1 HOUR of Pokemon Facts

[Music] this is japanese scriptwriter and novelist takeshi sudo shudo was the head writer for the first five years of the pokemon anime as well as the first three pokemon movies his creative process was fueled by alcohol and tranquilizers and in the last two years before his death he became obsessed with the only pokemon he ever created lugia the full story behind the diving pokemon's creation is a long and complicated story involving substance abuse seizures and contributions from just about every corner of pokemon bureaucracy to get the full picture did you know gaming searched through hundreds of sudo's japanese blog posts and translated everything he ever wrote about lugia along with some leaks and several other key documents but before we dive into lugia's bizarre origin story let's talk about where lugia wasn't created at game freak headquarters in retrospect it almost seems inevitable that lugia would appear in pokemon's second generation especially since luki's place as silva's box legendary is nothing short of iconic but lugia's inclusion in gen 2 wasn't originally part of the plan the earliest builds of pokemon gold and silver were shown to the public only once at spaceworld 1997 an e3 style gaming expo held in japan exclusively for nintendo products gold and silver's 1997 demos were very different to the game's final build taking place in a region based on the entirety of japan and containing lots of pokemon that eventually got cut from the game's final build but after the expo nintendo and game freak locked those demos away in their vaults forever leaving fans around the world wondering about all the secrets and lost pokemon inside it was one of gaming's biggest mysteries for over two decades that is until 2018 when a hacker going by the pseudonym wacko broke into nintendo's servers and stole tons of development assets before getting arrested the first thing they leaked was the now legendary space world demo fans marveled at all the newly found lost pokemon but one very important pokemon was missing from the pokedex lugia later leaks stemming from the same hack revealed that lugia's first appearance in gold and silver's development was dated june 1999. according to sudo that's because it wasn't game freak who created lugia it was him he came up with lugia specifically for the second pokemon movie which released one month later in july 1999. when he created lugia sudo originally thought it'd remain exclusive to the film in fact he was actually surprised when it appeared in the games at all toward the end of his life sudo wrote on his blog since lugia was a pokemon i designed myself solely for the new movie i was surprised it ended up getting used later in the games and tv show actually i thought of lugia as a pokemon exclusive to the movies by modern standards sudo's expectation that lugia would be a theater exclusive pokemon seems absurd of course it found its way into the games but this was still early days for the franchise and siri's standards were still being formed and even knowing what we know today it's worth pointing out that there are still pokemon forms that appear in official media but never made their way into the mainline series like mecca mewtwo from pokemon live primal dialga from pokemon mystery dungeon and of course shadow lugia from pokemon xd gale of darkness gold and silver's development began as soon as red and green were finished with game freak originally saying gen 2 would release in 1997 but their release date ended up getting delayed by a full two years and according to sudo if it wasn't for that massive delay lugia's inclusion in gold and silver would have been impossible which raises an interesting question if that two-year delay never happened which pokemon was originally planned as silver's mascot more leaks from the wacko hack have since revealed an even earlier proto-pokedex in which ho-oh unknown and a third pokemon were all grouped together this lost pokemon ultimately got scrapped but it appears to have been based on shusher from chinese mythology also known as lion dogs in china they're considered guardians and shusha statues are often placed at the entrances of imperial palaces temples government offices and the homes of the wealthy ho-oh is clearly based on the chinese phoenix fung huang which suggests this pair of chinese-inspired legendary beasts may have been the two pokemon game freak originally planned for gold and silver's box art the developers themselves never commented on the leak however so that's all just a theory and you'd do well to take it with a grain of salt with the sole exception of lugia every other pokemon was made in-house by game freak designers and it was a unique situation that allowed sudo the writer of the anime and movies the opportunity to make a pokemon of his very own in fact it was only possible because of a tragedy that took place in late 1997 what fans now call the pokemon shock the anime's 38th episode cyber soldier porygon contained a series of flashing red and blue lights that sent hundreds of japanese kids into fits of seizures and hospitalized almost 700 people in the wake of the tragedy every pokemon episode was pulled from the airwaves and pokemon executives scrambled to deal with the situation fearing it could result in the end of pokemon altogether so with all his bosses distracted sudo took advantage of the situation to make the first pokemon movie mewtwo strikes back into a much darker film than his bosses would have otherwise allowed sudo says his bosses would have stopped him if they had the chance but after mewtwo strikes back broke box office records and became the highest grossing japanese film to ever release in america shiro was given near total creative freedom to write the second pokemon movie and the first thing he did was crack open a bottle of booze after retiring from the pokemon franchise shiro admitted on his personal blog that he relied heavily on alcohol and pills to write both the pokemon anime and the movies he talked about it a lot but just to illustrate the extent of it all here's just one example of the sort of thing he was writing if i can't drink i take tranquilizers of course the ones you can normally buy in a pharmacy not illegal substances when i get a little bit high it helps me sort out all my confused thoughts however when it comes to alcohol and drugs you need to know your limit like if i start to think that one plus one doesn't necessarily equal two when these become difficult it means i'm drunk if i get any more intoxicated after that i won't be able to think productively and there's also the danger of tripping somewhere and hurting myself trudeau makes it undeniably clear he