ID #X11: LugiaThree years after Ho-Oh was first designed, its Silver-version counterpart finally made its way into the second generation of Pokemon games. Lugia’s a strange Pokemon, with an odd origin story that isn’t entirely clear. Let’s go through the steps, and see what we can find out about this very odd legendary…bird? Beluga whale? Before we start, by the way, it’s important to note that Dr. Lava wrote an excellent youtube video about the origins of Lugia, featuring a bunch of interviews with Takeshi Shudo, the head writer for the Pokemon anime, that he paid to translate. That’s where a lot of my source work for this entry is coming from, and I’d advise you to check it out! First, let’s talk about where I'm placing Lugia in Period 4. Lugia has finalized sprites by June 1999, and semi-placeholder stats two months earlier, in April (its stats are just Mewtwo's). This implies that it had been created close to the beginning of the reboot, but it was still being worked on; hence why it's here. It’s very likely that Lugia was put into the Pokedex at nearly the same time as Tyranitar (coming up next): both of them have nearly finalized stats in April 1999, and both of them have nearly final (but not completely final) sprites in the June 1999 version of the build. In fact, given how their timelines seem to match, and given that Sugimori likely drew both their sprites, that I wonder if he input their sprites into the games back-to-back. There is, however, one piece of evidence that suggests Lugia was in the game slightly before Tyranitar. On the scratchpads for Tyranitar, one of them has Lugia’s backsprite. There are a lot of reasons this could happen, but the most obvious one is that Lugia was originally in Pokedex slot #248 before it was moved to #249. If that was the case, then that has interesting implications for the planning being done in the early stages of the 1999 reboot. If Lugia was in #248, then why were their two (plus #251, so technically three) slots after it? Was the team planning for another legendary creature? If it was in slot #248, then Tyranitar might have originally been considered to be only a two-stage line, taking up #246 and #247, which is also interesting in and of itself. Why did they change that? I have no definite answers, and even this is very tenuous speculation (Lugia’s backsprite could be on Tyranitar’s scratchpad because Sugimori was using it as a way to judge proportions, for instance). But it’s interesting to think about what this could mean. Lugia is the only Pokemon from Generation II whose origins don’t come from the needs of the game itself. Instead, Lugia was created exclusively to be the star of the second Pokemon movie. The movie was written by Takeshi Shudo, who was the head writer for the Pokemon anime. His original idea for the film involved a real-world dinosaur fossil being discovered. It sounds as though this Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil would come to life and go on a rampage, and the Pokemon team would have to stop it. It’s a pretty nuts idea for a movie, and I’m glad it was eventually changed! Some people think that the discarded fossil Pokemon sprite from the Korean Index dates back to this strange idea, but that’s very unlikely. First of all, that sprite was probably made by someone who wasn’t a main designer of Pokemon, and thus were unlikely to be heavily involved in this sort of planning. Secondly, Shudo made a point of explaining that the fossil from the movie wasn’t a Pokemon, and therefore couldn’t be caught. (Not you) Anyway, after the "real world fossil attack" idea died, Shudo came up with the idea of a Pokemon god—like a mother spirit that would be the origin of all Pokemon. This Pokemon, initially dubbed “Pokemon X,” had a connection to the tides, and lived deep under the ocean. This is where things get really unclear. In interviews, Takeshi Shudo has said that he created “Pokemon X.” Or at the very least he came up with the idea for it; it isn't clear. Either way, I’m not sure what he meant. Shudo probably didn’t draw concept art for it—he was a writer, not an artist, after all—but he did have strong feelings about its characteristics: it should be related to ocean tides, it should be a mother spirit, etc. And certainly, when Shudo says he created it, it implies that he played a role in designing what it would look like. In fact, Shudo claimed that other people came up with the name for Lugia, and that he was surprised Lugia made it into Gold/Silver at all. Again, this implies that Shudo saw Pokemon X as his creation. However, the earliest concept art we have of Lugia was made by Ken Sugimori, and all the spritework for Lugia seems to be Ken Sugimori’s handiwork. Given that Shudo wasn’t an artist, it seems far more likely that Shudo came up with the idea for Lugia and then Sugimori made the initial concept art. Does that mean Shudo described to him an idea, or that Sugimori made it from scratch? I have no idea! Interestingly, the initial concept art has a prominent “X” on Lugia’s belly, which not only connects to Shudo's name for the Pokemon but also suggests that this concept art is very early. This leaves open a lot of questions, at least in my mind. How much of this initial concept was just Sugimori’s ideas? How much input did Shudo have? Did someone else make the initial concept for Shudo, and then Sugimori edited it further into this concept? None of that is very clear. Another thing that’s unclear is when, exactly, did Lugia lose the X on its tummy? My first reaction was that the X was an old piece of the design just seen in the concept art, and that it didn’t appear on the sprites. But it’s not that simple. Even though the sprites we have from June 1999 are almost identical to the final Lugia sprites (just lacking a few of the back spikes), you’ll notice that these sprites don’t actually show us Lugia’s belly. The first chance we get to see Lugia’s belly is in Lugia’s final Silver sprite, which make it look like it just has a darkened spot there, not an X (Thanks to FlowersBloom for pointing this out on twitter!). So even though the X looks strange in this concept art, it’s very possible that the team considered it a part of Lugia’s design all the way until a month before the final. It’s even a mystery what Lugia’s name even means. Shudo says that the name was chosen in a meeting without his input, so his ideas about Lugia probably don’t play into it’s creation. Dr. Lava thinks it might be related to a Latin word “Lugeo” which means “to lie dormant.” This would be referring to it’s role in the movie, sleeping under the surface of the ocean, but it’s a pretty obscure Latin reference and I’m not sure how much the Pokemon team knew about the movie’s plot when they named it. Bulbapedia thinks Lugia is related to “Beluga" Whale which is has a slight resemblance to, or the ancient Greek word for silver. But that word is “árguros” which sounds nothing like Lugia, so I don’t really know what Bulbapedia is trying to say here. What was Lugia’s visual design even inspired by? What, exactly, is Lugia? Beluga Whale fits as well as anything else; Bulbapedia also suggests that it’s based upon the ancient legend of Bahamut, which was sometimes described as a giant fish and sometimes as a dragon, but that seems like a huge stretch. To me, the hand-wings seem to come out of nowhere, though I admit Lugia's not the only video game character with that design. Still, why give a legendary bird digits? (Behold: Lugia) Some people think that Sugimori’s concept art of Lugia was a refined version of the viking boat Pokemon from early in the Korean Index (ID 344, to be exact). This has always been a strange Pokemon in the Index, since it is smack dab in the middle of a sequence of Sugimori-designed sprites, and it’s the only one of his sprites from that sequence that didn’t make it into Spaceworld ’97. That’s always given me the impression that it was a pretty important Pokemon design that got unfortunately cut. It’s even possible that it was a concept for a legendary Pokemon, given its proximity to Ho-Oh. