I’m looking at it again, I guess I could imagine that Baririina is about to twirl like a Ballerina, but it seems more of a stretch. There’s some interesting speculation on TCRF that Baririina looks like an egg because of an obscure practice called the “Clown Egg Registry.” Apparently, at the Clown’s Gallery Museum, a museum of clowning in London, there’s a collection of eggs dating back to 1946, each of them decorated with a particular clown’s signature makeup designs. As a result, it acts as a register of famous clowns and the makeup they used. Personally, I doubt that Game Freak had heard of this place while making Generation II, but crazier things have happened. If TCRF is right, this is absolutely a good reason for Baririina to be egg shaped. Baririina closely fits the pattern of the other babies made in Period 3. First, it's a pre-evolution for a mid-game, relatively obscure, and relatively unpopular Pokemon. Hinaazu, Betobebii, Pudi, Monja, Smoochum, and Magby all basically fall into this same pile of Pokemon. Because it's only received through an in-game trade for an Abra (which, it's worth pointing out, is a much better Pokemon), Mr. Mime is often forgotten about in a regular playthrough; its middling stats when comparing to Hypno or Kadabra don't help its popularity. Mr. Mime’s also only used by three trainers and Sabrina in Generation I, although arguably his appearance on Sabrina’s team makes him a bit more notable than, say, Electabuzz or Farfetch’d. Maybe Baririina was an attempt to rehabilitate Mr Mime, and give players more access to an otherwise undervalued Pokemon? If you could fight wild Baririina's on the first few routes (maybe say outside the ruins of Alph) then that would allow players to get early access to Mr. Mime and try him out. Or maybe the team was still just scouring the Generation I roster to see which Pokemon was a good candidate for a pre-evolution, and Mr. Mime, as a single stage Pokemon, was an obvious candidate. Baririina is, interestingly, found in the same Pokedex location as the trio of Magby, Elekid, and Smoochum (Baririina is 217, Smoochum 218, Elebebii 219, and Magby 220). These are all humanoid, rare to find Pokemon from Generation I, and so maybe the team conceptually imagined them to be part of a quadology. Maybe they designed a baby Mr. Mime so that it would fit in with the other three (Which is obviously an insane thing to do, as Electabuzz and co were already some of the least deserving Pokemon to get babies, and there was even less reason to expand that trio into a foursome). On the other hand, this is also basically how they were arranged in the Generation I Pokedex, though Scyther was ordered between Mr. Mime and Jynx. So they could have ordered the four like this because that's how they were originally. Baririina, unlike some of the other baby Pokemon like Pichu or Cleffa, doesn’t learn any unique moves; its moveset is identical to Mr. Mime’s, except that it learns the moves a little earlier. There’s only one notable difference between the two, which is that Baririina is a Normal-type, not a Psychic-type. I like this difference: it implies that Baririina was weaker, mentally, than its evolution. Smoochum, interestingly, is the same way: it's a pure Ice-type until it evolves into Jynx. I think it’s likely that Game Freak thought that Psychic powers were something Pokemon needed to develop as they matured; thus, baby Pokemon would need to earn those powers by evolving. Like Berurun, Baririina does appear to have been worked on after Spaceworld ’97, but not for very long. Baririina’s sprites appear in the June 1999 sprite banks with a new palette and, importantly, new shading on its sprite, which suggests the sprite was touched up a little. But even if those sprites appear in the June 1999 sprite collection, it isn't much more than a hint that Baririina once existed. By June 1999, the Pokemon in that slot is just named “Mitei 08” (Pending 08). It isn’t clear at all if there was ever a brief design in this slot before it was taken over by Corsola in August 1999, but Corsola seems like a very late addition, and so this slot appears to be empty all the way up until Corsola was created, which was probably months. There are a couple of other blank entries like this in the June 1999 collection, so it isn’t unheard of, but clearly the designers didn’t delete Baririina to make room for something else; they deleted it because it no longer fit into their vision of the final game. It’s pretty obvious to me why Baririina didn’t make it to the final game. Obviously there were too many baby Pokemon in Spaceworld ’97, and the team needed to cull some (or even most) of them. Even past that, among the massive amounts of uninspired baby Pokemon in Spaceworld ’97, Baririina stands out as an especially uninspiring design. Mr. Mime is already a Pokemon overshadowed by the Alakazam family. Most