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Unused First Generation Pokémon Designs Shown In New Manga
With all manner of Pokémon rumors swirling around the release of the next game, it might be good to take a look back at some things that never quite made it to completion.
A manga based on the life of Game Freak founder and Pokémon design head Satoshi Tajiri is being published in Japan and one scene in the manga, in collaboration with Game Freak, shows a grid of early Pokémon designs with some unused Pokémon. The image was shared on Twitter by Pokémon designer James Turner.
From the Satoshi Tajiri manga...
— James Turner (@JamesTurner_42) May 16, 2018
Early designs of Pokémon, including ones that didn’t make the cut.
Interesting, huh? pic.twitter.com/3Xkyzp9NIY
Some of the designs include what appears to be a shark with a spear-tipped nose, a deer, and a kind of bug-lizard thing. A lot of these animals have been touched on in later games, so it seems unlikely they're waiting 800 Pokémon down the line to bring these designs back. They're also surrounded by Pokémon like Voltorb, Venonat, and Blastoise, so they were presumably pretty close to making the final roster.
It is another bit of early Pokémon design lore, such as information on a third Pikachu evolution called Gorochu or that he was originally designed as a squirrel. Last year, we talked to Masuda about old design documents he was digging through, which you can see in this video.
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