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that Sugimori took that old design and reworked it into Lugia. On the other hand, I’m not sure I see the resemblance at all. So I think it’s up to you to make up your own mind about the connection (or lack thereof) between these two Pokemon. We do know one thing for certain. We have enough information from both Lugia's origins and Ho-Oh's origins to be sure that they were never designed together, and not originally intended to be counterparts. Originally, Ho-oh was designed as kind of the ultra-legendary for Pokemon 2. In much the same way as Mewtwo stands above Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres in Generation I, Ho-oh was supposed to stand apart from Raikou, Entei, and Suicune. However, after the development reboot, these plans changed. It’s unclear whether the decision was made to pair Ho-Oh with something and Lugia was slotted in to fill that role, or whether Lugia was created first. It can't have been long since Lugia first appeared in the Pokedex, however: two legendary Flying-types would have begged to be thematically connected. Notably, from it’s first appearance in the Pokedex, Lugia was Psychic/Flying, even though as originally conceived by Takeshi Shudo, it should probably have been a Water/Flying Pokemon. According to an interview with Shigeki Morimoto, the Psychic type was chosen not because it necessarily fit Lugia’s design, but mostly for gameplay concerns. At that time in Pokemon history, Psychic-type was widely considered the strongest type: Not only were Alakazam and Mewtwo absolute beasts in Generation I, but Psychic-types essentially had no weaknesses in the first game, making them good for just about everything. Thus, the team probably believed that Lugia would be more impressive to players with the Psychic-type. Notably, in the earliest data about Lugia we have, it’s stats are nearly identical to Mewtwo's, suggesting that the team's first idea for Lugia was to fill the same role as Mewtwo as a super powerful end game Psychic-type. Later, they swapped some of these stats so Lugia would be more defensively oriented than Mewtwo, which at least gave it a bit of a unique identity. Interestingly, even though by this point Ho-oh and Lugia were probably mirrors of each other, it took Ho-oh an incredibly long time to get it’s own secondary typing. In Spaceworld 97, Ho-oh was just a basic Flying-type; even by June 1999, it was a Normal/Flying type, even while Lugia was already a Psychic/Flying type. It’s only in August 1999, in the Spaceworld ’99 build, that Ho-Oh finally becomes Flying/Fire, getting its second type to better match Lugia. It’s unclear why this took so long. However, we’ve seen a pattern in development in which older Pokemon designs were sometimes left in an incomplete "good enough" state until the last month or so of development, while the team was prioritizing newer creations that needed more work. Thus, the team could have known that Ho-Oh needed a second type, but just left giving it one until much later. But I’m unsure about this, since it's typing actually changed from pure-Flying to Normal/Flying while Lugia was already Psychic/Flying. Is this some evidence that the two weren't conceived of as a pairing until even later, potentially just three months before the end of development? Maybe the team just wasn’t very sure what Ho-Oh should be? …I also want to take a moment here to point out that Shudo’s initial idea for Lugia—that it was a Water-type—would have made it fit as Ho-Oh’s counterpart much better. Definitely a Psychic-Type In the final games, it’s easy to see Lugia as the representative of the moon and of the night, while Ho-Oh is the representative of the day. This works really well because of the time mechanic introduced in Gold and Silver: it creates a neat parallel for Ho-oh to look like the sun and for Lugia to be silver like the moon. Shudo has said that Lugia was related to ocean currents, so it seems as though Lugia’s connection to the moon may have been an early part of its concept. However, I’m not really sure when Ho-Oh and Lugia themselves got connected to the Night/Day cycle in Generation II. Certainly, it couldn’t have been before Ho-Oh got its fire typing, and that was in August 1999, really late in the day and only a couple of months before the final release. In a later interview, Shigeki Morimoto claimed "Ho-oh and Lugia were born in the world of Pokémon Gold and Silver for its new feature, the time system, giving us the day and night cycle. Thus, they represent the sun and the moon, day and night." But we know that he's exaggerating a little, since Ho-oh was created before Lugia, and Lugia was created for a different reason. By the end of the development, however, the team may have thought the way Morimoto is suggesting. However, now that I think of it, do the actual games ever make a connection between Ho-oh, Lugia, and the time of day? Or is this something the team thought of but never said in Gold and Silver? Finally, let’s talk about the signature moves of Ho-oh and Lugia. Lugia learns Aeroblast at level one, a Flying attack with 100 power and a high critical hit chance. It’s a really good move, albeit one that doesn’t really have anything to do with Lugia’s concept or with its Psychic typing. Aeroblast is interesting, because it didn’t appear in the Spaceworld ’97 build. It seems to have overwritten a move called “Coin Hurl,” another signature move for the Meowth line that would have done more damage the more money the player had (which seems terrible, incidentally, since it would incentivize competitive players to get the maximum amount of money they could, through grinding, making the competitive scene really unfun). Even though Aeroblast technically replaced Coin Hurl, however, it’s probably a rework of a different move, “Wind Ride.” Wind Ride was a move in the demo that was Flying, had 40 power, and also a high critical hit chance, so Aeroblast is more or less just a souped-up version of Wind Ride. But what’s most interesting about Wind Ride was that it was originally Generation II’s replacement for “Fly.” In the Spaceworld ’97 build of the game, there are a number of moves at the end of the movelist with field effects, meant to replace the old HMs: Brightmoss (Flash), Strong Arm (Strength), Wind Ride (Fly), Uproot (Cut), Watersport (Surf), and then Whirlpool and Bounce, presumably the two new HMs that became Whirlpool and Waterfall. We’ve talked about this before, but these were probably cut because of the confusion they’d create: if you traded a Pokemon from Generation I with Fly, would Fly function? If you then also taught it Wind Ride, would it be able to Fly twice? It just feels like an awful lot of complication to make moves that do the same thing as moves they’d already created. Anyway, Aeroblast no longer has the “Fly” effect in the final game, but it’s obviously a holdover from this idea. Given how late in the day Lugia was, when the team wanted a signature move to give it some identity, it probably made sense to repurpose an old idea and buff the power. In Ho-Oh’s case, the team spent even less effort creating a signature move. In Spaceworld ’97, Ho-Oh learned “Sacred Fire,” (Itself an oddity, since Ho-Oh was not fire type yet and wouldn’t be for almost two years) a new fire move also learned by the Arcanine family and by Moltres. It was already a rare move in conception, given only to really powerful Fire-types (and Ho-Oh). By the final, the team just took this move away from everyone except Ho-Oh, creating a signature move to contrast with Lugia’s. Personally, as a kid I was always a bit confounded by Lugia. Ho-Oh appeared in the first episode of the anime, and I had always thought of Ho-Oh as the star of Generation II. Lugia didn’t seem to resemble Ho-Oh at all, or have any reason to exist compared to Ho-Oh. Now, of course, that makes sense: Lugia was created very differently from Ho-Oh, and only welded to Ho-Oh late in development. My younger self would feel vindicated. ID #X12: TyranitarTyranitar is the