Pokemon: Sinnoh Remakes!

Well, y'all wanted it, y'all got it! Sinnoh remakes are coming, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. I can't say that I'm surprised! It's not something that really makes me go super-duper excited, and I'm honestly not sure if I'm going to buy this. I thought I would be all over the Link's Awakening remake but I haven't even bought that game yet, and it took me a considerable amount of time to even begin playing Let's Go Pikachu when it came out. It's certainly more of a 'me' problem, though -- I know lots of people are just happy to have this on principle, so I am certainly very, very happy for the crowd out there that wants it. Sinnoh is a gorgeous region, and I put in hundreds of hours into my copy of Platinum. 

That said, I am happy that this isn't actually a Let's Go remake for sure. Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee does a lot of things right aesthetically. It's a pretty game to look at! Walking wild Pokemon! It's also a horrible game to actually play because there's no wild battles, which meant grinding was an utter chore. Cutting out some features from the original game -- the Safari Zone being my biggest complaint -- is also not a good thing in my books. So I'm definitely happy that BD/SP are going to be apparently 'faithful' remakes. Good, so no fugly Galar stadiums are going to infiltrate my Sinnoh. 

It's going to have Link's Awakening remake style overworld graphics, which... I'm not going to lie, it's actually kinda cute. Lots of people are screaming bloody murder at this, though, but honestly, I don't care for it? I just want the game to be enjoyable, I think, is all. I do hope that they give us just a wee bit more content, otherwise I'm... I don't think I'm particularly super-excited about this one? It's like expected at this point. I guess now I know why they added a bunch of features into OR/AS back when they were hyping it up. Things like new megas, random new NPC's and the Delta Episode really worked wonders to give a bit of an extra. 

Coming out of left field and surprising absolutely everybody is Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The game itself, I mean. The concept of the game? "Breath of the Wild, but Pokemon"? Yeah, that's not something that surprises me at all. Sword and Shield already has that proof-of-concept prototype going on, and this game looks neat!

No one expected this. All the rumours (and admittedly, I wasn't looking that hard) were talking about a potential Detective Pikachu or Conquest remake/sequel; and for me personally a Pokemon Ranger or Pokemon Colosseum remake/sequel would be most welcome -- but with them already having the (very pretty) Pokemon Snap for Switch? I didn't think two side-game remakes in a row is likely. Let's Go Johto is the other huge contender, too... but who expected this? Not me, for sure. 

That said, Sword and Shield did kind of burn me by feeling so incomplete, both from a storytelling perspective and as a region. So I'm still heading into this with a bit of skepticism. And, hell, even Breath of the Wild still rubs me the wrong way, by being a great standalone game but kind of a disappointment as part of the Zelda franchise -- that's what I'm afraid of. That this thing is going to entirely eclipse the original gameplay mechanics of the Pokemon franchise. Thankfully, we're at least still having traditional battles, so we're not abandoning that, at least. 

The trailer we're seen... it's kinda cool, I guess, though not the most impressive thing out there. The grass is prettier than Sw/Sh, but the movement kinda looks a bit stilted, and you just know that there's no way they can get even half of the existing Pokemon into this engine. Honestly, with two years after Sword and Shield, they better have taken all the XY models and polished it up for Switch. Nintendo, you get a pass for one generation if you need the time to do the models. Make it happen for Generation IX. 

It's not all negativity, though. If the game's good, then it's good! And from the looks of it, the concept of the game -- a feudal Japan prequel style about ancient researchers in Sinnoh, running around with ancient Pokeballs? Plus anything featuring Arceus in game canon is 100% welcome as far as I'm concerned. The grasslands and mountains are honestly whatever, every other game out there can do that already, but I do like what little cities and beaches that we get. We know so little about the game's story, but the little we get in the premise I actually do like. And honestly, Sinnoh and Unova are two regions where I feel there's a huge minefield of opportunity for a 'prequel set in the distant past'.

And the fact that the starters of this region are Cyndaquil, Rowlet and Oshawott (three very good boys -- and perhaps, not coincidentally, three that are still unavailable in Sw/Sh, so very hopeful that the next generation will have all the Pokemon eventually) is also something that took me off-guard. If nothing else, again, I do appreciate that we're going to get more variety out there. Again, I'm not going to expect much just so I don't get my hopes crushed -- it's probably just going to be the Sinnoh pokedex and a bunch of extras.

So yeah, this game (and the new Pokemon Snap, which looks flat-out gorgeous) is pretty cool. Someone put this game as something akin to Colosseum and Gale of Darkness; which are ground-breaking graphics engines for the generation that they debuted in, which I don't think is an unfair comparison, actually! I feel like marketing this as an ambitious side-game is a pretty good thing. Personally, I'm not going to hype myself up, because this could have the potential to be very good or be underwhelming, but by virtue of being something new and unexpected? Yeah, not bad, Nintendo. Not bad. 

Kamen Rider Saber E21-22 Review: The Reason To Fight

Kamen Rider Saber, Episode 21-22

Episode 21: Shine the Best, Full Colour

Another pretty simple pair two-parter, and... I'm pretty happy, honestly. So much of Saber is moving at a non-breakneck-pace recently and I'm so much happier to enjoy these episodes. I also like that each episode is starting to have a proper focus on one of the secondary characters without having to rely on special point-five episodes to actually give us the scenes we need to be invested in them. 

This episode's focus, sort of, is Daishinji, who gets a nice flashback to his mentor talking to him about what swords are forged for, and after finding Touma's sword lacking last episode, this episode has him find it in Touma. Touma and Mei, meanwhile, are going around investigating the disappearances, and it's interesting that we don't actually get any immediate resolution to all the missing and Megiddo'd wives, husbands, children and parents. After so many recent Kamen Rider shows have gone out of their way to be without casualties, this one was pretty surprisingly mature about it. 

Daishinji confronts Touma, talking about how if he doesn't get the weight of sacrifice and saving people, he has no right to wield Flameblade Rekka. It's a pretty cool sequence, with Slash needing to be 'convinced' by the blade. I also like that the older Ogami is also there to observe, and how he and Mei discuss about the difference between wielding a blade and becoming a swordsman. Ultimately Touma's desires to fight and protect the people end up making his blade 'resound' and while he seemingly lost the fight against Daishinji (he destransformed early), Daishinji is satisfied. Realizing that Touma has the potential to be the swordsman that his mentor taught him about, Daishinji full-on leaves Sword of Logos to help Touma. Which, honestly, is something that makes sense particularly with Daishinji's recent screentime. Plus, this also gives Touma's heroism some actual meat -- I don't think I'm exaggerating when I'm saying that Touma's motivations is murky and generically heroic in the first dozen episodes or so. He's still generically heroic, but at least we double down on that and actually make it a very strong moment. The simple act of him going and meeting the relatives of people he doesn't know and failed to safe, and that this fact weighs on him? That's a pretty good moment. 

