Being the original titles in the Pokémon franchise, Pokémon Red and Blue have the most changes by far. These changes date back to the series' earliest days as a concept called Capsule Monsters.
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Capsule Monsters
- Red's prototypical design is referred to as "Yuuichi". Yuuichi resembles Red but has a more basic hat, lacks Anime Hair, has lighter pants with kneepads, and doesn't wear sleeves. He has two different sprites; an early one depicting him as a rougher trainer holding a Poké Ball and whip with shaded-over eyes, and a later sprite depicting Yuuichi standing more neutrally. The shrinking animation that plays after Professor Oak concludes his introduction of the world of Pokémon was originally animated with this sprite in mind, but when the finalized Red design was used in its place, the neutral pose of the previous design can still be seen as a silhouette when the animation begins.
- Red's near-finalized design had a Poké Ball on his hat and straight hair, which is still seen in his final Red and Green sprite but is absent from official art.
- An early overworld sprite sheet notably shows a set of sprites for a female version of the player character. Her design resembles a female trainer seen in various pieces of Capsule Monsters concept art, depicting her wearing a sleeveless shirt and a hat like Red's.
- Capsule Monsters concept art shows a few designs which are likely placeholders, such as unused cat Pokémon, Godzilla-based Pokémon called "Godzillante", a gorilla Pokémon called "Gorillaimo"note , a dragon Pokémon that possibly served as inspiration for Charizard, and a weird round Pokémon called "Kabiin"note . There's also concept art of an early Rhydon with a spiked shell on its back, a Lapras without its ears (and a horn on its nose), Blastoise without cannons, and a reptilian creature fighting what looks like a Gengar.
- Several early sprites from this era depict many Pokémon with designs both slightly and radically different then those seen in the final, such as:
- Rhydon lacking the drill-motif with its horn, which can also be seen on an early logo for the game.
- A significantly more awkward and monstrous looking Clefairy, who was intentionally cutened up for the final.
- A bird known as "Omuomu" who likely became Spearow, but shares design elements with both it and the Pidgey line.
- An early Ivysaur that more closely resembles its evolution, Venusaur.
- Lickitung without the striped pattern on it's torso and a more forked tongue.
- Grimer and Gengar with closed mouths.
- A much smoother Rhyhorn, possibly showing it wasn't yet covered in rocky armor, which makes sense as typing hadn't been conceived yet.
- The aforementioned earless Lapras.
- A much more obviously kirin-inspired Arcanine, with hooves instead of paws and the early name of "Wing". It was very likely going to be a legendary Pokémon, as it's referred to as such in the final games Pokédex and was seen with the legendary birds briefly in the Anime's second episode.
- A very different version of Gyarados which closer resembles an eyeless leech or worm with antenna and small limbs. Interestingly, comments from Ken Sugimori's twitter reveal the rival was originally supposed to be a Gyarados trainer named "Gyaro".
- Shellder with an early version of Cloyster's sprite.
- Tentacool, here known as "Ambler", seen with significantly more tentacles and a more visible squid beak.
- Scyther going from a dragon with mantis-like features to a mantis with dragon-esque elements.
- Capsule Monsters era concept art shows a bald man working at a proto-Pokémart. This man resembles a man from the Game Freak game Quinty.
- Concept art depicts eggs and newborn Pokémon. Despite this, breeding wouldn't be utilized until Gold and Silver.
- Pokémon called "Firefly", "Green Dragon", and "Power King" are mentioned but not depicted, though it's possible that these were names of generic example Pokémon rather than any specific creatures.
- Early concept art for Gastly depicted it as made completely of gas, and as much larger than a human trainer. Its eyes also resembled those of a Koffing.
- Originally there were no elemental typings, no evolutions, and no starters. While typings and evolution would be added roughly midway through development, the internal index shows starters would take significantly longer to be conceptualized; while Ivysaur was designed very early on, Bulbasaur and Venusaur wouldn't be created until much later in development while the Charmander and Squirtle lines were some of the last Pokémon developed period.note
- It was also planned for there to be monsters that could not be caught, only fought as enemies.
- Pokémon were going to be regularly bought and sold at shops. Each creature would have a base value using gold as the currency instead of Pokédollars.
- There was going to be a charisma stat tied to the player which would determine if they would be able to capture/recruit wild Pokémon. Rather than simply fight them with another Pokémon, the player themselves would interact directly with them. The Safari Zone mechanics are a remnant of this original system.