king of the Johto region. Obviously meant to provide a cool endgame Pokemon, Tyranitar is definitely a fan favorite from Generation II. Feared by all, Tyranitar could defeat any Pokemon it confronted. I mean, theoretically. No trainer uses Tyranitar, and the only way to get one is by evolving a Larvitar from the final post-game area, at a point where most trainers have been defeated and experience isn’t easy to come by. Suffice to say, Tyranitar’s super cool, but another Generation II design almost completely wasted by the designers. Tyranitar’s clearly based upon a kaiju, in that it’s an imposing looking Godzilla-like lizard that looks as though it could stomp Goldenrod flat (though it’s only about six feet tall, so it could probably only destroy a model). It’s name in Japanese in “Bangirasu” which Bulbapedia suggests means “Barbarian” or “Savage”; "Girasu" then means Hateful or Hated -Saurus. I’m not sure of that provenance, but it’s the best we’ve got. Before it’s pre-evolutions were created (Yogirasu and Sangirasu), Tyranitar’s name was just “Girasu” without the “Ban” appended to it; if “Girasu” is supposed to mean “Hated Lizard” or “Hated Saurus” then this feels like an obvious play on Dinosaur (“Terrible Lizard”) or Tyrannosaurus (Tyrant Lizard). The resemblance between the two, especially the spines on the back of both Godzilla and Tyranitar, is very close. I'm not Kaiju expert though, so if you think there's a kaiju that Tyranitar is more closely based on, let me know! My guess is that Tyranitar was created out of an interest (maybe Masuda’s) in having another Pokemon like Dragonite: a powerful endgame dragon which could serve as a rare, powerful Pokemon which was a reward for leveling up a rare but weak early stage. The parallels between Tyranitar and Dragonite are obvious in the final game: Both are three stage evolutionary families, both evolve into their final form at level 55, both evolve from weak early stages that require huge amounts of experience for each level, and both have 600 BST. The fact that both are large kaiju-like dragons (or at least dinosaurs) is probably also not a coincidence. It’s also telling that Tyranitar and Dragonite occupy very similar Pokedex slots. Dragonite is #149, the last Pokemon before Mewtwo, the ultimate legendary Pokemon from Generation I, while Tyranitar is #248, the last Pokemon before the two ultimate legendary Pokemon from Generation II, Lugia and Ho-Oh. I see this as less of a parallel between the two and more of an indication of the intent in creating Tyranitar. It seems very likely that during Masuda’s time in charge of the team, he would designate certain Pokedex slots for certain types of Pokemon that the game needed, and then Sugimori and the rest of the designers would fill that slot with an idea that fit the needs of the games. In this case, I think what’s very likely is that slots #246, #247, and #248 were designated by Masuda to be filled with a Dragonite-like pseudolegendary (though the term wasn’t around yet), and Sugimori complied by looking through his old designs and choosing something that would fit. The main differences between Dragonite and Tyranitar are aesthetics and personality. Dragonite’s extremely goofy; it gives kind-hearted “Puff the Magic Dragon” vibes. On the other hand, Tyranitar’s much scarier and much more imposing. Before you get to their Pokedex entries, their coloring, or even their facial impressions, the difference is obvious just putting their sprites back to back. Dragonite is designed around soft curved shapes, while Tyranitar is covered in prickly spines. So where did Tyranitar come from? There are two common theories. The first is that Tyranitar’s a rework of Gyaoon, the discarded Kaiju Pokemon from the very beginning of Generation I’s development. There’s a few reasons to take this theory seriously. First, Gyaoon seems to have been directly based on Godzilla. Gyaoon’s name is almost a direct transliteration of Godzilla’s iconic cry, and we have evidence that in the very early development of Pokemon, the initial cries were named directly after the Kaiju that these Pokemon were inspired by. Arguably, this is probably why Gyaoon didn’t appear in the final games: it’s a very generic design that just looks too close to Godzilla. Rhydon, created right before Gyaoon, was also an extremely generic Kaiju-like design, as was Nidoking and to some extent Kangaskhan. Given how many early Pokemon were direct references to Ultraman and Godzilla kaiju, the team may have felt Gyaoon didn’t have enough originality to its design to compete with other generic Kaiju-mon. The theory a lot of people argue for is that Tyranitar was a rework of Gyaoon, tweaked to be less generic and fit into Generation II. I can see some of the logic here: Tyranitar has obvious inspirations from Godzilla, like Gyaoon. Given the similar inspirations, it’s possible to imagine that Sugimori went back to his first take on Godzilla, played up the spiky bits more, and drew a new sprite. However, there’s not much more evidence for this idea, and some evidence against. One reason I have to doubt the connection is that Tyranitar and Gyaoon is the difference in emphasis in both their designs. Gyaoon’s major unique design feature is its large, bellowing mouth. True to its name, it’s screaming it’s cry at full blast; I’m almost certain that if it had made it the final game, Gyaoon’s Pokedex entry would have made note of its huge maw. Meanwhile, Tyranitar has a very tiny mouth. It’s not even opening it’s mouth in the Gold sprites, and when they experimented with a both where it’s screaming, it’s gape is incredibly tiny. Instead, Tyranitar’s aesthetic focus is on its chunky, imposing body and on the spikes that go down its back. Even though they have similar inspirations, Gyaoon and Tyranitar took this same starting point in very different directions. The biggest reason to doubt the Gyaoon/Tyranitar connection, however, is that the second origin’s explanation is so much better. Let’s start by looking at the April, 1997 cover for the Japanese gaming magazine, Microgroup Game Review. This edition of the magazine contains an interview with Sugimori, and a cover designed by him: (This is a clean version of the cover, without the text. Credit to Dr. Lava for the high resolution scan of this artwork) Hold on. That’s Tyranitar. But it’s way too early for Tyranitar to appear. This magazine was released seven months before Spaceworld 1997, and a wopping two years and two months before the first data we have that features Tyranitar’s sprite. Tyranitar isn’t anywhere in Spaceworld ’97; not even something that could have been a early design for it. There’s nothing in the Korean Index that even has a chance of being related to Tyranitar. So what’s going on? We’ve talked about this magazine cover before, when we covered Hitmontop (which could have been inspired by the weird Clefairymontop in the bottom left of that artwork). This cover is infamous in Pokemon fandom, because of how it seems to offer us a look at beta Pokemon designs. In Tyranitar’s case, it seems to suggest that Tyranitar predates Spaceworld 1997, even though, for no explicable reason, Tyranitar doesn’t appear anywhere in that build. However, I think there’s an easy explanation. In the interview conducted with Sugimori inside the magazine, Sugimori denied that these were actually Pokemon on the cover. Instead, the cover showed “another world, like Pokemon, but not Pokemon.” In Sugimori’s mind, these weren’t Pokemon, just drawings of Pokemon-like creatures. Now, Sugimori could be lying here to hide that these are beta designs, but really, what’s the point? If he hadn’t wanted to show off beta designs, he could have just put something else in his cover sketch. Instead, I think that Sugimori was telling the truth: at the time he drew this cover, he was just doodling some designs without any thought that they might find their way into a Pokemon game. Tyranitar does exist prior to Spaceworld ’97, in other words, but at the time is was just something Sugimori drew on his own. It wasn’t