Meanwhile, the Megiddo Three make a brand-new combined monster, the Charybdis Meggido, out of our victims-of-the-week, twins that compete in speed-eating contests. We don't see much of the twins, but only Charybdis when it starts rampaging and eating random construction vehicles. Saber gets eaten by Charybdis, leading to the debut of Kamen Rider Saikou's X-Swordman form, which... finally fills in that 'Shadow' body with bright comic-book panels. Which, frankly, is something that I should have seen coming with Saikou's obsession with his Not-X-Men comic book. In one of the more fun uses of a suit design ever, apparently with 'full colour goes to arm', Saikou moves all of his coloured parts (and presumably his power) to one limb. 

The episode ends with a relatively truncated ending after Saikou blows up Charybdis, and Daishinji ends up agreeing to work with Touma. A fun little new-power-up debut, but ultimately I do think that the meat of the content here is the Touma/Daishinji moments. 

__________________________________________________

Episode 22: Nevertheless, I Want to Save People

This time around, it's Ogami's turn to defy the organization! I still think that Sword of Logos turning against Touma is kind of rushed and out of nowhere, but it's neat to see them slowly realizing that this Reika chick isn't quite trustworthy. Touma and Mei goes off to investigate the twin-eaters, while we get a hilarious and very meme-able scene of Daishinji's attempts to 'investigate' the living sword Yuri. Including one where he jumps to the air to dive after Yuri, and talking about his 'throbbing' desire. Oh, Daishinji. 

The surviving twin begs Touma to save her sister, and we do get a little sub-plot about the victim. It's a small detail about how the twins think they're worthless without their gimmick; Touma gives them a pep talk about individuality; and at the end of the episode they decide to actually fight for themselves as individuals. It's simple, it takes up maybe a minute full of total screentime, but that adds so much more weight to us caring about these victims-of-the-week!

Ogami gets a nice little moment with his kid, telling the little boy that Touma has a reason that he has to fight apart from Sword of Logos. Ogami's own reason is also reiterated -- he's here to protect the next generation. Which is why he ends up confronting Touma. Always cool to see the Buster sword, and Touma ends up taking a finisher to the face and gets buried in rock and rubble. Touma stands up and holds his sword anyway, still determined to "save Remi-san", and even goes unconscious in the middle of it. Pretty damn cool moment for Touma! And an interesting view into Ogami's mind, I think? He's basically an old-school 'honourbound' warrior of sorts, but he's also open-minded to not completely beat up Touma. 

Ogami steals King of Arthur (I think?) and gives it to the organization... then Mami-Charybdis ends up attacking and consuming Remi, and the two fuse together. Then we get the monster rampaging part of the week! We get a three-way fight between Charybdis, Storious, Slash, Kenzan and Saikou. Apparently, the gimmick here is that the two humans are going to fuse together, and that combined mind is going to cause the Sword of Light's separation technique to be impossible. 

Poor Rintarou looks the most conflicted as he tries his best to convince himself that 'there's no choice to cut them down, right?' because he's a good egg deep within, but he's also so unwilling to believe that the organization is evil. Touma gives a speech to the sisters, allowing them to break free on their own. He does a slash while un-transformed, Saikou frees the sisters with 'Full Colour Goes To Leg', and destroys Charybdis. Again, the remaining Logos-loyalists (Ogami's basically converted, isn't he?) bugger off, and I'm interested to see who gets to join Team Touma next. 

Again, these two are pretty solid. The whole 'each swordsman gets convinced by Touma' bit is pretty fun, but I will still admit that we are losing a fair bit by already having huge scenes showing them all being buddy-buddy friends earlier in the season and the rather rushed attempt to show the supposed betrayal. Still, some great moments for Touma here for sure!

Random Notes:

• So as the opening to episode 21 shows, Yuri and Tassel can meet each other randomly. I'm still waiting for Tassel to be relevant, honestly. 
• We get an actually pretty animated sequence in 21 showing the war of the swords and the creation of Sword of Logos. Nothing we couldn't already infer, but one that's pretty nice to have spelled out. 
• Did Storious's human form always had that ridiculously long lock of hair? I've only noticed it watching these episodes! 
• Desast, apparently, was born similarly to Charybdis! A random almost-throwaway line from Legeiel and Zooius mentions that. I like that little detail. 
• Very Ninnin-Comic vibes from the Saikou comic form, and the fact that part of the colour moves around has some vague Faiz vibes, too.
• A bit subtle and nowhere quite as dramatic as Touma or Daishinji, but I do like the little moment of Yuri having his own reason to fight -- he still wants to save the world, but now he wants to save the people in it too. Not quite as dramatic but still nice that he gets a small moment in the middle of all this. 

Series Review: Kamen Rider Drive

Kamen Rider Drive [2014-2015]

"OKAY! Start your engine!"

Insert your own "Kamen Driver" joke here. Haha, this Kamen Rider rides a car instead of a motorbike, how is he a Kamen Rider, haha. I mean, after we've gotten an oni Kamen Rider, one whose sidecar turns into a giant robot, Kone that rides a bike attached to a time-travelling train, one whose bike transforms into a vending machine, and Kamen Rider Accel, who just straight-up turns into a bike... is a car that much different? Drive isn't even the first Kamen Rider to use a car, that honour goes to Black RX. Post-Double very few of these Kamen Riders really use their motorbikes anyway.

Kamen Rider Drive is released in 2014, right after Gaim, and... and it's a show that I actually ignored for the longest time. Not that I dislike it or anything, but I just wasn't motivated to watch it. I saw the Drive cast both in the crossover movies for Gaim and Ghost when I went through those two series, and... I just wasn't particularly enthused with it. The show itself, though, was pretty fun when I eventually got to it. Drive was the final 'Neo-Heisi' show that I watched, I believe, either this or OOO. And... and for the most part, I don't have much of an impression either way for Drive. I certainly like it, but not enough to sing praises about it like I do some of my favourites. For the most part, what made Drive work for me are the strength of its secondary characters -- Shijima Go/Mach, Chase, and especially near the end of the show, the three primary Roidmudes Heart, Brain and Medic. Not that the main cast are terrible or unlikable! They're fun, they just... don't really leave much of an impression on me, sorry. 

Kamen Rider Drive's vibe is a fair bit more sci-fi inspired compared to the two series directely preceding it (Gaim and Wizard) as well as the one immediately after it (Ghost), and I do like the amount of world-building in this cop show. Because, yes, Drive's whole gimmick is that it is also supposed to be like a Japanese cop show... something those subtleties and parodies fly over most non-Japanese audience's head. Like me. And I acknowledge that it's a me problem and not the show's problem, but it does make a lot of the police-department scenes feel a lot more bland. 

The show's premise is pretty fun, since it involves one of those "there was a huge event prior to the beginning of the show", something that other series like Agito, Zero-One, Wizard, Kabuto and Build all manage to utilize to a great degree. In Drive's case, it's an incident called the 'Global Freeze', an incident where all time seemed to slow down while mysterious artificial robotic lifeforms called Roidmudes wreaked havoc in the city, only to be stopped by a mysterious figure called a Kamen Rider. And a bunch of sentient toy cars called Shift Cars. Our hero, police officer Tomari Shinnosuke, was investigating a case and the Global Freeze caused him to injure his partner during the whole time-freezing thing. 