- The developers considered letting the player character themselves fight alongside their Pokémon, but thought the player fighting on their own defeated the purpose of having Pokémon.
- Inns were going to be a major aspect that appeared in nearly every town. They would have provided healing before being seemingly replaced by Pokémon Centers. Curiously, Pokémon Centers double as inns for trainers in the anime.
- The map for Capsule Monsters
◊ shows a city in the sea south of Celadon City labelled as "C", likely related to an unused fly location in the game which crashes the game when selected. - According to old map designs, Celadon was going to have the harbor and Vermilion would have had the department store. There's also data for a scrapped town which has the infamous truck sprite on it, either speculated to be the "C" town mentioned above or an intermediate version of Pallet Town. Route 20 does not have the Seafoam Islands, instead having a tower which may have been a lighthouse. Route 21 had seven small islands on it, possibly an early attempt at the Sevii Islands. Route 23 is a winding mountain path with no sign of The Pokémon League or Victory Road, instead having a cave at the top. This was likely repurposed for Mt. Silver in the sequel.
- The earliest map design for Pallet Town does not have Professor Oak's lab. He's also referred to as a teacher in the files, meaning he may have originally been involved with Viridian's school.
- There is an interesting sprite dating back to the Capsule Monsters era that is consistently seen in most early overworld sprite sheets next to the default "monster" sprite. It seems to depict a masked character of some kind, though actual details relating to this character are sparse.
Pokémon Red, Green, and Blue
- According to a 1996 Japan-exclusive handbook called the Pocket Monsters Encyclopedia, the Pokémon games were originally going to be set on an alternate version of Earth — hence the reference to real-world events and animals like Indian elephants. The early anime episodes occasionally make references to the handbook, such as including a descendant of one of the first scientists to study Pokémon.
- In an interview, Satoshi Tajiri said that at an early point in development, the team decided they were not satisfied with the games' story. He then spent about six months completely rewriting it by himself. Exactly what this original storyline was and why the development team did not like it is unknown.
- Cut characters and trainer classes:
- Student was either an early Lass or an early Cooltrainer.
- Shinjuku Jack, modeled after Jacky Bryant from Virtua Fighter.
- Firefighters were ultimately cut and had their index slot given to Psychics. Firefighters wouldn't appear as a trainer class until Pokémon Sun and Moon.
- There's a trainer called Silph Chief who used what would become Blaine's final design. Blaine's original design was army-inspired, and it can still be found in the original games' manual, as well as the anime. The Silph Chief was intended to be found and battled in the Safari Zone, in the strange technological room where the NPC who gives you Surf can be found in the final.
- Yujirou is a young boy. His original sprite resembles a Youngster and has a "C" on it (for "Capsule Monsters"). His later redesign lacks a hat and has a badge on it, and Ken Sugimori's gym leader sketches show him labeled "1" before Brock, suggesting he would be battled in Viridian Gym early in the game.
- Ichitarou is a prototypal version of Brock. He's a generic boy with a plain shirt and slightly spiky hair.
- Junior is a little boy who wears a cap with a badge on it. He could be renamed and shares some visual similarities with Blue, with early name data suggesting a relation between the two.note
- Red's father was going to be a defined character, specifically he originally took the place of the Silph Co. Scientist who gives you a Lapras.
- Professor Oak was originally going to be an opponent in Red and Blue, using the last Pokémon neither the player nor rival chose and overall having a team stronger than the champion.note
- Blue was going to have unique dialogue for each encounter if the player lost.
- The "glitch Pokémon" MissingNo. exists 39 times in the code for the original games. MissingNo. is actually the remnant of 39 cut Pokémon. Pokémon designer Shigeki Morimoto allegedly stated that there were originally meant to be 190 Pokémon in the original games. The same people who discovered this information also discovered that the series was meant to end after Gold and Silver. Most of these Pokémon have been discovered, but three are still unknown.
- "Omega" resembles a robotic kaiju. Mew overwrote it in the final product.
- "Gyaōn" (originally called "Gyaasu", and named after the onomatopoeia for Godzilla's roar in Japanese) looks a lot like Tyranitar. It originally had Ivysaur's cry. There's also a Pokémon that seems to be its pre-evolution, and bears some resemblance to the iconic substitute doll.
- Raichu originally had an evolution called "Gorochu". It had fangs sticking out of its mouth, a horn on its head, and looked like a Raijin. According to a developer interview, it was removed for balance reasons and due to a lack of data space.