a Pokemon yet. In that same interview, Sugimori explained that he got his ideas for Pokemon designs by constantly going back to his earlier ideas and iterating them, refining them more and more until he’s happy with them (another piece of evidence Gyaoon could be an early Tyranitar, admittedly). But I think the more important take-away from this interview is that Sugimori is expressing the likelihood that, though these not-Pokemon on the cover weren’t being considered at the time, he was open to going back to designs like these when looking for inspiration. And I think that’s exactly what happened here. After Masuda took over development and started demarcating certain Pokedex slots for certain needs, he asked Sugimori to design a counterpart to Dragonite which could fill the same role in-game. Sugimori, who was probably quite busy and needed something that would work in that role, went back to these Microgroup designs and took the one he liked most, named is “Girasu,” and added it into the Pokedex. Though he may not have intended to use that design for a Pokemon, when there was an obvious need for a dragon or dinosaur like imposing super-mon, this one fit the bill perfectly and Sugmori would have been a fool to ignore it. Could both of these explanations be true? That is, could the Microgroup cover feature a reworked Gyaoon? I just don't think that's likely. If Sugimori truly had no intentions for these to be Pokemon, why would he spend his time reworked an old discarded Pokemon design? If he were going back to old designs, why change Gyaoon so drastically rather than just use it here? Why include a real Pokemon next to two designs that were definitely not anywhere in Generation I? It seems implausible that Gyaoon factored into this cover at all. This also explains why the two earlier stages of Tyranitar don’t get conceived of until months later, and why the team is using random sprites as placeholders for them in the June 1999 collection of sprites we have, whereas Tyranitar’s sprite is mostly finished. If Tyranitar were just a repurposed older design, then presumably Sugimori could easily turn it into a sprite. Whereas the other two stages would still need to be work out, since they weren’t part of the deal initially. Obviously, Tyranitar was the main inspiration here, and the team fumbled for a few months trying to come up with something that fit alongside it. Notice that it took them until August to create Pupitar and just they only figured out Larvitar in the very final stages of development: In fact, one of the earliest sprites we have for Larvitar is a heavily modified version of the Tyranitar sprite, made smaller and more compact so as to look like an earlier evolution. Showing again that Tyranitar was the base, and the other two were meant to fit in to match it. If you look closely at this Larvitar sprite, you'll notice that it isn't even an original sprite. It's actually just different parts of the Tyranitar sprite, copied and pasted closer together, to make it more compact. The eye might be the only new part of the whole sprite. One thing that’s always bothered me about Tyranitar has been its typing. Obviously, Tyranitar’s a Dragon-type: I mean, just look at it! However, for whatever reason, the team went with a bizarre Rock/Dark typing. It doesn’t look like the team ever wavered about this typing or thought about alternatives: from the earliest data we have of Tyranitar (in April 1999) it was already a Rock/Dark type, and that never changed. It’s moveset also has plenty of Rock and Dark type moves, suggesting that, unlike a Pokemon like Gligar, the moveset was made to closely reflect this typing. Anyway, my guess is that the team chose the Rock/Dark typing for two reasons. First, though Tyranitar is obviously a Dragon to my eyes, in think in conception, Sugimori was considering Tyranitar to be some sort of dinosaur. Given that all the other ancient Pokemon (Omanyte, Kabuto, Aerodactyl) are part Rock-type, a dinosaur might naturally have been a Rock-type in his mind. Secondly, as we’ve talked about before, I think the team was intentionally trying to keep the new Dark and Steel types very rare in the pre-Elite Four sections of the game. Commenters have suggested that this was to make them feel special, and I’m inclined to agree; I also think that since the strengths and weaknesses of these types were in flux, the team didn’t want too many of them too readily available because of the effects they could inadvertently have on gameplay balance if the types’ weaknesses were changed at the last second. The team might have chosen Dark-type for Tyranitar because as a way for it to show off the new Dark-type on a very powerful Pokemon, and thus make the type feel even more alluring. Certainly, if you went up against this thing and it Crunched your ace into oblivion, it would teach you that Dark-type is something special. In the same way that the team made Lugia Psychic-type because of the association of Psychic-type with powerful Pokemon, I think they were also trying to associate Dark-types with power by giving that typing to this monster. Of course, this strategy would work more effectively if any trainers actually used Tyranitar. Imagine if Karen used this guy instead of a Vileplume during her Elite Four battle, for instance. There’s no evidence for it, but I’d even suggest that Tyranitar might be the reason “Bite” was repurposed into a Dark-type move in Generation II. We know that Bite was still normal in the Spaceworld ’97 build, and so the choice to change it to Dark had to have happened later, presumably during the 1999 rework. Given how early Tyranitar shows up in this rework, and given that a giant intimidating kaiju like Tyranitar might Bite its opponents, the team may have changed the move to better reflect Tyranitar’s flavor. Then again, lots of Pokemon learn Bite. If the team had decided to keep Houndour and Houndoom around about this same time, then those two Dark-types might also have been the impetus to change the typing of the move. The reason Tyranitar is mostly unused in Gold and Silver probably comes down to the lack of development time. That probably didn’t affect Tyranitar itself all that much: it had 600 BST stats as early as April 1999, and those stats only slightly changed throughout the rest of development. Instead, it was probably underused because Larvitar and Pupitar took so long to get finalized. We’ll talk about them when we get there. One interesting final piece of Tyranitar’s development is that you can tell the team was trying to work out what Tyranitar’s personality should be—and, by extension, what flavor the Dark-type should have—as development progressed over 1999. For instance, in early (that is, early August 1999, so pretty late in development) Pokedex entries, the writers characterized Tyranitar as a tank, impervious to damage, that basically didn’t care what happened to it: Early Gold Entry: Because its body won't yield to any attack, this Pokémon won't fight without good reason. Early Silver Entry: The forehead is said to be the hardest part of its body. There's nothing that it can't crush. Both of these entries really stress Tyranitar’s identity as a Rock-type Pokemon. Meanwhile, compare those entries to the final ones: Final Gold Entry: Because its body won't yield to any attack, it will pick one fight after another. Final Silver Entry: It's so powerful that it can alter nearby terrain without breaking a sweat. It is so brash and cocky that it pays no heed to anything around it. In comparison, these entries really stress Tyranitar’s angry or bullying nature. It suggests to me that as the team became more certain that Dark-types would be aggressive, mean-spirited tricksters, they changed Tyranitar’s personality to match. I really like Tyranitar, and I think it was a great idea for Sugimori to bring this design forward to serve as a Dragonite stand-in. I like that both these Pokemon look really cool and powerful, but they have completely different natures: making Tyranitar much more dangerous looking makes it feel unique