players of Generation I probably never used one, and it was probably a waste of their time if they did, because Mr. Mime is outclassed by every other Psychic type. What does Baririina’s existence possibly add to that? In addition, Baririina is a Normal-type that would have assuredly had low Attack and Defense (like Mr. Mime himself), making it more or less unusable. The concept of “Mr Mime but boring,” is hardly a concept made to get people excited about the next Pokemon game. Of course, most of you know that eventually, Game Freak tried this idea again years later. While I really, really don’t like its visual design, the Generation IV devs found a way to make their version of a Mr. Mime baby, dubbed "Mime Jr.," work a bit more effectively than Baririina would have. While Mime Jr. is an extremely ugly and creepy design, it is the Psychic-type, unlike Baririina, so it doesn't lose the same-type bonus on its abilities. Secondly, Mime Jr actually learns moves distinct from Mr. Mime: the move "Tickle," which Mr. Mime would otherwise not get access to. To be fair, Baririina may have changed movesets by the time of the final had it survived, but we can only speculate whether it would have added anything helpful to Mr. Mime. In addition, Mime Jr has a cute story attached to its gameplay: it only evolves when it knows “Mimic”. Essentially, the idea is that Mime Jr. is still in training. Before it gets Mimic, it learns "Copycat," which is a much worse version of Mimic, implying that it's still learning the art of mimicry. I love the flavor on this. Only once it masters the power of mimicry can Mime Jr. graduate to a master Mr. Mime. Mime Jr’s not great, don’t get me wrong. But at least it has an interesting hook to its design that makes it a bit memorable. That’s more than you can say for Baririina. I doubt, by the way, that these are somehow related or that Mime Jr was a revised version of Baririina. By the time the team got to Generation IV, they were actively looking for more Generation I Pokemon they could give evolutions to (see also Lickilicky and Tangrowth). In that context, Mr. Mime was an obvious choice, being one of the last one-stage non-legendary Generation I Pokemon. It was really a no-brainer to try and find an evolution for it, and any similarities between Baririina and Mime Jr are very likely coincidence. …Even if they do seem to be dancing to the exact same tune… …And seem to be wearing nearly the same hat… Okay fine I guess it’s possible. ID 442: Nameeru Right next to Baririina is another evolutionary relative of a relatively obscure Generation I Pokemon, suggesting that the team created them as part of a set. The next entry is Nameeru (a name that is the extremely uninspired Japanese verb that simply means “to lick”), a Pokemon created to give Lickitung an evolution. Like Baririina, we can only speculate why the team created Nameeru, but my guess is that it’s purpose was to rehabilitate Lickitung, which by no means was bad in Generation I but certainly not a stand-out Pokemon. My guess is that Nameeru got cut for the exact same reasons it was created in the first place: Lickitung was an obscure and unpopular Pokemon, and the team decided to spend their time creating new Pokemon rather than expanding on unpopular ones. By this point in the Korean Index, it is worth pointing out a pattern. In Red and Green, there were four Pokemon a player could only obtain through in-game trades: Farfetch’d, Lickitung, Mr. Mime, and Jynx (in addition, Tangela was so obscure that for years I thought the in-game trade was the only way to get it). All of these Pokemon—maybe not Jynx—have middling stats and are only moderately useful in battle. They also have a couple of other things in common. First, they were all designed in the first two Eras of Generation I’s development. This was very early on in the conception of Pokemon, back before the team had designed the Pokemon environment and back when the team was first pioneering the idea of Pokemon types. Helix Chamber has pointed out a few other similarities: these early Pokemon tend to learn a lot of different TM moves (maybe because of their undefined nature) and a disproportionate amount of them turned up in the Safari Zone because they didn't really fit the progression of the final games, or didn't have a place in the game that housed a realistic environment for them. If much of these two early eras of Red and Green's development fit unnaturally into the final game, these four in-game trade evolutions must have been the absolute oddballs out of the crop. My instinct about these four is that not only did they not really fit naturally into the final design of the games, but that in addition they were probably the Pokemon that only, just barely, made the cut into the original 151. The team likely deemphasized them in the games partially because they didn't fit, and partially because they weren't universally popular with the design team and Game Freak didn't want them to be headliners. Farfetch’d, Jynx, and Lickitung (less so Mr. Mime) were also heavily based upon Japanese cultural inspirations. Farfetch’d’s concept was a joke based off the Japanese saying “a duck comes bearing spring onions,” which essentially means “a great opportunity” since the duck is literally carrying its own garnish if you were to cook it. Jynx, as I mentioned previously, was probably at least partly based on the Japanese demon called a “Yuki-Onna,” which is basically a female ice-ghost. And Lickitung—maybe the weirdest concept for a Pokemon!