Dozens of never-before-released Pokémon designs have surfaced online this week, including a sprite that seems to support a bombshell theory about the Squirtle family.
It’s no secret that numerous “Pocket Monsters” were cut from the original games to save time and storage space, but those designs have never officially been released to the public. Instead, their sprites have been unearthed over time by lucky fans that have stumbled onto the original betas.
The newest set of images were first tweeted by Helix Chamber, a group of Pokémon enthusiasts who claimed to have received an early beta of Pokémon Red and Green from an anonymous collector. These sprites include a look at earlier incarnations of many iconic characters, including a middle evolution for Psyduck, a pre-evolved form of Zubat and an evolved form for Marowak.
Also among the leaked images are a few new creatures with appropriately silly fan-names, including: “Bloonder,” a living balloon Pokémon; “Trampel,” a four-tusked elephant and “Buu/Freezeti,” a yeti-like creature that resembles a male version of Jynx.
However, it’s the design of a small, shelled-Pokémon with water guns on its back that packs the biggest punch, as it appears to be the pre-evolved form of Blastoise. While designs for a different evolved form of Wartortle, dubbed “Totartle,” have circulated the web for a while now, this beta reveals that that creature was eventually nixed and Blastoise was merged with Squirtle’s evolutionary line deep into the development of the final game.
Aside from the Pokémon themselves, Helix Chamber has also provided a look at new trainer characters, including a new gym leader and a robot NPC, as well as a look at numerous in-game maps. A ZIP file of all the assets are available on their website, so you can dig through ‘em all on your own.
Published: Feb 20, 2019 11:32 am