-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Pokemon Gold 1997 Prototype discovered: Many scrapped pokemon designs within
- Thread starter Tay26
- Start date
Oh whoa
https://protocrystal.neocities.org/imakuni.html
So there was this Imakuni sprite that was being purposed for testing a follower system...which judging by the file names seems to be for the Pokemon Following system?
I suppose that explains why HGSS added the feature. I wonder how thorough they planned this feature to be, having a full set of animations for every Pokemon surely would have caused some size issues. Maybe just based on the menu sprites?
https://protocrystal.neocities.org/imakuni.html
So there was this Imakuni sprite that was being purposed for testing a follower system...which judging by the file names seems to be for the Pokemon Following system?
I suppose that explains why HGSS added the feature. I wonder how thorough they planned this feature to be, having a full set of animations for every Pokemon surely would have caused some size issues. Maybe just based on the menu sprites?
So apparently this is the type chart for the beta gold...steel used to.be weak to electric and water, normal was super effective against dark (LOL) and many more interesting tidbits
Plague von Karma
Banned deucer.
Notice how Bug was indeed intended to be weak against Poison!
Considering that this type chart is from the spaceworld '97 demo, they most likely hadn't changed the type matchup between Bug and Poison yet.
Plague von Karma
Banned deucer.
No, they changed it so that Bug is 1/2 against Poison while keeping Poison as 2× against Bug. So they fixed the glitch where Poison was also weak to Bug. It seems Poison VS Bug was at least half intended.
I may be wrong but I think Pokemon Stadium 2 also noted the change to this type interaction in Earl's Academy?
Seems like the changes from final were:
Normal SE against Dark instead of Neutral
Dark is NVE against Normal instead of Neutral
Water SE against Steel (I Guess it would rust it?) instead of Neutral
Electric SE against Steel (Conductive metal?) instead of Neutral
Fighting NVE against Steel (Harder than rock, I guess?) instead of SE
Poison NVE against Steel, instead of Immune.
Psychic NVE against Dark, instead of Immune.
Dark SE against Dark instead of NVE (I guess the idea is villains will backstab each other)
Steel Immune to Steel (?!) instead of NVE
Ground is Neutral to Steel instead of SE
Steel is Neutral to Fire instead of NVE
Bug, Dark, Dragon, Flying, Ghost, Grass, Ice, Normal, Psychic and Rock are neutral against Steel instead of NVE
Poison SE against Bug
Bug is neutral to Dark instead of SE
Steel in general just was not the defensive power house and honestly at this point kind of sucked?
Dark's counterpart seemed to be Normal instead of Fighting at this point. I kind of like that even if it's silly. At least it was still SE against Psychic, even if the immunity idea hadn't been tossed around yet.
Dark still kind of feels like the "balance patch" type (SE against & NVE from Psychic, gives Normal a positive interaction) but Steel's just kind of...there.
Plague von Karma
Banned deucer.
The type was likely still being balanced. Note that the special split wasn't finished yet at this point. Still had another 2 years until the game would be finished!
Oh I thought this chart was still around by 99 implying late changes, my mistake.
Yeah I imagine the total overhaul of the game resulted in some sweeping changes mechanically too. Another 2 years to see Psychic's power too, I suppose.
Plague von Karma
Banned deucer.
They still had Nintendo Cup 97 to finish, and 98 and 99 to go through, which they heavily implied they used to balance the games. Steel was generally super unfinished and not well-distributed.
Please take this chart with a pinch of salt. The person who posted this said they found this on know your meme and their is no source attached to this.
edit: so this reddit post might've been older than I thought (nearly 2 years old right when the space world demo dropped). This might actually be real as the Cutting Room Floor has it listed as an oddity of the game. Its listed under Type Matchup. Initially thought this was a new discovery and got excited.
edit: so this reddit post might've been older than I thought (nearly 2 years old right when the space world demo dropped). This might actually be real as the Cutting Room Floor has it listed as an oddity of the game. Its listed under Type Matchup. Initially thought this was a new discovery and got excited.
Last edited:
Makes sense, though let's be real Steel was never well-distributed even in the final
97 had 4 steel types: Ikari/Gorutesu, Skarmory, Steelix
Final had 6: Magnemite/Magneton, Skarmory, Steelix, Forretress, Scizor
I think its be pretty interesting to have a showdown meta with these unfinished changes. Imagine dracovish running up and running over threats like ferrothorn and Aegislash...
I find it a bit amusing that Magnemite/Magneton never were primary candidates for getting the Steel-type, and had them added relatively late in development. As if it was just given to them by chance after someone went "Hey, wouldn't it make sense if these two were Steel-type too?" during a Game Freak dev meeting in early summer of '99.