—is based on the Akaname, a Japanese demon that has a gigantic tongue and licks clean bathrooms. It’s Pokedex number, 108, is also a rude number in Japanese culture, similar to the meanings of “69” in American slang. Why am I focusing on all of these in such detail? Because by the time we get to Nameeru, a definite pattern has emerged. While some of the Pokemon that got evolutions in Era III feel random, it doesn't seem like coincidence that all of the in-game trade Pokemon from Generation I got an evolution. It gets more interesting: not only did these in-game trade Pokemon get an evolution in Era III, but most of the other Generation I Pokemon to get an evolution in Era III were also from these extremely early stages of Generation I’s development. Of the Era III Pokemon to expand upon Generation I lines, 14 of them are from Period II of Generation I’s development (Hitmontop, Smoochum, Hinaazu, Madame, Steelix, Blissey, Monja, Jaranra, Magby, Animon, Koonya, Nameru, Baririina, Tyrogue) and four relate to Period I of Generation I’s development (Steelix, Scizor, Plux, Para). Only seven (Porygon2, Betobebii, Igglybuff, Pudi, Kingdra, Bellossom, Tsubomitto) plus the three Eevees (so ten total) are from the other parts of Generation I’s development. I'm sure that part of the reason for this pattern was because the Pokemon from earlier periods of Generation I’s development were simply less likely to already have evolutions. But the pattern is striking. The designers working on Era III weren’t just creating evolutions for Generation I Pokemon. They were purposefully designing evolutions for designs that originated in the earliest parts of Pokemon’s development. Why? It’s not clear. We know that these early designs from Generation I predate Atsuko Nishida’s involvement in the Pokemon games; instead, they were primarily made by Sugimori and Morimoto (it’s unclear what Fujiwara made in this era; probably Jynx and Koffing). Maybe Era III was an effort by the original designers to do second drafts of some of their designs they weren’t really happy with in Generation I. Maybe the team felt like these guys were missed opportunities: as they didn’t really have an environment available in Generation I, maybe these exotic specimens had a more natural habitat in Johto? Who knows. But it is fascinating that Era III seems to have a very direct connection to a specific time period in the original Pokemon’s development. Speaking of obscure Pokemon, how obscure was Lickitung? Honestly, I’d argue Lickitung is in the top five most obscure Pokemon in the entire game. Mew is obviously impossible to find without cheating. But Jynx and Mr. Mime, while hard to find, are at least featured in two important battles: Sabrina has her Mr. Mime, and Lorelei has her Jynx. Farfetch’d is relatively rare, but at least three Bird Catchers use a Farfetch’d throughout the game. Only two trainers in Generation I have a Lickitung. In terms of appearances, only Magmar, Scyther, Pinsir, and Electabuzz have less appearances, being used by no trainers at all. And even then, these guys could at least be found in the wild and caught, albeit only if you have the correct version of the games. Development data for Red and Green suggest this wasn’t always the case. In earlier versions of the games, Lickitung featured at least a little more prominently. Lickitung was originally found in the Safari Zone, which would have made it rare but not impossible to find; it also featured in a special end-game Dungeon found in Silph Co. on a floor where you could catch high level Pokemon from the Safari Zone. As well, in addition to the two Pokemaniacs that use Lickitungs in the final game, other trainers had their own Lickitungs! Cueballs, and Team Rocket members used Lickitungs in their parties commonly in earlier versions of the trainer teams; Jr Trainers and Beauties also used Lickitung, more rarely. In addition, before Giovanni became a Ground type trainer, his early encounters had a “rare Safari Zone encounters” theme, and Lickitung was one of the four Pokemon (next to Rhydon, Nidoqueen, and Scyther) in his second line-up. So there was a time when Lickitung made some nominal appearances in the games. I’m not sure why this changed; a lot of the edits to