And a good chunk of the show's early episodes focuses a bit on this. Shinnosuke's whole deal is that he's lost his motivation and is spending so much of his time just not doing anything. Or, to put it simply, he's "lost his drive" to do anything. As part of the Special Crimes Unit, Shinnosuke and his partner, the more no-nonsense lady Shijima Kiriko, end up being thrust into the return of the monstrous Roidmudes. With no way to fight the 'heavy acceleration' phenomenon caused by the presence of the Roidmudes, Shinnosuke ends up encountering a sentient, talking belt, who contains the digitized brain of the scientist Krim Steinbelt (what an ironic comic book superhero name), or, as we learn to call him, Belt-san. As an atoner who was one of the co-creators of the Roidmudes, Belt-san allows Shinnosuke access to him as a transformation belt, but also to the Shift Cars, as well as the powerful car whose parts can turn into Kamen Rider Drive's weapons, the Tridoron 3000. And thus was born Kamen Rider Drive. It's just a bit of a shame that after the initial "I got my drive back" storyline, he's essentially relegated to the relatable generic hero role. That does make him play off Kiriko, Go, Chase and Heart very well, but it also means that I am really struggling to think of what Shinnosuke is like a person. 

There are a bunch of other supporting characters, but they are mostly one-note and the show focuses primarily on Shinnosuke and Kiriko as they investigate the creation of the Roidmudes, the Global Freeze, and take on the 108 Roidmudes, all of which seek to achieve some 'promised number' to be the dominant species on Earth. The early episodes also have the idea that every single Shift Car is alive and sentient as they fly around the screen on edited-out strings, and you even have two-parters involving little Hot Wheels cars having an angsty police drama while the actors hold and talk to these tiny cars. It's an interesting gimmick, but they dropped it entirely around halfway through, something that I felt was a bit odd. At least in Ghost, they stuck with the idea that each collectible toy is also a character in its own right. The heavy acceleration gimmick, at least, they stuck with for a good chunk of the series, and gives the Drive enemy monsters a neat vibe. 

The series doesn't actually really kickstart until we meet the two secondary riders of the show, though. Shijima Go, Kiriko's loud-mouthed brother and the hilariously over-the-top Kamen Rider Mach (or MAH-ha! as he announces it), and the somber, enigmatic emo "reaper of the roidmudes" called Mashin Chaser or Chase. Both characters progress a lot through the story and I would say that they are the heart and soul of the show moreso than Shinnosuke himself, who feels more like the catalyst behind Chase and Go's development more than the actual main character. Go gets to learn to be mature, but it took a while for him to realize that the Roidmudes are more than just mindless xenophobic killing machines -- something that Shinnosuke and Kiriko learned pretty quickly. Meanwhile, Chase has the exact opposite reaction. Essentially a robot with no emotions, he finds strange human emotions welling up inside him as he begins to befriend Kiriko and later Shinnosuke, eventually leading to easily the best 'evil rider becomes good' story that I don't think any other Rider show before or after has ever done quite as smoothly. 

The villains of the show are also pretty fun, although they admittedly do take some time before they become truly characters of their own. The three main long-running Roidmudes Brain, Heart and Medic show up pretty early on, but for the most part they settle into pretty basic toku-villain tropes. Heart is the handsome one with spiky hair and a clear 'main villain' vibe. Brain is the smart one, but also kind of immature. Medic is the girl, all ufufufu. Oh, and Medic and Brain continually fight over Drive's affections as his main right-hand Roidmude, and this does provide with some entertainment mostly due to how hammy Brain's actor Matsushima Shota can be, particularly regarding that handkerchief. While they were pretty disappointing early on and (spoiler alert) their role gets jacked by an even bigger threat in the final ten episodes or so, they end up growing so likable and fun that when these three bickering assholes start actually working with the good guys and jumping in the way of bullets to save their friends, you really feel for Brain and Medic's respective major dramatic scenes near the end of the show. For a trio that I initially felt were a weaker ripoff of villain ensembles done better in other shows (they give me strong Greeed vibes initially) they really do come to their own and become pretty likable characters. 

Whether intentionally or not, Drive as a show does take things pretty slowly in its first half, focusing mostly on standalone two-parters and slowly building up the huge Chase redemption moment. But in a surprising twist on how most Kamen Rider shows go, it actually hits on the accelerator and gets a huge boost in tightening up its storytelling, stakes and character work in the second half of the show. A lot of the revelations about the true main villain, Gold Drive/Banno Tenjuro (Belt-san's old comrade and the father of Go and Kiriko) are delivered and paced surprisingly well -- some other Rider shows do admittedly have the weakness of making exposition about their plot uninteresting or rushed. 

Unfortunately, it's just that... Gold Drive is a supremely hateable dick of a villain, but he's just not that interesting. His plan makes some sense, and I do like his rivalry with his son Go, and I adore his final moments, but... Gold Drive (and his creation Sigma) feels more like a way to get the three good Kamen Riders and the three Roidmudes the audience is attached to to fight against a common enemy. The ending of the show is pretty solid from a narrative standpoint, and there's no part of it that felt rushed or cheated (unnecessary Kamen Rider Ghost cameo notwithstanding), but the fact that I spent the final episode going "man I wish Heart had more time to shine as the main villain". Characters die left and right near the final stretch of the episodes, and just like its predecessor Gaim, the show manages to make each loss and death feel impactful and make you realize just how much they've imprinted themselves in your hearts. 

And let's talk about more weaknesses of the show, because I have been praising it a lot. Shinnosuke being slightly flat is a bit of a problem, but I feel like his interactions with other main leads Go, Chase and Heart does work well with Shinnosuke being relatively mature and level-headed. It's just that his primary character arc -- finding his 'drive' in the world -- gets resolved very quickly in the show, and up until the final couple of episodes he ends up being pretty much stable as the more mature protagonist in contrast to the other main riders and antagonists... which also has the unfortunate side effect of him feeling somewhat more static in the middle portion of the show. He's still likable, but I do wish that he'd gotten a bit more. (On the other hand, one would argue that this is the reason why Mach and Drive are so strongly realized, so it's kind of a balancing act)

A bigger problem, however, is Kiriko. She doesn't quite fall into the "utterly incompetent damsel in distress female cop" that plagues poor Rinko from Wizard, and Kiriko gets to be a badass a lot, but after the first ten or twenty episodes her role is significantly diminished. There's no real reason why she doesn't get a rider form despite the show teasing us many times, and ultimately there's not even any huge drama between her and her father, the main villain of the show. A lot of Go and Chase's character development revolves around protecting her, but Kiriko herself regrettably remains utterly flat throughout the show. She's still likable, for sure, but I really do wish that they did more with her. After his backstory parts are over, Krim Steinbelt also basically gets reduced to getting an obligatory line or two every episode, which I felt could've been done better. 

I've also talked a bit about the comedy, but... a lot of it just doesn't work. It's not a huge part of the show, and later on we go into more traditional stuff like Brain and Medic's antics or Chase's lack of understanding of human emotions and society, but the police comedy stuff... yeah, it's not for me. 