- There's a Pokémon that looks exactly like a large male Nidoran. However, it doesn't appear to be either Nidorino or Nidorina, who were created much later in development.
- Barunda is literally just a balloon. No clear images of its front sprite have been found, but it apparently had a face. Jigglypuff replaced it.
- Buu is a yeti-like Pokémon that bears some resemblance to Jynx. It's inspired by Woo from Ultraman.
- There is an unused deer Pokémon with a Kangaskhan-like face.
- There's an unnamed elephant Pokémon with four tusks.
- Crocky is an unused crocodile Pokémon. Its original design, as briefly shown in a bio manga about Satoshi Tajiri, had hair, however its sprite is a later design that features spikes instead.
- There are two squid Pokémon, but it's unknown if they're simply similar looking or if they share an evolutionary family.
- Cactus is, as its name implies, just a simple cactus Pokémon with a mean expression.
- Jagg is an unused hammerhead shark/swordfish Pokémon.
- Zubat originally had a pre-evolution. It was a simple-looking bat with a tiny little body and oversized wings.
- There are two dark-colored fish Pokémon, possibly based on either flying fish or betta fish.
- Mikon is an unused Vulpix pre-evolution. It has three white-tipped tails. This explains Vulpix's Pokédex entries mentioning Vulpix being born with white tails. Mikon was later going to be reused in Gold and Silver but was scrapped again.
- There are two cut Pokémon with what appear to be Japanese-style topknots, though it's difficult to tell what they're meant to be with how little their low-resolution back sprites actually show. The most common speculation is that they are frogs of some kind, which may be supported by an early sprite of Politoed from Gold and Silver resembling them.
- There is a three-stage evolutionary line that appear to be vaguely reptilian in nature.
- Psyduck was meant to have a three-stage evolutionary family. In between Psyduck and Goldduck was a Psyduck-looking Pokémon with a darker palette.
- Konya is a Meowth pre-evolution. It was scrapped, was going to appear in Gold and Silver, but was scrapped again. Between the two designs, the original Konya had a longer, straighter tail. It was also larger than Meowth (because Meowth was originally larger than it ended up being).
- There is a cut Magneton-looking Pokémon without its magnets. It is found before Magnemite in the index, meaning it was probably an early attempt at a Magneton pre-evolution that got scrapped.
- Marowak originally had an evolution. The evolution is depicted holding a baby Cubone, similarly to how Kangaskhan has its baby in a pouch.
- Gyopin is an unused goldfish Pokémon that would have evolved into Goldeen. It was planned to be added in Gold and Silver as a baby Pokémon, but was scrapped again there.
- Kotora and it's evolution Raitora are round tiger Pokémon with an electric theme. A third evolutionary relative is also present and looks like a much more traditional tiger in comparison. Kotora and Raitora were later reused for Gold and Silver as a two-stage line before ultimately being scrapped.
- Puchicorn is a unicorn Pokémon that would have evolved into Ponyta. Yet another pre-evolution that was considered to be brought in as a baby Pokémon in Gold and Silver before being cut for good.
- Wartortle's evolution was not originally Blastoise, instead bearing a much closer resemblance to Wartortle. Blastoise was part of a separate, two-stage family. For the final game they combined the families, ditching Blastoise's preevo and Squirtle original final stage. This explains the oddity of the Squirtle line gaining ears and a bigger tail in its second stage, only for them to shrink and change shape completely in its third stage.
- Changed moves:
- Flash was originally named "Squid Ink".
- Substitute was originally named "Cast-off Cicada Shell".
- There are three cut Fighting moves called "Punch", "Upper Cut", and "BaiBai Punch".
- Hydro Pump was originally named "Hydro Jet".
- "50Man Volt" is a cut stronger version of Thunderbolt.
- "Mega Fire" is a cut Fire move.
- There's a cut move just called "Honoo" (Fire). It made it into the trading-card game and was translated as "Flare".
- Rock Throw was originally named "Rock Slide", a name later given to a stronger Rock-type move.
- Redesigned Pokémon:
- Early official art depicts Pikachu and Charizard's earlier designs. Pikachu is much larger and has a white spot on its stomach while Charizard has a larger lower jaw.
- The original Red and Green website circa 1997 featured unused designs for Dragonair, Weedle, Poliwag, and Poliwrath. The most noticeable changes are that Dragonair has a striped back, Weedle is lacking stingers, Poliwag has a short tail instead of a fin, and Poliwrath is wearing a King's Rock-like crown.
