Every Pokemon fan wants to know how the pocket monsters are designed. Why were they so chonky to begin with, and who decided to make them lit🍌he? Why does every starter Pokemon turn bipedal nowadays? How do you even come up with the idea for Groudon? Who decides what c꧃olour shinies are? Why are so many of them green?
Muneo Saito designed the Legendary Beasts – that’s Suicune, Entei, and Raiko💧u for those of you not familiar with Pokemon lingo – which are some of the finest creatures ever to grace the series’ hallowed PokeHalls. The roaming Johto legendaries are my favourite trio Pokemon has ever created. Nostalgia plays a part, sure, but the three are collectively far superior to the Lake Guardians or the genies. Kanto’s birds and their Galarian counterparts, are the only ones that come close. All that’s to say that Saito is very good at his job. He’s designed some of the finest legendaries going, and he’s a master of his craft.
Primarily a manga artist, Sa⛦ito ran a workshop at Kyoto Computer Gakuin and Kyoto Institute of Information Graduate Schools in 2014, during which he shared some of his designs that weren’t used for Pokemon. These were subsequently . While some of the illustrations and sketches could just be personal projects, there are a few that are clearly♒ Pokemon, and some that bear striking resemblances to existing monsters, suggesting that they were either early prototypes or later recycled into actual designs.
Take this design, for instance. The electrical sabretooth tiger must be an early prototype for Raikou – the cloud-like mane atop its back even made it into the final design. While I’m a big fan of the version that leapt out of the long grass in my copy of Pokemon Silver all those years ago, we don’t have enough blue and purple Electric-types. If this version had been chosen instead, perhaps Pokemon designs would haveไ gone in another direction, and designers would have embraced more colourful and unrealistic ideas. Gone are the regular cats and chickens, in are the luminous orange monkeys and pink, spotted dragons.
Speaking of dragons, I’m struggling to place exactly where the next design could fit into the existing Pokemon lineup, but it’s clearly a Fighting/Dragon-type. Four generations before Kommo-o burst onto the scene, this looks like Machop donned a mask and grew a tail. Maybe it was a completely new basic Pokemon, or even another Legendary that was eventually replaced with Celebi? Who’s to say, but I’d love to see a modern interpretation of it in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Scarlet & Violet’s potential DLC.
Now we come to some more in-depth designs. For one part of his seminar, Saito clearly explai✃ned how he designed evolution lines, using an Electric-type jellyfish design and a corn-based monster which may ring some bells to those oℱf you who have played any Pokemon game since Black & White.
Below you can see the monster lines, accompanied by notes scribbled in Japanese. It’s things like this that make me want to learn the language just to translate Saito’s thoughts. The arrows clearly represenꦑt evolution, but the left Pokemon’s seemingly Grass- and Electric-type evolutions suggest that this seed Pokemon could have had divergent evolution paths, perhaps through the use of Leaf or Thunder Stones respectively.
The right-hand side Pokemon is justജ Jellicent, right? We all see that. It’s popcorn Jellicen൩t. I’d have loved this Pringles-looking jelly to have had a corn-based design rather than a, well, nothing unique at all design. Evolving from kernel, to cob, all the way to popped is a brilliant idea, and one that I’m surprised Game Freak hasn’t incorporated since. Of all the aspects to take from this design, the moustachioed jellyfish seems to be the less obvious choice.
These are obviously very complete designs, but the fact that they were left unused speaks to decisions made in the Game Freak offices. We obviously don’t know when Saito designed these Pokemon – or, technically, whether they’re Pokemon designs at all – but we can take a lot from them. The Dragon/Fighting creature is much more complex than most Gen 2 designs, but over 💯time Pokemon has embraced more complicated creatures. The likes of Sigilyph and Dhelmise wouldn’t have been possible to display on an original Game Boy screen, so maybe Saito’s ideas were just ahead of their time.
I’d love a corncob Pokemon in the next game, taking inspiration from Saito’s proto-Jellicent. It’d be another🍌 Grass-type in my mind, evolving into a Grass/Fire-type once heat is applied to pop its corn. The moustache and jellyfish elements would need reworking unless Game Freak decides to make it a convergent evolution species like Toedscool. Either way, it’s fascinating to see the designs that di💟dn’t make the cut, and wonder what Pokemon could have been somebody’s favourite if the series went in a different direction. Macho-Dragon would definitely make my top three, that’s for sure.