I'm guessing they really really wanted parity with Dark (had 6 both in the proto & the final) but after turning Scizor into steel and probably foretress (iirc it's steel in 99 already but the dex entry & proto sprites seem very...not...steel) couldn't think of other new pokemon that'd fit so they went with the retyping Magneton route. IMO if Ikari & Gorotesu had stuck around, maybe as their own standalone Pokemon & kept the steel typing, we probably wouldn't have gotten retyped Magnemite/ton.
I wouldn't call it a glitch since it's part of the type chart like every other interaction.
While we don't know whether poison being weak to bug was intended (we can guess from later data), we do know that at least one interaction in gen 1 was almost certainly unintended: psychic's immunity to ghost.
While it's definitely good for bug that it lost a weakness in the gen 1 to 2 transition, having two separate types be super-effective against one another was a neat interaction, and it's a shame it didn't come back in one of the newly introduced matchups. e.g., it could have been cool---or at least funny---if dark and ghost were both super-effective against one another to further lean in to their identical offense matchups.
So, going off the new information that Shuckle originally had a shell that was more clearly a clay/earthen pot instead of a natural shell, and that it originally wasn't Bug type, Bogleech posits that Shuckle's concept is actually snake wine, apparently a thing in Japan/Asia where you stick a whole venomous snake into wine for a really exciting drinking experience where you're more likely to die than normal while drinking (seems just as exciting as eating pufferfish which, if prepared wrong, just kills you). Now, I haven't looked into the whole "snake wine" concept and don't really care to, but there may be a chunk of truth to this, backed up by a trainer that used Shuckle a generation later:
Pike Queen Lucy.
Her signature Pokémon being Seviper, Lucy's teams have a definite serpentine theme to them. Along with Seviper, she uses Milotic, Steelix, and Gyarados, three Pokémon who are either directly referred to as snakes or who basically share a body plan with snakes. But she also uses Shuckle in her silver print fight, a choice which struck me as odd even as a kid. Sure, it gets moves like Wrap, but those are hardly restricted to snake Pokémon. If Shuckle actually was originally a less unpleasant interpretation of snake wine, this team choice would certainly make a good deal more sense.
Pike Queen Lucy.
Her signature Pokémon being Seviper, Lucy's teams have a definite serpentine theme to them. Along with Seviper, she uses Milotic, Steelix, and Gyarados, three Pokémon who are either directly referred to as snakes or who basically share a body plan with snakes. But she also uses Shuckle in her silver print fight, a choice which struck me as odd even as a kid. Sure, it gets moves like Wrap, but those are hardly restricted to snake Pokémon. If Shuckle actually was originally a less unpleasant interpretation of snake wine, this team choice would certainly make a good deal more sense.
breh
強いだね
It's in an opaque pot rather than a glass jar, which is, as far as I understand, the gimmick of snake liquor - you see the snake's corpse in a fearsome pose (through the clear glass) and that implies it'll give you various dubiously related benefits. Moreover, it's specifically the "Earthenware Pokemon" while having a name that is the word "pot" repeated. Gamefreak was evidently super fucking hung up on the idea of making a pot pokemon, for whatever reason. I don't think the concept of snake wine (where the snake is killed or drowned in alcohol rather than being, say, the source of bacteria that ferment it) lines up too well with its fermentation flavor, either, which to me suggests that it's more tied to literally how you make sake.
The remark about "mold" being a poor localization is also somewhat questionable given that the fungus that is used to make sake (among other fermented foods) is usually called the kouji mold in English.
If Lucy has it for any reason, I would be willing to barter that it may well be the resemblance to a snake from a stereotypical snake charmer than anything else.
The remark about "mold" being a poor localization is also somewhat questionable given that the fungus that is used to make sake (among other fermented foods) is usually called the kouji mold in English.
If Lucy has it for any reason, I would be willing to barter that it may well be the resemblance to a snake from a stereotypical snake charmer than anything else.
Very good counterpoints! I'm much more inclined to take your interpretation of its name and origins considering you speak Japanese. I think his jumps of logic are are rather big, though I also see where he'd got the idea that Shuckle was inspired by snake wine.
I mostly just wanted to point out the odd "snake" connection it has with Lucy.
One more note, though; I wonder why Shuckle isn't and apparently never was Poison.
Maybe that's why Shuckle can turn Berries into Berry Juice?
(Off-topic, but when I played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies a few months ago, I kind of laughed at Jinxie Tenma's idea that there are yokai of everything, everywhere. But it indeed looks like there are yokai for everything)
Last edited:
I'm curious: Now that at least some of RBY's source code has leaked, do we know what could have caused this? In the final release with all developer comments and such stripped out, the relevant data is literally just three bytes translating to "Ghost Psychic 0.0" (when Ghost hits Psychic apply 0.0x multiplier), which isn't much to go by. Maaaybe they typo'd and switched the order of the two types? But there's no proof of that without the source code.