Prototype and Removed Pokemon (Early 90's - 2003)

Pokemon is one of the most well known and beloved franchises in Gaming, The original 151 Pokemon are considered some of the best designs for characters in any RPG series, But like all projects the lovable little monsters went through a lot of changes, And some were removed completely.

Early Concepts


Pokemon first saw the light of day as a personal project of Satoshi Tajiri called "Capsule Monsters", In this early version of the idea, We can see many Pokemon that were simply redesigned like Gengar, Blastoise, Staryu and Lapras, However, Some designs seem to be completely unused.

Unknown early Capsule Monsters Designs
Most of these Pokemon are simple sketches, And may not have been intended to be in the final game, But for the sake of comprehensiveness they will be included.

Papyo

Not much is known about this design, It looks to be some kind of Water or Electric type, And may never have even been considered for use in the final game, It's Pokedex number is 211, Higher than the 151 that were included in the original games.

Buhi Again, Not much is known about this Pokemon, It is similar in design to Pikachu, And it's Pokedex number is 124, The same as Jynx in the final Version

The 39 Formatted Pokemon, AKA, Missingno.


Yes, What is possibly the most famous glitch in video gaming is caused by a piece of lost media, At a fan convention in 2010, Shigeki Morimoto, The lead programmer of the first Pokemon games confirmed that there were originally 190 Pokemon intended to be included in the release of the First Generation of Pokemon games, This is backed up by the fact that for the first 190 of the 255 slots in the hex grid of Pokemon all slots possess either a valid Pokemon, Or the same form of the iconic Missingno., All slots 191 and later simply contain random garbage data that produce different glitch Pokemon in each slot.

And if the right glitch is performed when trading between the First and Second generation games the Missingno. will appear in Gold or Silver as a legitimate Second Generation Pokemon, However, In the same interview Morimoto also stated that some Pokemon on the hex list in Generation 1 were not intended for those games, Including Ho-Oh, The first Second Generation Pokemon revealed, Which means that either the Pokemon that filled those spaces when they were formatted are completely different from the ones seen in the index list, Or they are indeed the same Pokemon that are used in Generation 2