The suits in this show is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I really, really like some of them. Drive base form, Drive Tridoron form, Mach, Mashin Chaser, Brain and Medic are all very good, but a lot of the tire power-ups and the middle alternate forms just feel awkward and clunky (I particularly don't care for Type Technic and Type Formula), and as much as I adore the character, I can't help but feel that Kamen Rider Chaser is a huge step-down from the badassery of Mashin Chaser. Also, as fun as the tire power-ups are, Drive is going to be the start of one-off minor-change alternate forms that are heavily advertised early on in the show, and almost never used later on -- the same problem that I argue also plagues Ghost, Ex-Aid, Build, Zi-O and Zero-One. 

I'm actually surprised at the amount of spin-offs that Drive has (one of them even offers a conclusion to Kamen Rider Faiz of all things), but a lot of them are neat little explorations of the original Global Freeze, the backstories of some characters, and the sequel trilogy movies (the Chaser/Heart/Mach trilogy special) is an interesting way to cap off a lot of the dangling side characters.

Ultimately, Kamen Rider Drive is very solid. There's nothing for me to really complain about ultimately that ruins my enjoyment of the show. It's just that Drive doesn't really do anything particularly spectacularly. Great characterization, great action, great drama. Still, a solid, fun Rider show that I will definitely recommend. 

Gotta Review 'Em All, Special Episode: Miscellaneous Beta Pokemon

Last year, I did a coverage of the 'beta' Pokemon that were either abandoned or revised in a bunch of beta versions of Pokemon Gold & Silver that were taken from a recovered beta game ROM from 1997. Yesterday, I revised it. And I did that because there was a second batch of beta Pokemon sprites that apparently was floating around from a 1999 version of the beta. 

But... that's not really all the beta pokemon out there. Between concept art for "Capsule Monsters", the game that would be Pokemon, a manga detailing about the conception of Pokemon and focusing on the original Gamefreak team, and an uncovered bunch of back-sprites and sound files from Generation I games, we have a bunch of random other 'beta' Pokemon that I think I can talk about for a bit here. 

It's nowhere as well-recovered as the clean files for the Spaceworld betas, and we don't get, like, clean sprites for some of them and there's a significant amount of speculation on what they are, but hey, let's just kind of talk about these old beta sprites and artwork, yeah?

(I know that there's a bunch of newer-uncovered Beta sprites, and there's some amazing Sugimori-style artwork done by the artist RacieBeep, but this article's just going to collect the information that is available circa January 2021)

Credits to:

• Bulbapedia's page on Unused Pokemon
• Helix Chamber's List of Proto-Generation I Pokemon
• Helix Chamber's article on Generation I development cycle
• Helix Chamber's article on more lost Pokemon
• TCRF.net's coverage on the Gold and Silver betas
• TCRF.net's coverage on removed Generation I Sprites
• Lava Cut Content, which covers a lot of miscellaneous cut content in the games, and a lot of fascinating collection about other behind-the-scenes design of Pokemon
• The source Diamond and Pearl Beta Leak, and in Youtube.

Before we go into the more obviously-finalized sprites, I guess we'll quickly talk about a bunch of rough sketches from the development of Capsule Monsters, Satoshi Tajiri's brain-child of what would become Pokemon. And... they're pretty rough, yeah? "Buhii" and "Papyo" here are obviously just very rough sketches, with Buhii looking vaguely like a weird legless cat and Papyo looking like a Flumph-bug mutant creature. Not much to say here other than acknowledge that they exist. Bulbapedia identifies the creatures fighting on that Capsule Monsters art as a prototype version of "Gengar and Nidorino", based on the fact that it's similar to the opening sequence in Red & Blue... but that's pretty far off, I feel. The creature on the left looks like a prototype Godzilla-esque monster that would eventually morph into the likes of Rhydon, Nidoking, Nidoqueen, Tyranitar or Kangaskhan, while the weird vaguely wyvern-esque creature jumping up with stumpy wings and two legs could just be a generic random lizard monster. 


It's worth noting that a lot of the early sketches of Capsule Monsters or Pokemon tend to revolve around Godzilla-esque dinosaurian monsters. Again, a lot of these has to do with the general look of Rhydon (often noted as the first Pokemon finalized in the Pokedex) or maybe Gyaon (more on him below), and the fact that a vaguely similar look tends to be used as the Substitute doll and those gym statues found in the first-generation games. Basically all the sketches in these Capsule Monster documents all had a variation of this pseudo-Rhydon pseudo-Nidoking creature walking around. The creature jumping out of the proto-Pokeball is called Rokku, literally just 'Rock'. 

Also, check out that prototype Lapras. Man, I can totally see why they added Lapras's ears or whatever those things on its forehead is. Lapras just looks just kind of there without those, huh? Also, considering how the original first-generation games had Lapras represent the surfing sprite, they probably had this mental image of a dinosaur-like creature with a hard shell you can sit on being your water-transport buddy. 


And here are more 'proto' Pokemon, from left to right we have Godzillante, Gorillaimo, Dragon 4 and Kabiin. And I'm pretty sure that these are less 'prototype Pokemon' and more just a bunch of sketches to test out the layout of the game. Godzillante and Gorillaimo are obviously a 'Godzilla vs. King Kong' deal, while Kabiin is apparently an in-joke to a nickname of a member of the development team, Nishino Koji, who apparently was a bit of a glutton and that nickname would actually be used for a final Pokemon, Kabigon, otherwise known as Snorlax. Again, not a whole ton to say here, these are rough sketches.



A lot of these 'lost' Pokemon are first revealed from a Satoshi Tajiri manga where blurry, low-res images of them cropped up in a list of sketches. The way the selection for what made it into the original 151 is by voting within the team's members, and there were a bunch of phases or periods where they started refining some of the more popular designs. And while some of them, for the longest time, only showed up in blurry, blown-up photographs in a manga that are taken from documents that are two-decade old, recently a bunch of ROM hackers managed to recover a whole bunch of back-sprites for these 'missingno' Pokemon.

And perhaps the most famous among them is Gyaoon, showing up in the Satoshi Tajiri manga, and we got Tajiri or Sugimori or someone tweeting a more high-res picture of the draft for Gyaoon, and two back-sprites from the beta demo appear to correspond to Gyaoon and a portential pre-evolution. Gyaoon basically seems to be the generic 'kaiju' Pokemon whose design would later evolve into either the Nidos or Tyranitar. And, yes, it might look pretty different if you compare them side-by-side, but considering just how different some of the beta designs in Generation II are (look at beta Dunsparce, or beta Ariados, or beta Noctowl), these designs clearly go through a fair amount of revisions. As the Capsule Monsters concept art show, they clearly want a bunch of Godzilla/kaiju-style monsters and it's no surprise we got a bunch in the first generation. 