was under the influence pretty much the entire time he was working on the pokemon franchise and went into particular detail about his intake while he was writing the pokemon's second movie so it's fair to say that lugia wasn't just a result of the pokemon shock but it was also born out of sudo's substance abuse even before sudo came up with the movie's plot the first ideas he came up with were two main characters the collector who went on to become lawrence iii and what he called pokemon x a placeholder name for what eventually became lugia this is why when lugia later appeared in the anime dr namba refers to lugia as pokemon x what action do you want them to take regarding the mysterious pokemon x according to sudo x was supposed to be a creature different from pokemon since it had to symbolize life for humans too it's a symbol of life but also a symbol of coexistence originally pokemon didn't have genders but x symbolizes deep ocean currents and created life on earth it's a maternal pokemon sudo originally wrote the movie based around pokemon x and purposefully excluded series regulars like ash pikachu and team rocket he wasn't particularly fond of ash and wanted him written out of the anime but sudo's subordinates asked him to inject ash into the script anyway which he eventually agreed to as a way of showing his willingness to compromise pokemon x finally got an official name during an all hands on deck production meeting staff from every corner of the franchise attended including staff working on the film game freak employees and even distribution staff everyone in the meeting voted and the winning name of course turned out to be lugia the most likely inspiration for its name is lugia a latin word that means to lie dormant probably chosen because the first time lugia is ever seen by the public is five minutes into the film when it's lying dormant deep under the ocean the name might also draw partial inspiration from the beluga whale which lugia bears some resemblance to lugia's role in the story has some parallels with the great white whale in moby dick with lawrence playing the part of captain ahab but it's unclear if that was actually sudo's intention as far as law inspiration sudo may have drawn from japanese mythology's god of the sea the benevolent dragon ryujin not only does lugia resemble a wyvern dragon but in the japanese version of the movie lugia is also called the god of the sea lugia has the power to summon storms as does ryujin like when he used a hurricane to repel a fleet of mongolian ships invading japan the rio gene connection was eventually made even stronger with lugia's shiny colours which match those of ryujin's legendary underwater castle one key difference though is that while ryojin is a male god sudo specifically created lugia as a female god but unfortunately for sudo lugia ended up resembling ryujin a little bit more than he might have intended he created lugia as the maternal symbol of life and deep ocean currents but like many pokemon after coming up with the creature's concept the details were out of the creator's control not just lugia's name but also its voice and gender he felt strongly that as a maternal god lugia should have been voiced by a female actress but the film studio went against his wishes and chose a male actor instead in the final year of his life sudo wrote at great lengths about the anguish this caused him here's just a few excerpts from his final months one of the regrets i have about writing the second pokemon movie was that i didn't push back on the gender assigned to lugia although its gender isn't addressed in the plot it's given a male voice but it's a maternal pokemon to make matters worse using a male voice actor for lukia was a decision made during a big meeting with many participants advertisements had already aired it was too late we couldn't suddenly change lugia into a female but the more i thought about it the less i could imagine x being anything else but female i was gulping down alcohol and drugs i started to feel like i wanted to die not only was lugia voiced by a man but it was made genderless in the games shudo wrote a lot about lugia in the year before he died but it was the loss of its maternal identity that pained him most in late 2010 he collapsed in the smoking room of a train station and was rushed to the hospital but tragically didn't survive the cause of death was a subarachnoid hemorrhage which is essentially a brain bleed whose risk factors include cigarettes and alcohol it was pseudosubstance abuse that fueled his writing and gave birth to lugia but sadly it may have also been what killed him this brings us to the end of sudo's story but it's far from the end of lugia's to continue we need to rewind back to gen 2's development the first lugia beta sprite ever found is dated back to a month before the second movie landed in japanese theaters it looks nearly identical to lugia's final design but has six dorsal spines instead of the 10 on the finished sprite but there's an even older beta sprite dating back to the shushu period that may have been an even earlier form of lugia an unnamed boat pokemon now known only by its proto-pokedex number number 344. just like lugia 344 appears to draw partial inspiration from plesiosaurs a type of marine reptile that went extinct 65 million years ago along with the dinosaurs some of its physical details are similar as well especially its dorsal design long neck and its tail which has led some fans to speculate that after sudo came up with the pokemon x concept game freak might have used 344 as a springboard to come up with a brand new design that ultimately became lugia as an apparent non-legendary some fans also believe 344 may have been evolutionary related to two other lost pokemon from that version of the proto decks however since that particular leak lacked evolution data and the developers themselves have never commented on those lost pokemon any relation between lugia and 344 is entirely speculative it's unclear if trudeau made any sketches himself and as a matter of fact in 2009 sudo said he doesn't know who all was involved in the design process however we do know who to credit for lugia's final design like all gen 2 pokemon game freak's art director ken sugimori made lugia's final revisions and drew the watercolor artwork that became its official design although it's worth pointing out that even after lugia landed on the silver screen which by the way became the second highest earning japanese movie to ever hit american theaters there was one significant detail that wasn't truly cemented until almost a decade later in the movie lukia was white with blue spikes and its in-game sprites were white and