News: Major discoveries revealed from Pokémon Gold and Silver demo

Lots of super interesting stuff here!

crazy that they're still finding stuff in the demos

so much cut stuff, imagine if a lot of it made it into the final versions of the game

Pokemon 79 is unknown, I wonder what it was going to be? It looks like that by this beta build, a lot of the Pokemon were more finalized. There seems to be a lot less lost Pokemon this time around.

...Now, if only gen iii would start leaking.

This article is kinda mangled - Spaceworld 1999 is fairly close to the final game, and earlier stuff is coming out of the various backup copies of the codebases in the leak.

Evidence Cyndaquil was its own species line and not originally intended to be the Fire Starter

Click to expand...

Questionable; it's a Cyndaquil sprite with spikes rather than fire on its back. Given how some of the other sprites are clearly unfinished (shoutout to blob Larvitar and toony Slugma) that could be blocking out the shapes in order to get the flames to look right.

Generation 2 versions of Komala and Cherrim have been spotted.

Click to expand...

Conjecture; it's a sprite of a koala, but there's no evidence it has any connection to Komala. The same is true of Cherrim.

Natu was a 3-stage line.

Click to expand...

Conjecture; all we have is sprites.

Celebi had quite a different look as well, and was a Normal type.

Click to expand...

Normal is the default for when they haven't decided on a type yet, so this is jumping the gun a little.

The Elite Four had the likes of Agatha, Lorelei, and… Giovanni.

Click to expand...

Flat-out wrong; they're placeholder sprites. The names are already updated, the art just wasn't ready yet.

Meanwhile, this article doesn't mention interesting things we can make a reasonable argument for.

• Honooguma developed into Teddiursa, while Cyndaquil was created to be a first form for the orphaned Volbear and Dynabear.
• Wobbuffet developed from "Twins", the SW97 Girafarig pre-evolution. (The source code, meanwhile, indicates that at one point in development that was developed into a full evolutionary line - i.e., Girafarig evolved again, though its evolution isn't given a name.)
• There's some map data indicating that work continued on the Spaceworld world map, and the source code indicates that it developed into the Johto we know, with Kanto expanding into a slightly miniaturised version of its Gen 1 self to replace locations that didn't make the cut.

Nah said:

crazy that they're still finding stuff in the demos

so much cut stuff, imagine if a lot of it made it into the final versions of the game

Click to expand...

Yeah, there's quite a lot of 'what could have been' given the different ideas and etc that came out prior. I quite liked what GS did end up being though, haha.

Palamon said:

Pokemon 79 is unknown, I wonder what it was going to be? It looks like that by this beta build, a lot of the Pokemon were more finalized. There seems to be a lot less lost Pokemon this time around.

...Now, if only gen iii would start leaking.

Click to expand...

Beta builds, to be fair, but yeah, lots of changes and developments.

ThomasWinwood said:

This article is kinda mangled - Spaceworld 1999 is fairly close to the final game, and earlier stuff is coming out of the various backup copies of the codebases in the leak.

Click to expand...

I did mention that there things from the 1997 demo too, and not everything was said to be specifically from the 1999 demo. TCRF's entry shows there were still a fair few differences between it and the final version, such as with music, team set-ups, unfinished sprites, and etc.

Questionable; it's a Cyndaquil sprite with spikes rather than fire on its back. Given how some of the other sprites are clearly unfinished (shoutout to blob Larvitar and toony Slugma) that could be blocking out the shapes in order to get the flames to look right.

Click to expand...

I'll edit the text a bit, but the main point would be that it existed around 1997 but we still had evidence of a different 3-stage fire-type line. Personally as well, the spikes it had in that sprite were at least more developed than blob larvitar's placeholder. :V

Conjecture; it's a sprite of a koala, but there's no evidence it has any connection to Komala. The same is true of Cherrim.

Click to expand...

Certainly some conjecture, but it does also line up with developer interviews (Turner, Sugimori) saying that Pokemon designs have been changed and resubmitted for later gens after being cut from earlier ones. I'll clarify that a tad.

Conjecture; all we have is sprites.

Click to expand...

I think it's a pretty strong point though - it clearly sits between Natu and Xatu. Perhaps further digging will give us more information than the sprite, but I feel it's a strong point towards it being more than just 'conjecture'.

Normal is the default for when they haven't decided on a type yet, so this is jumping the gun a little.

Click to expand...

Didn't know that, good to know. Added mention of it being a possible placeholder typing.