Also revealed alongside other proto-pokemon is Omega, who, notably, didn't make any further appearances in other datamined beta versions of the first generation games. It's the Mecha-Godzilla to Gyaoon's Godzilla, but I guess they wanted to not stretch themselves out too thin with concepts and it's not until I sat down and wrote this and realized how few Pokemon actually feel like robots. Like, Golurk and the Regis are more animated golems than anything, the likes of Steelix, Aggron and Duraludon are more metal-plated animals, and maybe the only ones that count are Metagross and Magnemite? And they look real weird. Omega here is kinda cute with its cannon arms, but when we finally get a metal kaiju-pokemon in Aggron I am happy that it's not as bland as this. Or as obviously a Mecha-Godzilla copy. 

"Crocky" over here also shows up in the manga and in the demo back-sprites, and it's... it's a weird lizard-crocodile with huge eyes that bug out and had a bunch of hair (which it loses when it became a sprite). We would have a crocodile Pokemon in the second generation with the Totodile line, but this one clearly didn't have a lot in common with either the Totodile line or the Sandile line that came much, much later. Personally, I am actually not particularly broken up about this being lost or revised, a hyperactive crocodile really doesn't look super-interesting.


The fandom's consensus is that Barunda (a.k.a. Baloonda) here is reworked into the 'balloon pokemon' Jigglypuff, and the concept for a more balloon-looking Pokemon would later show up as Drifloon. A balloon with a cartoon face would be funny as heck, but considering how the Gamefreak staff whittled down a massive amount of potential monsters by popular vote, it's easy to see why this one got cut out. 


Only known as Cactus, this one is... kind of bizarre? It's less of a cactus monster but rather a bunch of spiky balls arranged in a weird, almost-toppling tower (an exaggerated version of those bunny-ear cactus, I think), and it has a tail and a pair of feet. It's actually a weird, funky-looking monster. It's also pretty far from the actual cactus monsters we got (Cacnea, Cacturne, Maractus) and this one would probably work better as an enemy in something like the 2D Zelda games, I believe. 


This is Beta Seel, also seen in the Tajiri manga on that page of the voting system. Here with its Japanese name (Pauwau), original Seel actually looked a bit more realistic and rugger, with... uh... are those bug mandibles? It's actually quite neat, if kind of ugly, although apparently notes on the documents do note that this is a design that needs improvement. And of course, all we got to see for the past two decades is just the Seel we're familiar with. And while I don't mind Seel and Dewgong, they are kind of boring and plain, aren't they? I do kind of wish that at least some of the roughness of Beta Seel made it into the final design. 


Jaggu (or just Jagg) is pretty neat. It's interesting just how many times they tried to make a shark Pokemon, with Jagg here and later Ikari in the Gold/Silver beta, and it's not until the third generation when they decided that the torpedo half-a-shark Sharpedo is finally worthy of being a proper shark Pokemon. Jagg's actually pretty great, though! I mean, sure, the art we saw of it does kind of look unfinished, but the saw-shark protrusion doubling and giving us the silhouette of like a harpoon or something is kind of cool. I'm surprised that they didn't include Jagg in the final version of the first-generation games, considering how iconic of an animal sharks are. 


Simply named with the English word for "Deer", this creature is honestly less of a deer and more of some sort of mutant war-mutant moose. There's a bunch of cartoon-reptile featuers and those spikes, the weird head and the stumpy, almost robot-like feet does make it a pretty menacing look. We would get a bunch of deer Pokemon down the road (Stantler, Sawsbuck, Xerneas) but none of them actually feel like this menacing, stabby monster. Again, not a particularly notable design, but I feel like Deer and Jagg are probably some of the better ones in what's essentially Gamefreak's old reject pile. 


This one had its name covered, and has basically been called the Elephant by the fandom, this one is obscured but seems to just be a generic elephant on two legs. I'm actually glad this got cut out and when we do get elephants as Pokemon it would be the far more unique-looking Phanpy, Donphan, and later on Mamoswine, Cufant and Copperajah, none of which are straight-up lazy elephant-men. Again, I feel like there's a significant effort in the first generation to try and avoid the 'just an animal' trope. And while that's certainly not true for the entire Kanto pokedex (Goldeen, Pidgey, Spearow and Seel exist) I do appreciate that 
the curation process does get rid of a bunch that would probably be a bit more forgettable. 


As we leave the Tajiri manga behind, we're going to go through one of the newer finds of beta Pokemon, which is this batch of back-sprites. And here we see a bunch of familiar faces -- albeit only familiar if you're aware of the lost Pokemon in the Generation II betas. Here we have Mikon, Puchikon, Konya and Gyopin, a.k.a. Baby Vulpix, Baby Ponyta, Baby Meowth and Baby Goldeen. Again, it's interesting to see that they've been around since the first inception, I genuinely did think that they were added in Generation II when they wanted breeding to be a thing. 


Speaking of familiar faces, Kotora and Raitora were also in the first-generation betas, and they even had a third, unnamed evolution! Not too much to say here, it's just interesting that Pokemon basically designed and later dropped a bunch of round tiger Pokemon twice. 


We've known for a while that Pikachu and Raichu was originally intended to evolve into a third form, Gorochu, which was revealed in an interview in 2018 which would include 'fangs and horns'. We had no idea what it would look like (even though a bunch of fan art of a red-and-yellow oni Raichu made its rounds in the internet) and the closest we would get to see the enigmatic Gorochu is this back sprite. I mean, you can imagine your own horned Raichu, but considering just how much Pikachu has eclipsed its evolved sibling, it's safe to say that poor Gorochu would never ever make it back into the main-line games. 

Buu is a bit of an interesting creature. Supposedly based on Woo, an Ultraman enemy that's a giant ice-dwelling yeti creature, 'Buu' here is apparently the ice-type counterpart to Electabuzz and Magmar (Elebuu and Buuba respectively in Japan) and would presumably morph into Jynx. This would make the 'buu' trio a trio of humanoid monsters that perfectly fit in with the Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres trio... and honestly, still, either way, Buu and Jynx both had that black face with thick lips that, regardless of the intent, is still extremely unfortunate. It's interesting to note where Jynx's origins might have came from (presumably they added the whole 'yuki-onna' bit or something), but still. 


We've got this Middle Duck that was apparently meant to bridge the gap between Psyduck and Golduck, and it's... honestly, not that different, just a weirder Psyduck with dot eyes and an elongated skull. A good move, I think, to cut out what's essentially a redundant middle stage. 


Speaking of missing evolution line members, we've got Baby Zubat, which is just a little body with bat wings! That's kind of adorable, and it does kind of lend a neat little progression where Baby Zubat gains a mouth and ears when it evolves into Zubat, and then gains eyes and feet when it becomes Golbat. I'm going to assume that Crobat was probably designed separately, and later folded into the Zubat/Golbat line when they lost the pre-evolution. That would explain why Crobat felt so oddly disjointed, design wise, from the other two bats. 