- Pikachu is based on a squirrel. Originally it was a vertically long daifuku rice confection with ears. As said before, a design with a white stomach existed prior to its finalized design. This design can be seen in early promotional art and (more finalized and smaller) in a 1996 New Years card distributed internally at Game Freak.
- The prototypical Seel, Pauwau, had a black face and spots on its back.
- A Bird type was originally planned and still exists in the final game data. It may have been replaced with Flying, or cut for being redundant (the four bird families in the game all ended up as Normal/Flying). NPCs still refer to them as Bird Pokémon instead of Flying, and MissingNo. is shown to have a Bird type as well. This is also evident in the Japanese names of Flying-type moves in the game, several of which refer to birds specifically in some way (for instance, Sky Attack is God Bird), and in the fact that wind-based moves like Gust and Razor Wind were or are classified as Normal-type rather than Flying.
- Originally, Mew was not planned to be programmed into the games as an actual Pokémon at all and was only supposed to be referenced in Pokémon Mansion texts. Shigeki Morimoto slipped Mew into the code just two weeks before the games were finished.
- Most of Blue's sprites in RGB depict him with an Off-Model haircut, implying that was an earlier design that the devs didn't remove. Yellow and the remakes fixed it.
- A lot of the early official artwork depicts Poké Balls as breaking in two when Pokémon are released. This dates back to Capsule Monsters.
- According to the official website circa 1997, Weedle originally evolved into a Pokémon called "Kasanagi" and then an unnamed Pokémon. Noticeably, the last evolution resembles a cockroach, not a wasp.
- Clefairy was the original planned mascot of the franchise, however the popularity of Pikachu led to it being the mascot. Predating both, Rhyhorn was seemingly a mascot as it was featured on two different early logos.
- Pokémon trainers were originally called "dealers".
- Agatha's original team consisted of the Eeveelutions and a Tauros.
- Giovanni was originally a Flying-type trainer, which is why the Earth Badge looks like a feather. He also originally wasn't a gym leader. The Viridian Gym would have been the first gym in the game with a different, younger leader named Yujirou (who looked kind of similar to Giovanni).
- The various trainer classes had different Pokémon earlier in development. For examples, Youngsters used Bulbasaurs a lot.
- Coding indicates that badges were at one point supposed to be items in your bag that could be used outside of battle similarly to the Hidden Machine moves, perhaps as a replacement for them.
- Present in the coding is an unnamed item which acted similarly to the Surf HM. Prototype data names this item specifically as "Lapras", likely meaning field moves were originally handled by item versions of specific Pokémon.
- In Red and Blue/Green, you were originally going to be able to pull out your Pokédex in the middle of battle (like Ash Ketchum does in the anime) to refresh your memory on a Pokémon's type or see if you've caught it yet. But due to glitches, this was removed and left out of later games. They eventually settled on adding an icon to a wild Pokémon's health bar if you've already caught one of that species in later generations.
- Trainer battles were originally going to trigger every time you entered line-of-sight instead of just the first time. This was because wild Pokémon were not going to be fought, but instead interacted with by the player character. Future games have this feature but only with certain trainer classes (such as Breeders).
- HMs were originally normal TMs that could be purchased and sold just like the others. Looking at the index numbers of the HMs also reveal that there's an empty slot between Fly and Surf, with the source code directly naming this unused field move as "Mega Fire", an early version of Fire Blast, but doesn't specify what it's function would be.
- The English localization team considered making up Pokémon more muscular under the impression that Americans might not take well to "cute monsters".
- Many Pokémon had different names planned for them in the English translation. These changes range from minor (i.e. Pidgey was going to be Pidge), slightly different versions of their original names (i.e. Kakuna was Kokoon, a corruption of its Japanese name Cocoon), completely different names (i.e. Tentacruel was Man O' War), or direct translations of their original Japanese (i.e. Chansey was going to be Lucky).
- There were plans for Pokémon games to have multiple save files, but due to game space constraints, the developers were forced to choose either having multiple save files or being able to nickname your Pokémon. The developers chose being able to nickname your mons and haven't looked back since.
- On top of that, there were also plans to let the player name each species of Pokémon and write their Dex entries.
- The gym coach was originally named "Danpei", after the coach from Ashita no Joe. He even had dark skin and wore an eyepatch like him, and was likely changed for copyright reasons.
- The early designs of the gyms were all built off the same template with minor differences. Internally they are referred to as "Dojos" and seem to have focused more on the player defeating trainers in order to challenge the leader.