compared to Dragonite without taking away from it’s design at all. Tyranitar has a great design, which I’m sure made it all the more difficult to create cool Pokemon to evolve into it. ID X13: SentretIt’s a bit odd to me that Sentret was such a late addition to the Generation II roster. A basic early-game Pokemon, Sentret feels like the sort of thing they would have settled upon first, so that the beginning of Gold and Silver was as polished as possible when showing it off to people. Still, this little guy didn't make his appearance until after the 1999 reboot of development. Let's figure out why. But first, let’s talk a little about ID 360, the Ninja Squirrel that we saw much earlier in the Korean Index. I said back when we discussed it that I suspected ID 360 might have been an early design for Sentret; I’m still not sure about that, but there are at least a few things that make me suspicious. First of all, consider that ID 360 first appeared in Period 2a. That section of the Korean Index was primarily designed by Nishida and Sugimori, and almost every sprite in that section ended up used in Spaceworld ’97, with the exception of Proto-Cyndaquil (which obvious got used soon after Spaceworld ’97) and another flying squirrel like Pokemon that could have been a precursor to Furret. The fact that ID 360 appeared in that sequence automatically makes me think it was more important to the designers than the more-or-less throw away designs of Period 1e, right before. In addition, though ID 360 has a strange style to it—especially if you consider its eyes and it’s weird front-on perspective—it is found right next to the Volbear line of starter Pokemon, which were created by Nishida. It's certainly a bad looking sprite compared to Nishida's normal work, and it's possible ID 360 was made by the designer of Period 1e and somehow input into the Korean Index out of order. Still, it's possible it was in Period 2a for a reason. Which is important, because Sentret also strikes me as an Atsuko Nishida design (albeit one that was probably touched up by Sugimori). Nishida didn’t have much role in the rebooted 1999 period of development, and wasn’t actually credited with any of the graphical designs in the final game, but it’s likely she put some work into these sprites but wasn’t available to add the finishing touches, which Sugimori did. In this case, if you look at the earliest sprites we have of Sentret, and look at its face. The minimalistic style of the face doesn’t look like many finalized sprites we have, but the mouth is quite reminiscent of Pikachu’s Green sprite, and the dot eyes Sentret uses remind me of Ditto. This is all a lot of speculation though; Sentret could have been made by anyone. If ID 360 really was an early Sentret, the team probably dropped the Ninja motif to make Sentret into a more simple design, better suited to the early game. A Ninja squirrel might be a cool idea, but it’d be weird to find a million ninjas all running around the first route of the game. They certainly wouldn’t be doing a very good job of sticking to the shadows, as ninjas should. If the team did decide to revisit the Ninja Squirrel design, these ninja sprites were probably not ever actually in the game. We know that Sentret took the spot in the Pokedex previously held by Monja, the Tangela pre-evolution found in Spaceworld ’97. Monja very likely did not survive the reboot of development, and by April 1st, 1999 (our earliest snapshot), Monja’s slot had been completely cleared, only have placeholder stats and the Normal typing. That means that there was nothing in that slot entirely, though Monja's sprite may have briefly persisted. Sentret appears soon after. Sentret (and Furret) gain real stats on April 13th and those get tweaked to their final stats ten days later, April 23rd. To my knowledge (so far), these are the only Pokemon we have which got updated stats in at this time: every other Pokemon added in Era IV either already had stats by April 1st, or got them later, in June or July. That means we can pretty definitively date Sentret and Furret as the dividing line between Pokemon which were mostly done before our first data from the development reboot, and those that were worked on during 1999. Note that Sentret was actively being worked on throughout this period: its sprite, for instance, went through a number of small tweaks. The team obviously wasn’t sure how wide it’s body should be, and they even experimented with a very squished-looking version of the sprite (though I’m not positive that was ever really the actual sprite, or if it was just a failed experiment). From the sprites, it appears that Sentret was based on a Flying Squirrel, but it’s early name implies a different origin. Initially, Sentret was called “Moruten,” which is both a pun on the animal “Marten,” and uses the kanji for Martens for the syllable “ten”. Martens, in case you aren’t up on your furry animal taxonomy, are thin, brown or black furred mammals that are closely related to weasels, to ferrets, or to stoats. They’re all pretty cute, but are only rarely domesticated. The name was probably changed because, while Furret looks a lot like a Marten (and of course its English name is a play on “Ferret”), Sentret looks nothing like one. (A Marten on the left, and a Ferret on the right) The “Moru” part of the name is more interesting, because “Moru” can mean “to guard,” or to protect. It’s final Japanese name, Otachi (Tail weasel) doesn’t make any reference to Sentret’s nature as a guard, but interestingly, the name “Sentret” derives from the word “Sentry,” which has a similar meaning. Sentret’s final Pokedex entries make note of this quirk of it’s personality: Gold Final: A very cautious Pokémon, it raises itself up using its tail to get a better view of its surroundings. (Note: TCRF translates “cautious” to “highly vigilant,” which is likely a better translation). Silver Final: It stands on its tail so it can see a long way. If it spots an enemy, it cries loudly to warn its kind. Crystal Final: When acting as a lookout, it warns others of danger by screeching and hitting the ground with its tail. Interestingly, an early Pokedex entry gives it a different personality, claiming that Sentret is cowardly: July 20th: This cowardly Pokémon raises its tail to see as far away as it can. Of course, when I read these Pokedex entries, and the fact that Sentret is “guarding” something or is a “sentry,” I wonder what it’s guarding. And I think I know the answer: Berries. Ever since Spaceworld ’97, Generation II had added held items as a mechanic. There are numerous items in the data of Spaceworld ’97 that either increase the damage moves of a certain type do, or decrease the damage done by moves of a certain type, so long as your Pokemon is holding the item. However, the held item mechanic wasn’t very developed in that build: no Pokemon are actually holding any of the items, for one, and there are no items that activate in battle. Both of those important dimensions of the held item mechanic were added later. Pokemon actually holding items in the wild only first appeared on July 30th, 1999, when 41 different Pokemon are given held items. Importantly, as TCRF has noted, Sentret and Furret are the only Pokemon holding berries at first, though they are eventually given to other Pokemon. They hold these berries rarely, but for at least one period of development, Sentret had a berry in its common held-item slot, meaning that it had a 25% chance to have a berry when you fought it. My theory is that Sentret and Furret were added into the game as early game Pokemon precisely because they were Pokemon which would hold and eat berries in battle. If the team wanted to teach the player how to use these new held items, have a very early Pokemon consume a berry while you fought it would be an obvious tutorial on how they were used; the fact that catching a Sentret would often lead you to obtaining your first berry would also encourage the player to make use of them, even before the first gym. It also makes sense of Sentret’s lore: if Sentret