One of the sprites that caused the most buzz and caused me to be aware of these beta sprites in the first place is this bizarre Marowak-Kangaskhan hybrid, lending a lot of credence to the fact that maybe Cubone is a baby Kangaskhan who lost its mother. How this would play into the Cubone/Marowak and Kangaskhan bit is a bit confusing, though. This is a Marowak with some extra back-spines that seems to have adopted a baby Cubone on its own... but how does it work, evolution-wise? Do we go Cubone into Marowak into Momrowak? Where does Kangaskhan fit into all this? Is the Kangaskhan an alternate evolution or something? The mind boggles, and while they've clearly taken a completely different direction with Marowak and Kangaskhan, and both of them have gotten alternate forms without any sort of tie-in to each other, it's still interesting to note that the fandom was right all along. 


A back sprite that you think would belong to one of the Nido family, but this one doesn't correspond to any of the actual existing Nidoran, Nidorino or Nidorina back-sprites. Probably just a first draft that didn't get deleted. 

This one, meanwhile, is often speculated to be a Magneton pre-evo, but it's probably more likely that it's a draft sprite for Magneton itself since both Magnemite and Magneton exists in the demo, and unless they made an alternate evolution for Magnemite (and remember generation I wasn't big on that because they wanted to make Eevee special) I don't see that happening. 

So back in the original beta, Squirtle, Wartortle and Blastoise were in the game... but not in the same evolutionary line! Wartortle evolved into this Wartortle Evolution, which presumably is just Wartortle but with extra features, while Blastoise was a completely separate, unrelated cannon-turtle monster. I've always thought it was weird that the Squirtle line went from a turtle into a turtle with a bushy tail and ears into a regular turtle with cannons on its back. Turns out they weren't even meant to be related in the first place! Although maybe the original Wartortle evolution might've simply been too similar to Wartortle.


The other sprites in the beta don't really correspond to anything and while Helix Chamber does make some really educated guesses, no one but those people in Gamefreak is going to know whether this dude is really a Blastoise pre-evolution with bubble cannons and snot bubbles or if it's anything related to Blastoise at all. 


These Squid Boys are pretty obviously a bunch of squids, which probably was cut out because it was too boring. Worth noting that no modern-day squid has those swirling hard, external shells, because at one point in the squid's evolution the shells become lighter internal 'skeletons', so to speak. And this might be meant to show this, how cephalopods (other than the nautilus) lost their shells through a period of evolution. That's neat. We didn't get them, though, and got the more exotic-looking Omanyte and Omastar instead, and it's really surprising that we wouldn't get a proper squid until Inkay and Malamar around one and a half decade later.


A bunch of maybe-Lizard-boys. It's really hard to have any sort of opinion on these, although I kind of feel like the smallest one in the evolution line does kind of look like Kurusu from the Gold & Silver beta. 


These are a bit harder to tell, the Weird Fish that Helix Chamber speculates might be similar to Mario's Cheep Cheep enemies. It's really hard to tell with these generation I back-sprites, but the general consensus is that they're weird bird-fish things. 



Another duo that is basically hard to tell, these are weird bald sumo dudes with topknots. Helix Chamber speculates that they might be sumo frogs based on potential cheek things, but I personally go 'eh'. It could literally be anything. 


A bunch of other proto-designs in the Capumon/Capsule Monsters pitch also includes a bunch of proto-Pokemon design, which are, again, pretty sketchy although Helix Chamber did end up getting someone to essentially recreate the sprites in nicer detail. We get to see a bunch of Pokemon that essentially didn't change until they became the first-generation sprites -- this includes Cubone, Gastly, Pinsir, Blastoise, Staryu and Tangela. And, sure, Gastly looks weird but that's how his original generation I sprite looked, and while some of the others might have different proportions (and names), it's not too far off from how lumpy the first-generation sprites might look. 

Oh, hey, that's Omega, too, next to Blastoise! Looking at them side-by-side, Blastoise might actually be one of the 'kaiju' Pokemon, huh? I didn't really consider it. Proto-Lapras from above with no ears and stub-flippers also show up. What looks like a Cloyster without horns is actually proto-Shellder, and presumably there was a bit of name-swapping when they designed what we would know as Shellder. Proto-Rhyhorn really looks like the first draft of the far-cooler design we know now, and looks more like many of the draft spiky-rhinoceros monsters we saw in the Capumon drafts. Maybe they didn't decide on the 'rock' part until later, and only had Rhyhorn as this weird rhinoceros/triceratops hybrid?

Proto-Tentacool, or "Ambler", as it's called here, was kinda interesting. It had modern Tentacool's head but a whole load of extra little tentacles, making it look like more of a weird jellyfish-squid fusion. Proto-Scyther (next to Pinsir) had really nothing in common with his final design beyond being a dinosaur with mantis claws. And man, it's interesting how wildly different the same concept can be, huh? Proto-Scyther looks so lumpy and almost comical, whereas the modern-day Scyther had great traits of both dinosaurs and praying mantises and looked unbelievably sleek. 

Proto-Arcanine ("Wing" here instead of his final Japanese name, "Windy"), is... a lot more different. Look at those hooves, and the bizarre, almost draconic snout! "Wing" here was clearly meant to be a Kirin/Qilin which suddenly made its whole 'legendary' status more sense. Of course, modern Arcanine made it more of a lion-dog fusion based on a different Chinese guardian statue, but it's interesting to see where it came from. 

Most interesting, though is that giant Dune worm with no eyes, giant antennae and a massive lamprey mouth. And that... is proto-Gyarados, which genuinely baffled me. Gyarados didn't start off as a dragon or sea serpent, but some weird monster lamprey leech thing? It's very cool, although admittedly, might fall under the same banner of copying another pretty common monster trope. 


Proto Ivysaur here is seen in Bulbapedia, and look at that poor frog, it's basically fallen down and looks like it can barely crawl. Considering how the original Venusaur sprite basically recycles this look from proto Ivysaur, I wonder if the original concept had a 'parasitic plant' gimmick which was dropped. 

Also seen from Helix Chamber are these, "Omuomu", which is the bird that would later be revised into Spearow, and Pippi, otherwise known as Clefairy. Look at how weirdly rocky and rugged proto-Clefairy looks! I would beleive that this one is an alien in a heartbeat. That said, though, I'm happy it's revised into the Clefairy we all know and love now, because that's a design that's both a cute fairy but also something that might be an alien. Original Spearow looks nothing like its modern-day counterpart and looks more like Iago's ugly cousin, and apparently in the Tajiri manga Spearow was very nearly crossed out and outvoted. 


That's it for the Helix Chamber stuff, and since we're already at it, I figured why not go through a bunch of other beta stuff we know? These ones have been floating around the internet since the third or fourth generation, I believe, because I remembered finding them. Kokana, Kasanagi and their unnamed final form seem to be some sort of bizarre prototype sketches of a bug Pokemon, and Kokana does have the same sort of weird mouth that Weedle does, albeit its legs are teeny-tiny and looks more like a grub. I'm not sure what's going on with the faces of the second and third forms, though. A coccoon with hands and a bizarre face (with a mustache?) is bizarre. The final form is like some sort of beetle with Mickey Mouse hands. Maybe they would rework this into what is now Ledian? Eh. I'm indifferent to these. 


