Interest

Beta Pokémon Gold Reveals a Whole New World of Monsters

The Pokémon Gold game is garnering new interest this week after some ROM digging uncovered several "lost" Pokémon designs. The Cutting Room Floor, a group dedicated to revealing hidden content in old games, made the discovery by tapping into a unique version of the Generation II Pokémon game: The Space World 1997 demo.

Prior the game's official release in Japan in 1998, Nintendo brought a demo to the Nintendo Space World '97 trade show. This demo was an early version of what would become Pokémon Gold, and someone anonymously dumped the ROM on the world wide web last month. The Cutting Room Floor began digging through the files and found a plethora of early designs of official Pokémon as well as designs that were scrapped entirely.

Users on Reddit have since colored the sprites. In the line-up you can find pre-evolution Vulpix, Grimer, Paras, Meowth, Doduo, and Mr. Mime.

The concept for Girafarig was more akin to conjoined twins originally, and its pre-evolution raises even more questions as it resembles a dual-headed ghost.

The game's Fire starter looks nothing like Cyndaquil and perhaps all too much like Flareon. The Water starter, on the other hand, looks like a Pliosaur crossed with Dragonair.

The designs for Remoraid and Octillery also more closely resembled weapons, which makes sense given their naming scheme.

The Legendary Beasts of Generation II were a little lackluster originally. These designs aren't nearly as beefy.

But let's talk about the real crime here, and that's that Kotora and Raitora's chubby electric tiger bodies were left in the dark recesses of gaming code and not added to the game immediately. Similarly, Porygon 2's original design was fantastic.

Ditto was also planned to have an evolution that was...basically a conehead that screams at you. Fans are sharing their art of their favorite forgotten Pokémon on Twitter with the hashtag #Pokemon1997.

Some other awesome parts cut from the game? The ability to shred up and down the Johto region on a skateboard.

Source: The Cutting Room Floor via Polygon (Petrana Radulovic), Images via Project Pokemon