the early trainer teams where to make the trainers use a smaller and more consistent amount of Pokemon, probably to give them a more concrete identity as trainers. Lickitung could have been a casualty of tighter theming. Notably, in the final, the only trainers that uses them are Pokemaniacs, which specialize in rare and unusual Pokemon; maybe the team decided Lickitung was too odd for random Beauties to be carrying around. They may have also minimized its appearances specifically to make it into a trade-only Pokemon, to increase variety in how the player needed to hunt out Pokemon to catch ‘em all (though there were already three other trade-exclusives, why would they need one more?). My own personal gut instinct is that the team knew Lickitung wasn’t a very well designed Pokemon, and they didn’t really want it being front and center in their games (especially with that origin story). As a result, the team hid it in the game, making it easier for players to catch cuter designs that the team was more proud of. If the team weren’t happy with Lickitung, Nameeru might have been an improvement. The concept, for one, seems to be completely different. As TCRF claims, Nameeru’s design seems to take some inspiration from snake charmers: the hat its wearing looks a bit like a turban, and the way Nameeru is holding its tongue resembles a long flute used by a snake charmer. In addition to that, Nameeru, to me, looks like it was clearly designed after a catfish; the whiskers, in particular, are a dead giveaway. Catfish are hardly rare in games of this time period, in large part because the Japanese associate them with river spirits. Catfish, in Japanese mythology, are able to control electricity (for instance, look at Volt Catfish from Megaman X3) and able to create Earthquakes. While Nameeru couldn’t learn these moves on its own, Lickitung (and thus Nameeru) certainly had access to Thunder and Earthquake as TM moves. Either design—snake charmer or wise catfish—also had the positive side of not being a reference to a lewd bathroom demon, making Nameeru a bit more family friendly and thus opening the possibility for a more prominent place in the games for the Lickitung family. Whatever the reasons for creating it in the first place, Nameeru was one of the very first Pokemon cut once development was rebooted in early 1999. While Madame and Plux seem to have made it to at least July of 1999 before the team thought of replacing them, Nameeru had already been overwritten by Tyranitar by April of 1999. Nameeru’s backsprite survived as a placeholder for Tyranitar’s backsprite, but unlike Madame or Baririina’s sprites, there’s no indication that it was refined or modified at all since Spaceworld ’97; it also looks notably awful in Tyranitar’s green palette, indicating that Tyranitar didn’t inherit a palette from a version of Nameeru, but overwrote it from the beginning. There’s nothing else left of Nameeru: even Tyranitar’s stats and Dark/Rock typing are in place even by April 1999. Of the four in-game trade Pokemon from Generation I—Jynx, Farfetch’d Mr. Mime, and Lickitung—only Jynx’s evolutionary relative, Smoochum, survived. If there once was a subtheme of rehabilitating these obscure Generation I creatures, that subtheme clearly didn’t survive past the 1999 reboot. And, honestly, that makes sense. I love Madame and Nameeru (less so Baririina), but they all faced the same problem: it’s very hard to make an evolution of any of these Pokemon that is interesting enough to be included in the sequel. Eventually, of course, Lickitung did get an evolution, in Lickilicky. Generation IV had a subtheme of evolving Generation I and II Pokemon that lacked an evolutionary relative; the designers ended up creating a lot of new evolutions for old Pokemon in Hoenn, including Tangrowth, Mamoswine, Yanmega, and Lickilicky. Lickilicky is a very simple design: it’s a fat version of Lickitung. Honestly, I hate it. Nameeru was an interesting extension of Lickitung. It took the design in new directions, giving Lickitung a nuance that it previously lacked. Lickilicky is…chubby. There’s no new inspirations for it, nothing nuanced about its design: the designer decided that if Lickitung eats a lot, of course it'd get fat when it evolved. It’s pretty infuriating that the team had such an inspired idea for Lickitung’s evolution just lying in the scrap heap, and yet they went with that…thing. But I’ll say this. Even if the Gen IV visual designs of these Pokemon are...not very good...the team that made Generation IV did know how to make them interesting in both a flavor and gameplay direction. Like Mime Jr, most of the new evolutionary relatives in Generation IV evolve only when they know a specific move; that move then informs their identity as the evolved Pokemon. For Mime Jr, that was the ability to successfully mimic; for Mamoswine and Tangrowth, it was the ability