The Proto Poliwag line is actually remarkably similar to the modern-day designs, although the proportions are all different. Proto Poliwag has no mouth and a mere nub-tail. Proto-Poliwrath has a crown on its head (so that's where the King's Crown came from?) and is a lot chubbier and seems to have a mouth. Meanwhile, the Poliwhirl remained more or less similar to the Poliwhirl we know, but reportedly the game designers ended up feeling that players might be upset if Poliwhirl evolved into a 'weak looking' design, which is why they redesigned Poliwrath into the angry, more muscular form. Okay!


And Proto Dragonair is a lot less sleek and more like a traditional sea serpent, with scales and spines all over. And not that this wouldn't be a good design if drawn properly (and not a low-resolution photograph of a sketch) but I do like how sleek the modern Dragonair is. 


These three are apparently designs drawn by Sugimori as a cover for a Japanese magazine, and was originally claimed to be 'unrelated to Pokemon'. As you can see, though, that giant kaiju is clearly prototype Tyranitar, albeit with different arms and a different colour. Which ends up bringing to mind the other two creatures shown on the cover. The Turtle is honestly generic enough that it could be anything, although by design or by coincidence, its head does bear some resemblance to Tirtouga, released nearly a decade later. And then there's that bizarre mixture of Clefairy and Hitmontop, which is more literally a top with a bunch of feet kicking around. Not too much to say here, it's kind of bizarre but not quite as bizarre as the other Proto-Hitmontop with three eyes. 


It's the first two generations that I feel had the most ideas tossed around, and since they didn't really had a lot of information security or whatever, I guess they had a lot more random concept art tossed around. But we have also known about these concept art for generation III for a long time, with Bunny-ears Proto Torchic and this "Latiken" both being pretty common images seen online. Proto-Torchic is already very close to its final design other than the ears (which look creepy), but it's so interesting how this "Latiken" would eventually split into two designs. You can already see the almost-finalized arms and legs that correspond to Blaziken, as is the feathery down; as well as the airplane vibe, the colour scheme layout and the general head/neck shape of Latias and Latios here. Most interesting to me, though, is that if "Latiken" did precede Blaziken and Latias in conceptualization and was split into two, then Blaziken's legs were originally meant to be the jet-exhaust of a flying chicken jet. Huh!

I don't have much to say about Proto-Groudon and Proto-Treecko here. Proto-Groudon is a lot more hunchbacked than the final one, but it's the head that's the biggest change, with the prototype version looking more armoured and grumpy. Proto Treecko, meanwhile, is a lot less stylized and the bottom left version looks a lot more gecko-esque. It's nowhere as sleek as the final version of the Treecko we know, and at least two of these had Grovyle and Sceptile's arm leaf blades. As neat as these concept art looked, I'm happy that they would eventually completely overhaul Treecko's face into what we now know. 

Found in the Generation III Ruby/Sapphire beta are the back-sprites for.... Shellos and Gastrodon! And that's not like some huge event or anything, since the two of them showed up a generation later, but Proto-Shellos here actually mixes and matches features, having the colouration and head-bulbs of the modern pink Shellos, but the back-fins of the modern blue Shellos. And Proto-Gastrodon is all covered in a rocky bit that somewhat resembles the modern pink Gastrodon... but a lot rockier. 

Other than Shellos and Gastrodon supposedly debuting a generation earlier, generation 4 didn't seem to have a whole ton of scrapped content, or maybe Nintendo is just a lot better at hiding their 'beta' versions and the like. A massive amount of sprites were leaked, but the most interesting bit for me is that there were a whole lot more of gender differences for Pokemon from the first three generations than what we got. A lot of them were redundant and a lot of what we actually got were barely noticeable anyway, so it's probably a good thing (particularly with the 3D and later Switch model conversions) that they limited the amount of variation among these designs. In retrospect, maybe they already knew that they were converting to 3D models sooner or later, and cutting down the amount of models they have to convert is certainly a smart idea. 

Of course, yet another leak with far, far more than just gender differences of older Pokemon ended up showing up in 2020... with some of the Pokemon clearly already conceptualized, but some only having very, very rough and clearly-just-placeholder sprites. There are still some interesting prototype versions of all the Sinnoh pokedex, though, which is interesting. 

Take these Beta Sinnoh Starters, for example. Some of them (Turtwig, Piplup, Empoleon, the entire Chimchar line) are more or less finalized. Granted, the sprites look somewhat rougher, and Infernape in aprticular look like they haven't done some of the shading or added his tail, but the real interesting ones are Beta Prinplup, Beta Grotle and Beta Torterra. Beta Prinplup looks more like an obvious middle-ground between Piplup and Empoleon, and perhaps shares too much features with Empoleon which is why they ended up with a more unique design. Beta Grotle is... somewhat similar with the final one, although I can see why they ixnay'd the awkward bonsais here and swapped it with bushes. 

Beta Torterra, though! The bonsai garden idea was already in place, sure, and I can totally handwave the trees and features being a bit rough. It is a beta build and one that's still in early development... but man, considering both Turtwig and Grotle already have their snapping turtle faces decided even in this stage, it's so, so bizarre seeing Torterra with a dopey, smiling huge face. It does take away a lot from what Torterra's vibe would be in the final game. The garden-shell also feels a lot more flat instead of the more armoured turtle-shell vibe of the real Torterra that we got, so all in all I'm actually happy we got all of these changed. Mostly, the Diamond & Pearl leaks just really ends up giving us a neat look at how they went from clearly already-defined concepts into the final designs we had now.

The Beta Gible line, on the other hand... wow, what a departure, huh? Nevermind the colours, which lean more towards a less-badass brown-red instead of blue. Look at just how different the concept ended up being! And sure, just like Beta Garchomp, the design still ends up being finalized as a raptor-shark-jet thing, but shit, it's really different, huh? Beta Gible reminds me of Betamon or Gizamon from Digimon, being a four-legged blob baby with a fin on top. It's a lot more shark-y than its final design, and honestly, putting a coat of paint on this one and I would totally love this thing. Beta Gabite, on the other hand...  yeah, it sure is a mid-point between Beta Gible and Beta Garchomp, but a long-necked dinosaur with shark fins does look bizarrely awkward between little blob-frog-baby and jet-raptor. In retrospect, that's probably why they changed Gible from quadrupedal to bipedal in the final design. 

And Beta Garchomp... proportions aside and that awkward, weird crotch, this basically ended up becoming the final version of Gabite, doesn't it? So it's like they deleted the middle form, moved Beta Garchomp in the middle, and added a final, spikier and scarier form. I also really liked just how much sleeker and smoother the final Gabite and Garchomp were compared to Beta Garchomp, and the addition of hammerhead shark head-thingies definitely gave them a lot more personality. These aren't bad, but, again, comparing them to the final product, you can see why these were cut. 

Due to the size of the D/P beta, I'm not going to talk about every single beta sprite, and especially these. Again, it's easy to mock these for being so scribbly, but they were clearly just sort of rough placeholder images, and maybe they were trying to test out poses, or the Sugimori team's artwork aren't finalized yet -- Regigigas, Carnivine, Shinx and Shaymin are already basically set in stone, they just basically ended up fleshing out the specific details. And sure, Beta Probopass is missing his hat and mini-noses, but again you can totally see the basic concept of the thing already finalized. 