is really a guard or a sentry, then it was probably just trying to protect its berry stash from trainers encroaching on its territory. By the final game, this doesn’t really come through, given that berries are more commonly held by all sorts of Pokemon. But if this was the original intent of Sentret, then it makes sense of why an early game Pokemon was dropped into the Pokedex so late: the team needed one last mechanic explained, and the old Ninja Squirrel was heavily repurposed to fill that niche. Or not. Sentret could have just been added because the team realized there wasn’t enough diversity on early routes: after all, in the final you can still find Pidgeys and Ratattas, and without Sentret it’d be hard to even know you’re playing a game with new Pokemon. Or it could be the case that the team knew they didn’t want so many baby Pokemon, and Monja’s excision opened up a new slot that got filled with the first idea someone had. It is definitely a hole in my berry theory that Sentret and Furret got added in April but Pokemon didn’t gain held items in the wild until July 30th; Sentret and Furret could have just been convenient already-existing creations to show off the berry mechanic, not created on purpose to show it off. So there are lots of other ways to read the data we have. But enough about Sentret. Let's turn to its adult form, Furret! (Fan art by Amy Walek!) ID X14: FurretThere isn’t actually a lot new when we turn our eyes to the grown up Weasel/Ferret thing. Furret’s design story is basically identical to Sentret’s; they both came into the world at the same time, and were modified at the same time. I do think Furret is pretty cute! If that counts for anything. First of all, Furret, like Sentret, got it’s first set of stats on April 13th, and then got them updated on April 23rd. Its stats are, for the most part, just twenty or thirty point improvements on Sentret’s, though it strangely heavily improves on Sentret’s two worst stats: HP and Speed. In HP’s case, it gets a fifty point boost, going from a pathetic 35 to a respectable 85; in Speed, the ferret goes from an awful 20 in speed (I had no idea flying squirrels were so sluggish!) to 90! I'm not sure why there's this drastic increase in stats. Maybe they wanted to make Sentret especially weak so it wouldn't be a threat on early routes, but wanted to make it viable in the late game if you put work into it. It's early stats, before they were revised on April 23rd, by the way, are a bit odd. While Sentret’s are kind of generic (Mostly 50s and 40s in all stats except speed, which is 55), Furret has an odd 64 in Attack and 58 in defense. I have no idea why they would choose those numbers. If there’s a theory that Sentret is a rework of ID 360, the Ninja Squirrel, then there’s also a reasonable chance that Furret is a rework of ID 377, or the Windsock Fox sprite also from Period 2a. While the Windsock Fox was probably made originally by Sugimori and not by Nishida, everything else I said about ID 360 applies here as well. ID 377 is a remarkably good sprite (unlike 360), and it’s the only other sprite other than ID 360 from Period 2a to not make it into any of the builds of the games. It also has the long, tube-like appearance of Furret, though its face doesn’t quite look like the same sort of woodland creature (most commonly, people read it as a fox). We have no way of knowing for sure if the Windsock Fox is related to Furret; I’m personally less sure of this connection myself, which is why I didn’t include it on the graph I put at the beginning of this entry. But it is possible that, when the team needed a new early game ‘mon, Sugimori looked back at this design and decided to redraw it as something that had a more obvious species connection to Nishida’s flying squirrel sprites she used for Sentret. Like Sentret, Furret went through a couple name changes. It’s first name was “Ninten” which uses the same “ten” that Sentret used that denotes a Marten. However, I have no idea what the “Nin” part means and I can’t help but wonder why it happens to have the same name as the protagonist of Earthbound Zero, who was named after Nintendo. That name was quickly changed to Dakuten—I have no idea what that name means—and finally to “Ootachi” which is similar to Sentret’s final “Otachi” but the long “O” denotes the Japanese word for “Big”. So essentially the two are “Tail Weasel” and “Big Tail Weasel.” The most interesting thing about Furret is its early sprites. First, it looks completely different! This early Furret doesn’t quite look like the tube of fur it’s final design looks like: it’s got a more distinct tail that is thin at the base and resembles a bit of a pom-pom. It’s fur is also not as detailed, and lacks the stripes across its whole body that the final version has. It does, however, have the exact same poses as the final design. My guess is that Sugimori touched up the design right before the end of development, to make it look a little more like a Pokemon and a little less like a generic animal that happens to be in a Pokemon game. I have no idea who did the earlier sprite: it could be Sugimori, who then touched it up himself, or it might, like Sentret, be a rough Nishida design that Sugimori finalized since Nishida was busy with other projects. Obviously, the thing that stands out most about these early sprites is the palette: Furret’s bright pink! That’s usually the thing everyone comments on, but it’s probably not as exciting as you might think. As FrenchOrange was the first to note, Furret’s pink palette may have been a leftover from Gyopin (the Goldeen Pre-evolution). Given that Furret replaced Gyopin in the Pokedex (we see this from the scratchpad data we have), and how the pink palette matches Goldeen, it's likely that the palette comes from a palette given to Gyopin before its removal. Thus, Furret was probably never intended to be pink. The team just didn’t get around to giving it a proper palette until the last couple months of development. This could also explain why the sprite got a pretty heavy rework: Sugimori may have felt that a brown palette didn’t work very well with the old sprite, and may have resprited it to specifically work better with a palette like the one Sentret had. (Thanks to OrangeFrench for the recolored sprite on the left!) The early sprite does look pretty bare and textureless in that palette. In any case, something about the accidental pink palette made an impression, because it did make it into the final games as Furret’s shiny palette! Sort of; the palette isn't exact, but you can see the similarity. If you were ever wondering why Furret had such an out there coloring when you found a shiny one, now you know! Someone on the design team clearly got used to the pink. Anyway, that’s all there is to say about Furret! Onto our next Pokemon! ID X15: SudowoodoSurprise! It’s Sudowoodo! I honestly love Sudowoodo. I loved it as a kid, I love it now, and it’s always one of the first Pokemon I use when it becomes available (It’s an early game beast in Scarlet as long as you make sure to make it remember its level one moves). But what’s up with Sudowoodo? It’s a weird concept and a weird design, and I’m not completely sure how the design team came up with it. First off, the name’s quite clever. In English, Sudowoodo's name is a portmanteau of “Pseudo” and “Wood,” which literally means it’s not wood. A fitting name for a Rock Pokemon that pretends to be a tree! The Japanese name, however, is even better. “Usokkie” is a combination of “Uso,” meaning “false” and “ki,” the word for tree. Bulbapedia also adds that the full name is also a pun: Usokkie looks similar to Usotsuki, which means “liar.” So the name works on multiple levels, and pretty accurately describes what Sudowoodo does. We know that Ken Sugimori designed Sudowoodo, because he said so in an interview about Generation II’s development (even without this interview, the sprites have tons of hallmarks that make this an obvious Sugimori design). Sugimori explained that Sudowoodo was created purposefully as a roadblock Pokemon, and