to learn Ancient Power, which turns them into prehistoric Pokemon. For Lickilicky, it is empowered by learning the move Rollout. This gives Lickilicky a bit of a fun story: it eats and eats as Lickitung, then becomes so fat it can Roll over them as Lickilicky. At the very least, giving it this evolutionary method makes Lickilicky stand out much more than Nameeru ever would have. It’s also worth mentioning that in early leaked builds of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, we find a backsprite of an earlier design of Lickilicky that makes it look like a spiked yoyo! What’s interesting about this is that it provides strong evidence that Lickilicky was designed, from the beginning, around its ability to use Rollout. In addition to being interesting, this also, to me, heavily suggests that Lickilicky’s design is completely unrelated to Nameeru’s. If they were related, we’d expect some continuity between the two designs, at least at some point in development; instead, Lickilicky looks even more different from Nameeru in its earlier design. On top of that, it’s pretty clear that the designer started with the move Rollout, and created a design from there. It’s very unlikely they first consulted the catfish design of Nameeru. Honestly I'd love to see what this guy looked like from the front. Seems like a much more interesting design than the one we got. Anyway, Lickilicky is a shame, given how good a design Nameeru was. If Nameery was meant to be a second draft of Lickitung--a chance for the redemption of an imperfect design--unfortunately, Lickitung’s designer never got a chance to create an improved version. Instead, someone else just doubled down on Lickitung’s bizarre traits, making Lickilicky not a revision of Lickitung, but an exaggeration of everything that was already wrong with it. ID 443: Noctowl Next up, we're back to extensions of Generation II families. Noctowl's next. What do we make of it? Of all the possible Generation II Pokemon that needed an evolution, Hoothoot was at the top of the list. And thus, Noctowl was a given. It’s honestly surprising the team waited this long to design it. Hoothoot was initially designed to be an early game bird Pokemon; it was a nighttime counterpart to Pidgey and Spearow, to reward the intrepid midnight adventurer. But there’s no way that an early game bird Pokemon could be a single stage specimen. Instead, Hoothoot needed either one or two evolutions, to bring it into parallel with either Pidgey or Spearow. From its very conception, Noctowl was going to exist in some form or another. But clearly the team had had other concerns. We're almost to the very end of the Korean Index, and only now is Noctowl making an appearance. Maybe no one on the team had a good design idea for Hoothoot’s evolution, or maybe it was so certain that the whole team knew they’d get around to eventually. Whatever the case, Noctowl snuck into the games right before the Spaceworld ’97 build. It's possible the team took so long to design Noctowl because they weren't confident that Hoothoot would end up being the bird representative they went with in the roster. If we remember all the way back to the very beginning of the Korean Index, you’ll recall that there were a ton of bird Pokemon designs; the team couldn’t seem to have enough. It may have been the case, thus, that the team knew they needed a new bird representative, but they weren’t 100% sure it would be Hoothoot until late in the design. Noctowl’s creation at the end of the Index might be an indication that they had finally paired down the bird roster to Hoothoot, Natu and Xatu, and Murkrow. Once the team decided that the quarter note bird, the weird megaphone bird, and the Scarecrow weren’t actually going to make it into the roster, they felt safe designing Noctowl as the evolution to Hoothoot, rather than worrying it might have been discarded as well if the team decided on Megaphone bird to take Hoothoot’s place in the early game. If that’s true, it’s interesting just how long the roster was in flux before Spaceworld ’97! Anyway, on to Noctowl. Noctowl’s an owl! There’s not much more to it! In it’s initial design, Noctowl is a large, mean-looking oval with pointy eyebrows. In this version, it shares Hoothoot’s main feature: it only has one, large foot that it stands on. This design for Noctowl reminds me of cartoonier depictions of owls that tend to make them into a big circle. To my eyes, the closest real-life owl to this design is the Screech Owl: However, after Spaceworld '97, the designer of Noctowl (probably Sugimori) had a change of heart. Instead of this more abstract depiction, the team decided to go with a much more realistic owl design, albeit one with giant eyebrows. This one looks a lot more like a Great Horned Owl: It also looks a bit like an egg timer to me as well, since it's ovular and egg timers are sometimes designed