- In addition to the boys playing Game Boys, there were overworld sprites for boys playing Virtual Boys in early versions of the game.
- Blastoise's original name was "Caravaggio".
- Concept art shows that Erika was originally the fifth gym leader. Her early design shows her wearing a funeral-style kimono, which along with her Poké Ball mysteriously floating suggests that she may have originally been a Ghost-type trainer. She ended up being the fifth Gym Leader Ash fought in the anime, but likely only because he fought Sabrina much earlier.
- The Pokémon League HQ was once a tower with eight floors, each based on an earlier "dungeon" in the game, followed by battling the Elite Four and Champion in one room which became Lance's in the final game.
- Silph Co. would have contained a gauntlet in which the player would fight three trainers followed by a Gym Leader on each floor, similar to the Gym Leader Castle in Pokémon Stadium. There were going to be wild Mewtwo on the top floor.
- Individual mons retain their catch rate after you capture them. In the final game, this isn't used for anything (though if you trade them to and from a Gen II game those bits will be repurposed to preserve their hold item), but its inclusion suggests that at some point, the possibility was considered for enemy trainers to be able to steal your mons, with some method you'd use to mitigate this by reducing their catch rate. Or, admittedly, it might have been intended for something else entirely — the existence of the data is all we have to work with, after all.
- Unlike most Pokémon in Red and Blue, Lickitung learns multiple moves by level-up below the minimum level where the player can obtain it: it can only be obtained at level 23 or highernote , but learns Stomp at level 7 and Disable at level 15. The two trainers who use it also have it at rather high levels. This suggests that at some point, it was either going to be encountered in the wild, or be found in the hands of an early opponent (the latter might also explain its oddly low statline).
- Moltres was originally found in the Cerulean Cave, which originally had a completely different design, but it was cut and moved to Victory Road. There it was going to have its own separate room, which also ended up getting cut.
- After Moltres was moved out of Cerulean Cave, Zapdos (who was not yet found in the Power Plant) was considered to be the legendary of that location, as evidenced by a comment in the first floor's early script file reading "Thunder Live Dungeon".note
- At one point, there was to be a special music track for link trading, that would be played on both Game Boy systems as a duet. The data for it still exists in an incomplete form in the final game; this is the well-known Dummied Out music track which was originally speculated to be town music. More information, as well as a restored version you can listen to, is available at The Cutting Room Floor.
- An NPC's Spearow was originally going to be nicknamed Britney in the English localization. For likely legal reasons, it was shot down by Nintendo and renamed Speary. Other localization 'what could haves' are detailed here.
- There's unused trade data for an NPC requesting a Butterfree for their Beedrill.
- Instead of releasing two versions of the game with slight differences between them, there was going to be just one game that procedurally generated aspects of the world and Pokémon selection. This would have been based on the player's Trainer ID number, with 65535 possible outcomes. The idea proved far too difficult to program with the knowledge and technology of the time, and executives worried that it'd be difficult to convey the gimmick to potential buyers, so it was retooled into the well-known two predesigned versions signaled by the color of the Game Pak. Even after dropping the procedural generation, there was a brief period where five to seven color versions were considered, but the cartridge manufacturers were resistant to the idea of making so many minor variants on what they saw as essentially the same product.
- The original paired versions in Japan was Red and Blue just like the internationals. However, Venusaur was thought to be more appealing than Blastoise.
Pokémon Yellow
- The source code for Yellow mentions a Pokémon Pink that was never released. There's also art of Pikachu and Clefairy together, suggesting the starter in that version would have been Clefairy, similar to the Pocket Monsters gag manga.
- Various Pokémon were originally intended to use Pokémon Speak, many of which, if they had an English voice, retained their Japanese voice. In the final product, only Pikachu does. This is likely because, as the leaked files show, they were insanely bitcrushed to the point of outright Sensory Abuse.
Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen
- LeafGreen was originally considered to be retitled to "WaterBlue" for the international releases to match how Red and Blue were the versions released outside of Japan instead of Red and Green. However, it was ultimately decided that the international releases would be titled the same as the Japanese release, as the Leaf in the title was supposed to symbolize peace in a world of friendly competition (not to mention it would have been expensive to redesign the box art).
- The Pokémon Sun and Moon source code leak contains a list of all Pokémon games released up to that point. Interestingly, after FireRed and LeafGreen (which are 4 and 5 respectively), the list jumps straight ahead to 7, which is HeartGold. This suggests that another version, possibly a remake of Yellow, was planned for the GBA but scrapped.