that he asked the scenario designers to add in a part into the story where a Pokemon would block the player’s path. As a tangent, Dr. Lava has pointed out that this makes Sudowoodo the exact opposite of Snorlax design-wise: Snorlax was initially created because the team needed a way to block a path in the map they had already created, while Sudowoodo was made and then the designers found a reason to add in a blocked path. Sudowoodo’s creation—as a new Pokemon that served the same function as Snorlax—strikes me as part of a larger trend in Generation II’s development. As I discussed above, initially the team wanted entirely new HM moves that served the same function as the original HMs; Spaceworld ’97 also had a skateboard the player could use, presumably as a fast-travel option that would replace the bicycle from the first games but serve the same purpose. While most of these ideas got discarded, Sudowoodo seems like an attempt at the same idea. The team could keep things fresh by not reusing Snorlax (though, of course, in the end they did, in the Kanto region of the games), but they could still have the same gameplay of locking locations behind plot progression, and keeping the overall feeling of the gameplay the same. I have no idea why Sugimori settled on the idea of a Pokemon that looks like a Grass-type tree but is actually, secretly, made of stone. It’s a strange concept, stranger still when it turns out you need a Squirtbottle of all things to make it move (I guess since it's weak to water and thus even a squirt hurts it?). There’s some resemblance between Sudowoodo and Bonsai trees (tiny, carefully maintained trees that function as miniature models of much larger trees); in fact, when Sudowoodo got a baby version in Generation IV, it was named Bonsly and designed specifically to look like a Bonsai tree. And of course, one of Sudowoodo's main traits is that it's a false mimicry of something else, which is fitting for a Bonsai tree, which isn't actually the type of tree its mimicking. So I wonder if Sugimori drew inspiration from the idea of a miniature tree that was actually artificially created to resemble something it was not. While all of the above is pretty straightforward, there is something off about Sudowoodo's development. It’s pretty certain that Sudowoodo replaced Kyonpan, the Panda/Vampire Ghost Pokemon from Spaceworld ’97 which had evolved from Norowara, the voodoo doll. Though we don’t have sprites for Kyonpan after Spaceworld ’97, Kyonpan’s sprites do appear on the scratchpads for Sudowoodo, and most interestingly, until July 1999 (even more than a month after it got a sprite!) Sudowoodo is a Ghost-type Pokemon with drastically different stats. The most likely explanation is that Sudowoodo inherited some stats from Kyonpan and the team just didn't have time to give Sudowoodo its own unique stats and typing until July. Still our earliest sprites come from June 1999, so we have no idea if this Pokedex slot used updated Kyonpan's sprites or there was something else there entirely. If this is evidence that Kyonpan survived into the reboot, there’s something suspicious about the data we have. Interestingly, if you compare the stats of this ghostly echo of Kyonpan to Norowara—which, importantly, still existed in the game until at least Spaceworld ’99—then the stats don’t match up at all. Take a look: (These stat tables taken from TCRF) These aren’t the stats of an evolutionary family; Kyonpan’s stats are completely different from Norowara's, and they share BSTs (both have 400, which is low for an evolved form like Kyonpan anyway). In addition, Norowara was, by this point, changed to Ghost/Dark typing, and no Pokemon goes from a dual-type to a single-type upon evolving. There’s also no evolutionary data connecting the two Pokemon. Which means that if Kyonpan survived the 1999 reboot and survived in the slot Sudowoodo took for awhile, it must have undergone quite a bit of changes. Even before Kyonpan was slotted to be removed from the games (as it was, clearly, by June; it’s stats and typing were still in the data, but Sudowoodo’s sprites show that it’s replacement was just a matter of time), it had been severed from Norowara, making them two unique Ghost-type lines. This makes some sense; afterall, Norowara’s design and inspiration had almost nothing to do with Kyonpan's. But that means that for a few months in development, the team was considering having two unique, unrelated, new Ghost Pokemon: one pure Ghost type, one Ghost/Dark. Given that Twinz was also still in the mix at this point, there’s an alternate world where Generation II introduced three original Ghost-types (Four if Girafarig or its evolution had become Ghost). That’s really cool! I would have loved more Ghosts in Generation II. It’s also possible that the Ghost which preceded Sudowoodo wasn’t Kyonpan at all, but a completely original Ghost which existed for a few months after replacing Kyonpan. Given that the pre-Sudowoodo Ghost didn’t share typing or evolution data with Norowara, it could have been so completely redesigned away from Kyonpan that it was an original creation by that point. Who knows; we don’t have sprites going back early enough to check. I’d really love to get a hold of a December 1998 or January 1999 build of the game; alas, we’ve probably gotten everything that’s going to turn up. Of course, Sudowoodo could have been originally designed as a Ghost, but I somehow very much doubt that. After all, how is an incorporeal spectre supposed to block your path? One thing that could help us get a picture of what the pre-Sudowoodo ghost was like would be a glimpse into Sudowoodo’s moveset around May or June, back when it still had the Ghost-typing. I wonder, for instance, if it still had a moveset that was more suited to something like Kyonpan, or if it had already gotten a hold of Rock-type moves. If you have access to this data please let me know what you find! Anyway, by July 18th, Sudowoodo got it’s Rock type, and by July 30th, it got original stats to replace the Ghostly ones it had before. These new stats emphasized Sudowoodo as a physical Pokemon: it had low speed, but high attack and defense. Fitting for a Rock-type. Even better, Sudowoodo became the very first pure Rock-type in Pokemon history! All the Rock-types from Generation I were either dual-type Ground types or water-types, or Aerodactyl. This is almost assuredly because there was no Rock-type through most of Generation I's development, as it only got split from Ground-type very close to release. As a result, any Pokemon who gained Rock-type probably kept their original typings from before Rock existed as well. So it's cool that Generation II finally had a chance to give us a Rock-type with its own identity! Given how much of this period in development was driven by filling existing holes the in Pokemon roster, I wonder if the brief for Sudowoodo was initially to design a pure-Rock type Pokemon and Sugimori came up with the Bonsai aspect of it later. If so, this may have been a funny joke of Sugimori’s: rebelling against Masuda’s directive to create a Rock-type, Sugimori gave him an obvious Grass Pokemon design and then told him, “Don’t worry, it’s actually a Rock-type just pretending.” I wish Sudowoodo was a slightly better Pokemon; unfortunately, I almost always end up replacing it by the end of the game, as its stats are just not good enough to fight the Elite Four. But I adore that it exists. I’m the world’s #1 Kyonpan fan, and I’ll always mourn that we never got that awesome hopping-panda-vampire. But if we had to lose Kyonpan, I’m glad it was replaced by such a winner. (The artist who made this awesome piece is Mazee, or まぜう, and can be found here: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/60077051)
16 Comments
r_n
1/22/2024 08:03:11 pm
My read on Shudo's comments is he came up with the full concept: probably some sleek looking white bird with distinct black markings. As you say he was a writer, not an artist but that also means he'd be pretty good at describing a visual to a team of artists.