to look like birds (OrangeFrench pointed out that, if animated, it'd be really cute to see the upper half of this guy's head rotate around like an egg timer). Since Hoothoot looks a bit like a cuckoo clock, this would be a fun clock-based parallel between both evolutions. For whatever reason, the team decided to back down from this more cartoony design by 1999, and instead Noctowl became much more generic. This is honestly a head scratcher to me. Not only does Noctowl lose the one-legged design of Hoothoot, but in evolving, the Pokemon also loses the clock theme that Hoothoot had. The design U-Turn wasn’t caused by a new designer taking over Noctowl’s 1999 sprites, because I’m relatively certain Sugimori created both the SW’97 and the final sprites (one reason to think this is that the sprites are relatively finalized by June 1999; usually Sugimori designs are the only one that don’t go through slight tweaks over the course of development). For some reason, Sugimori just decided that Noctowl should look more realistic and less like a Pokemon. To be fair, there is some indication the team tried to bring Hoothoot more in-line with Noctowl, rather than make Noctowl conform to Hoothoot. On the scratchpads, there is a bizarre alternate design for Hoothoot that happens to look a lot closer to Noctowl than its final design does: In Hoothoot’s entry, I posited that this was actually an earlier design for Hoothoot from before Spaceworld '97 and from before they decided to make it look like a clock. I admit, looking at it more closely next to Noctowl, I was probably mistaken: the idea here seems to have been to make Hoothoot resemble Noctowl more, to make the family more consistent.
I mentioned previously that the foot on this Hoothoot is a dead giveaway: it's not the same as the foot on the other versions of Hoothoot's sprite. That suggests that this was drawn from scratch, not modified from the other Hoothoot sprites, which at the time suggested to me that this predated those sprites. I don't think that's impossible, and it is really weird that they didn't just edit the other sprites to make this Hoothoot. But looking at them, the connection is obvious: this version of Hoothoot was meant to share the same huge eyebrows with Noctowl. Saying that, this sprite was probably never used: it was either just an experiment that was rejected once they saw how odd this Hoothoot looked, or it was a placeholder sprite for the new Noctowl before they had finished the new sprites. Whatever it was, I doubt it ever replaced Hoothoot. When we previously discussed Hoothoot, we discussed Noctowl’s moveset, which doesn’t change that radically from Spaceworld ’97 to the final game. In the final, Game Freak decided to give Noctowl Dreameater and Confusion, two Psychic types moves that it didn’t have in Spaceworld ’97. Given that owl’s are wise, spooky creatures, Psychic moves make some sort of sense for the family, and I like the extra flavor these moves give Noctowl. In Spaceworld ’97, on the other hand, Noctowl’s moveset was a little more vanilla. It learned Wing Attack, giving it a stronger Flying move other than Peck, and it also learned Moonlight, which would recover it’s HP, especially if it was nighttime when the move was used. It’s a useful move, and it further connected Noctowl to the nighttime (Hoothoot, after all, was originally created to show off the day/night cycle!), but other than this connection with the night, it doesn’t really fit Noctowl to have a healing move like this. It also, interestingly, had a signature move called “Megaphone,” which had an 85% chance to lower the opponent’s special attack. Not only do “megaphones” not fit an owl at all (I guess it hoots pretty loudly), but the move is terrible, so it was no big loss when it lost this signature. I kind of wish the team had created a new signature move for Noctowl to replace this loss, but you can’t have everything. Otherwise, there’s not much else of note about this bird. I don’t think it was ever in danger of not existing; like I said before, once the team had decided Hoothoot was for certain on the roster, Noctowl had to exist. The last thing of note to say about Noctowl is to simply point out one oddity. In the final game, two trainers have Noctowl: Gentlemen Alfred in the Lighthouse, and Bird Keeper Bob on Route 18 (who used a Farfetch’d instead in Spaceworld ’99). Now, Bob’s Noctowl is your standard, run of the mill Noctowl; Alfred’s, on the other hand, knows Poisonpowder, a move that is otherwise impossible for Noctowl to learn! Why would the team have programmed this random trainer to have this random move on his Noctowl? It’s got to be an in-joke. Something that made sense to the designers but that we, as players, will never understand. So if you're wandering through the wilds, watch out for poisonous owls I guess?
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