Flat-out wrong; they're placeholder sprites. The names are already updated, the art just wasn't ready yet.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't be quite as hasty. Certainly placeholders to some degree, but yet they had put in the effort to do new sprites for Agatha (same pose but recolored and minor differences) and Lorelei (new pose outright), e.g. here and here, compared to...



If they had used unchanged gen 1 music as placeholders in places, then it strikes me as odd that there were new sprites for these placeholder characters. More info needed I suppose.

Meanwhile, this article doesn't mention interesting things we can make a reasonable argument for.

Click to expand...

It's neat info certainly - the article however was not meant to be an extensive list of everything interesting, more a broad 'this happened, here's some of the notes'. This in part is due to the uncertainty on Nintendo or TPC or whatnot's response, given tweets have been taken down and so forth, while other sites so far remain untouched.

I hope for more short articles (plural) to come after on smaller aspects but with more detail, either by myself or anyone else who was interested, if we don't see the likes of e.g. TCRF have to take down their analysis of the games. Bit of a wait-and-see game to be played first.

At any rate text updated in places, and added you to credits; thanks.

The only thing I'm getting out of this is that Falkner was originally going to have a Level 10 Pidgeot. As if the Level 9 Pidgeotto wasn't illegal enough. He out here promoting Action Replay.

bobandbill said:

I wouldn't be quite as hasty. Certainly placeholders to some degree, but yet they had put in the effort to do new sprites [...] More info needed I suppose.

Click to expand...

Okay, here's more information: I can read Japanese (at a beginner level). All four of them have the names of the final Elite Four members (イツキ Itsuki, キョウ Kyou, シバ Shiba, カリン Karin). Here's what "Giovanni" says when you interact with him, with a basic translation.

ようこそポケモンリーグへ！ここは最高の腕を持つトレーナーが集める場所。最初の相手は僕エスパーポケモン使いのイツキ！今までのチャレンジャー全員打ち負かしてきたよ！さて君はどうかな？なんとなく強そうだけどね。では勝負を始めよう！
Welcome to the Pokemon League! This is the place where trainers with the best skills gather. Your first opponent is me, the Psychic-type Pokemon user Will! I've defeated every challenger so far! How about you? You seem strong. Let's start the battle!

We know both Giovanni and Agatha showed up in the Spaceworld 1997 demo - the former was almost certainly a boss fight, and it's not inconceivable the latter may have been up for a battle as well. That's enough to explain the updated sprites in my eyes.

ThomasWinwood said:

Okay, here's more information: I can read Japanese (at a beginner level). All four of them have the names of the final Elite Four members (イツキ Itsuki, キョウ Kyou, シバ Shiba, カリン Karin). Here's what "Giovanni" says when you interact with him, with a basic translation.

ようこそポケモンリーグへ！ここは最高の腕を持つトレーナーが集める場所。最初の相手は僕エスパーポケモン使いのイツキ！今までのチャレンジャー全員打ち負かしてきたよ！さて君はどうかな？なんとなく強そうだけどね。では勝負を始めよう！
Welcome to the Pokemon League! This is the place where trainers with the best skills gather. Your first opponent is me, the Psychic-type Pokemon user Will! I've defeated every challenger so far! How about you? You seem strong. Let's start the battle!

We know both Giovanni and Agatha showed up in the Spaceworld 1997 demo - the former was almost certainly a boss fight, and it's not inconceivable the latter may have been up for a battle as well. That's enough to explain the updated sprites in my eyes.

Click to expand...

That's neat to know. I see that since the previous post TCRF also updated stuff and say they're placeholders (https://tcrf.net/Proto:Pokémon_Gold...1999_Demo/Map_Differences#Pok.C3.A9mon_League). That said, it's also clear that they had been been undecided earlier in development and hadn't had everything on the same page by the time of the Spaceworld 1999 demo - see Will's room being much more ice themed (and yet Lorelei's sprite used as a placeholder in Karen's room, which also looked pretty different, go figure).

I think the takeaway here is that they had gone to the effort to make new sprites for eventually never used Trainers, and had come up with different E4 room designs at some point, and hadn't yet finished implementing the final version of those things by the time of the Spaceworld 1999 demo - names and dialogue, sure, but sprites, no. I suppose I just needed to be clearer that these things were merely evident still in the Spaceworld 1999 demo, but were moreso leftovers from previous work.

Cherrygrove and Azalea were swapped during development.

I'm just bouncing around in my chair. I have the pictures and a fascinating series of evolving maps to prove it. It's incredible. And I don't even understand some of the changes they made. But it's there. It's undeniable. And I have the evidence.

All this stuff is extraordinary.