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Commenter
1/22/2024 08:11:32 pm
Regarding Ninten: While it might just have been just a silly little pun on Nintendo/the Earthbound player name, "nin" (忍, literally stealth/spying/endurance, which can either be read as shinobi or nin. The word ninja consists of that kanji and then the kanji for person, 者, read as -ja in this case.) is often used as a part of compound words relating to ninjas, such as ninjutsu (ninja techniques/arts), so it could well be a link to the ninja squirrel design.
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Asmorano
1/22/2024 08:16:33 pm
Thanks for the help on the names. I agree with you, Dakuten is not a very interesting pun, but it didn't last long so it was probably just a placeholder.
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Commenter
1/23/2024 12:09:13 am
It doesn't seem to be very well documented (I only found this Italian article documenting it: https://www.pokemonmillennium.net/giochi/224552-le-mosse-scartate-da-pokemon-oro-e-argento/), but when people were going through the G/S source code that was leaked in 2020, they found a list of moves that contained various moves that ended up getting removed. Apparently it's located in mons2\Document\ポケモン金銀\情報開発が請求した資料\金銀技5.3, for those who have the files.
KeithTheGeek
1/22/2024 09:36:17 pm
On the subject of Tyranitar's potential inspirations, the Rock typing, and its name, it might help to look at the Ultra series once again. There are two Kaiju that are known for being made from a modified Godzilla suit. In my opinion, I think Gomess is probably the main inspiration for Tyranitar. You can see it from the back here: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ultra/images/b/b7/Gomess_vs_litra_color.png/
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Asmorano
2/17/2024 06:35:39 pm
Thank you so much for all the Ultraman info. Your first guess, Gomess, does look pretty convincing as a Proto-Tyranitar. It could also be that Tyranitar was designed to be a typical Ultraman Kaiju design, and that they drew from a number of sources rather than one particular design.
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Demian
1/25/2024 03:00:08 am
I noticed that the Microgroup art has two pokeballs in it (The girl holding one and the other illustrated on the boy's shirt), makes me wonder why he'd draw those if it's intended to be “another world, like Pokemon, but not Pokemon.” I don't think he's lying, it's just a bit strange.
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GoldS_TCRF
1/25/2024 06:43:51 pm
Sudowoodo's earliest moveset from the April 3rd file doesn't show any ghost moves, but it's still interesting. Starting from Level 1, it starts with Mimic and learns a new move every 12 levels in the following order: Synthesis, Mega Drain, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf. Ironically, it looks like whoever assigned that moveset mistook Sudowoodo for a grass type! By the July 21st file, it looks like the team caught on, and all of its moves except for Mimic were removed. The next moveset we have from August 16th is identical to the final set.
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Asmorano
2/17/2024 06:32:31 pm
This is so interesting! Does that mean it was originally conceived as a Grass-type before Sugimori had a more interesting idea for it? Or just that the moveset designers were often just working off the look of the Pokemon, and didn't really have much information to go off of. Regardless, that's a really cool find! Thank you!
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GoldS_TCRF
2/18/2024 12:26:43 pm
Not entirely sure on either. Sudowoodo was listed as a Ghost type through the end of April, and the earliest known instance I see of it being changed into a Rock type was in a bug report for a July 11th build. (#495 in the 601-828 xls file). Said bug report asked why Sudowoodo was using the generic Grass-type icon in the selection menu even though it was a Rock type (This is most likely why it got its own icon later on), and why it was able to learn Synthesis, which means that at least some of the grass-type moves were still in its movepool by that point. The developer comment (From Kouji Nishino) states that level-up moves were in the process of being changed, and by the next build, all of its moves besides Mimic were deleted as a temporary measure. Both issues were fully resolved by the August 1st build.
AirikrS
2/6/2024 06:50:13 am
Small detail, but the T-Rex skeleton pitch was for a third movie. It got replaced by spell of the unown, not power of one
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Jennyjams
3/12/2024 10:42:08 pm
This is a bit obscure, but I've always thought that there might be one more possible connection linking the Tyranitar line to Gyaoon. In the Generation I beta backsprites, there's what is believed to be a pre-evolution of Gyaoon sticking out its tongue - and the unfinished Larvitar sprite from Spaceworld '99 is also sticking out its tongue. It's a bit of a stretch, but I find it interesting that the tongue would be a common element between those two.
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Asmorano
4/15/2024 02:28:14 pm
Oh wow, I love this connection! I'll be sure to mention it when we get to Larvitar. You're right, it's a stretch, but it isn't nothing.
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Trip
4/22/2024 06:49:56 am
I know I'm late to this discussion. I was actually rereading Sudowoodo's entry today and something caught my eye:
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Asmorano
5/7/2024 01:27:31 pm
I should always be careful making a proclamation like that: there are so many Pokemon, there's bound to be at least one counterexample to any general statement I make.
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Trip
5/7/2024 02:32:20 pm
Oh, that's clever. I like that idea. What about a possum that "plays dead" by becoming half Ghost type in its middle stage? Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMy name's Aaron George, and I'm both a historian and a fan of Pokemon, especially of development. Reach me at @Asmoranomardic Archives
February 2024
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