The Lake Pixies, in particular, already had basically finalized front sprites... but their back-sprites do show us that at some point, their head-crests were more different and they had Suicune-esque antennae. I really wonder if their faces would be different and if they would've felt a lot more unique. 

There really isn't a good place to source all the images from, so I'm picking from different sources. It's interesting that Beta Yanmega is actually a lot more monstrous, although a lot of the details are similar. He's got more exaggerated back-spikes and chunkier tail-bits, as well as an extra bulb connecting the bug legs to the body. I actually like the more monstrous Yanmega, although I definitely think that the final design's colours win out. 

Beta Bronzor is only slightly different, having an extra number of details, but Beta Bronzong... yeah, changing those creepy dead-set eyes into the more friendlier-looking one in the final design, as well as adding a mouth, really does make Bronzong into a far, far friendlier-looking creature, huh? Part of me really do love Beta Bronzong, but on the other hand one of the principles of Pokemon is how every creature must look 'like it can be your friend'. That Beta Bronzong looks like it would rather kill me and bury me in a swamp than being my friend. 

The Beta Shinx Line! Beta Luxio is basically just only slightly unrefined, and Beta Luxray had a bit of a haircut, but Beta Shinx is super-duper popular for basically being a lot more baby than its already cute finalized form. That tuft of hair! And those mousy eyes! As cute as it was, though, this one, I think, was changed more to fit the Pokemon aesthetic of more anime eyes, which, for better or for worse, permeated the third generation onwards. 

Beta Rotom was just a very simplified blob of electricity with a couple of hands. And man, I do like just how much was changed while the idea of 'a ghost lightning-blob with hands' remains with the finalized Rotom. Was it already decided at this point that Rotom was going to possess electronics? We'll never know. I can totally see why this one was junked, for sure. 

Beta Darkrai looks so goofy, being a far, far less badass-looking skinny ghost-man with a giant S on his face. One of the most interesting thing is that someone had this Beta Sprite in mind when they designed the Japanese logo for the Darkrai movie, which is like such an obscure easter egg that was certainly made pretty deep into Diamond & Pearl's life. I do really like the fact that this weird giant letter-in-the-face design was scrapped. The final Darkrai design isn't like, anything super-special as far as fantasy ghosts go, but it's still a lot cooler than this. 

Beta Giratina is... uh... okay, wow, what the heck? Named "Chimairan", this is clearly still a in-development sprite due to the lack of shading, but it looks like Raikou and Therian Landorus slammed together and made a baby. It's a four-legged orange beast with maybe one wing and a bunch of face-tendrils instead of a mouth? That sure is a weird, quasi-angelic looking being. I like the giant devil-centipede we got, but was this supposed to be a completely different 'character' than Giratina? Or did the concept of Chimairan evolve into Giratina later on? 

And yeah, Beta Arceus is just a weird doodle with creepy circle eyes. While some people theorized that Arceus might just be meant to be a meta-physical being and this misty thing is his avatar or something... I do like the idea that the god of Pokemon is just a fancy llama, which the franchise does manage to portray pretty well anyway. This Beta Arceus does end up being the genesis of some really badass and spooky fan art, though! Like this one by CaptainPiika. 

Going a bit more quickly now, Beta Hippopotas! It's a mite too detailed to be a placeholder like Carnivine or Arceus, but I guess they went backwards after designing Hippowdon and decided it needed a baby. This one is literally just a hippo. Beta Hippowdon is... it's a garish orange-and-purple, and there are a fair bit of differences. A more straight set of jaws, random bristles, and very different tiny-feet. All in all, it's neat to see just how a couple of slight tweaks did end up improving Hippowdon's design, even if it's not one of my favourites.

Beta Finneon isn't too different, if anything, it's got a more simplified body and a less butterfly-inspired set of tails. The white-pink-black colouration is neat, but nothing to write home about. Beta Lumineon, on the other hand... she's interesting, and I really would've liked to see this concept brought to fruition. A lot more in keeping with the anatomy of the Tripod Fish that it's slightly based on, Beta Lumineon has a longer, more eel-like body with butterfly wings on her front half. It's weird, sure, and this sprite is nowhere near finalized... but both the black-with-neon-markings look and the far more memorable silhouette makes me think that if they had followed through with Beta Lumineon, it might not have been as forgettable as it ended up being. 

Okay, this is interesting. Beta Cranidos is a lot cooler looking than its final form, with a scrappier look and a design that felt more natural in that of a Pachycephalosaurus. Maybe that's why they scaled it out a bit, to make Cranidos more of a cartoon dinosaur than just a dinosaur? I'm more or less indifferent about Beta Rampardos, I feel, the weirder proportions and the arms being so far back on its body looks weird to me. The arrangement of the spikes around its head is interesting, but I wouldn't say that it's a straight-up improvement to real Rampardos. 

Beta Togekiss is... uh... it's more of a plane than real Togekiss, huh? I wouldn't mind having a slightly more eerie and badass-looking alternate evolution for the Togepi line, but not at the expense of the Togekiss we got. I feel like a huge factor of the Togepi line is how friendly it is, and taking it out for this more eerie, spooky version isn't something that I felt works particularly well. 

Beta Combee is actually a design that snuck its way into a Sun & Moon (or Sword & Shield?) artbook before, and it's basically a simple but interesting change. Instead of weird faces, the little hexagons used to own baby faces sucking on pacifiers. Okay, sure? That's a bit too werid for me. Beta Vespiquen has a lot of the designs we'll see in the final design, but I guess she got toned down for how... angular and alien-looking she ends up being? I do like the addition of green and purple to her palette, and that face does look pretty badass.

Beta Snover and Beta Abomasnow... uh... they look more... lady-like, I guess? Sort of? I dunno. They look so awkward! Beta Snover looks a bit shriveled up and honestly a fair bit more monstrous. I'm not sure which one I prefer, but I really do like Snover as this cute, Moomin-esque fat plant baby. I certainly don't like Beta Abomasnow. It leans a bit more into the yeti vibe, but I really do like the far more likable and more plant-esque final Abomasnow we got. 

And here is our last prototype Pokemon, one from generation V, some random sketches for what would become Sawsbuck. Not much to say here. 

And... that's about it! This has been fun, a nice little jaunt into what-could-have-been for the Pokemon franchise, seeing the creation in the behind-the-scenes of the design of these 800+ Pokemon. And honestly, the Generation I and II ones are probably the most fascinating since it's when they were just conceptualizing the franchise and trying to set the tone and theme of the franchise going onwards. Seeing how it's been immensely successful for close to two and a half decades now, they certainly made a lot of great choices. None of these honestly feel like "man, we could've gotten a classic" in the same way that I feel about some of the Spaceworld Gold/Silver ones like the Tangela evolution or Ikari. But it's still neat to imagine what could have been, though.