blue as well but ken sugamori actually released two contradictory pieces of watercolor artwork during gen 2. one with blue spikes and another with black spikes after that lugia's sprites switched to black in gen 3 as well as in gen 4's beta but finally in gen 4 the sprites switched back to blue spikes this was also the case with lugia's gen 4 artwork and after that it was never seen with black spikes ever again there's also the question of lugia's elemental type a topic that's caused some confusion ever since its inception neither the film or sudo himself ever directly addressed lugia's type although presumably when sudo created the god of the sea he probably intended her as half water type but when game freak went to program it into gold and silver they ended up making it dual type psychic and flying according to programmer and designer shigeki morimoto who's best known as the creator of mew lugia was made half psychic simply because they wanted to make it strong in the july 2009 issue of nintendo dream magazine he said we wanted lugia to give the impression of being a powerful pokemon so we settled on psychic for the second time instead of watertime in other words lugia is not a water type despite being underwater because due to its flying type appearance and psychic type being the symbol of a powerful pokemon at the time for some extra context to what moromoto is saying here it's worth noting that psychics were so powerful back in the 90s that mew and mewtwo were banned from all three world cups and even after the ban nearly half the pokemon used by the finalists were all psychic types but what about shadow lugia or as it's known in japan dark lugia it made its first and as of the making of this video it's only appearance in the 2005 gamecube title pokemon xd gale of darkness in the game shadow lugia is referred to by its code name xd001 which some fans believe is a reference to its origins as pokemon x weirdly the pokemon company never actually said what xd stands for so fans have been speculating for the past 15 years whether it's extra darkness extreme darkness or some other abbreviation did you know gaming got in contact with tsukasa tawada the composer who created shadow lugia's theme as well as all the music in both coliseum and gale of darkness he told us the xd actually stands for extra dimension and when we asked if the developers intended xd001 as a nod to pokemon x he didn't seem to even know what we were talking about just like the original lugia its shadow form wasn't created by game freak both its concept and its design were made by gale of darkness's developers at genius sonority lugia was the only shadow pokemon in the game to receive a unique design whereas every other shadow pokemon retained their standard appearance just with a purple haze shadow lugia is often cited as the very first pokemon ever designed by james turner the englishman who eventually worked his way through the ranks to become sword and shield's art director but just like the original lugia its dark side was really more of a team effort according to james lugia was chosen as the star of the game by the writing team he said he doesn't know why they chose lugia but presumably it's because ho-oh was the star of the ra game that came before pokemon coliseum but james wasn't the guy who drew the first sketches either it was the art director hiromoto sinichi who's probably most famous as the illustrator of the star wars return of the jedi manga series after hiromoto hammered down the basic design shadow lugia was finally handed off to james who chose the colours and finalized the design james also made shadow lugia's official art that appears on the box art as well as the cgi cutscenes that featured shadow lugia sudo grew obsessed with lugia and similarly james also had a great affection to shadow lugia both of them considered lugia their baby in some sense james calls it his dark child and occasionally laments on twitter that he'd love to see shadow lugia return someday unfortunately the only way to transfer shadow lugia to a mainline pokemon game is by purifying it at which point it just becomes an ordinary lugia meaning shadow lugia is trapped forever on fans gamecube memory cards but now that james is working game freak proper and has a lot more clout as the art director maybe someday we could see shadow lugia finally return to the series in 2020 the venusaur charizard and blastoise clones from mewtwo strikes back made their way into pokemon go so shadow looking might someday make a comeback as well even if it's only in a spin-off did you know there's a lost pokemon movie about a t-rex fossil that comes to life and almost destroys kanto the movie was written by takeshi shiuto the chief writer of the first two pokemon films as well as the early years of the pokemon anime just a few months before his death in 2010 shiro wrote a series of entries on his blog explaining what the movie was about what inspired him to write it and why it was ultimately never made we recently translated all those blog entries into english so all the information in this video comes directly from takeshi shiro himself this story begins with shudo waking up in the hospital hooked up to an iv drip at this point he had already completed several seasons of the anime and thought pretty soon the series would come to an end even knew how it would end but one day the director told shuto that the anime would continue on for at least 10 more years leading shuto to obsess over how he could possibly make it last in perpetuity shooter wanted to get rid of ash and reboot the series with a new protagonist and have the show grow up with his audience and tackle more mature themes he drank more and more as he obsessed over these musings until eventually shiro drank so much that he blacked out when he woke up in the hospital he felt completely alienated from the nurses treating him they were all girls in their 20s and by now shuto had aged into a 50 year old man they treated him like he was ancient and that he found it impossible to have any real conversations with him he felt depressed alone and worst of all to him old shooter thought to another time he had blacked out and woke up in a hospital bed back to when he was a younger man of 38 after recovering back then he took all his nurses out for drinks and tried to romance the one he thought was the prettiest even staying up until 4am talking to her on the phone one night when he was younger the nurses found him charming and thought his job as a screenwriter was exciting he was such a heavy drinker that he found himself in the hospital on a pretty regular basis so regular in fact that in the middle of the story he offered his readers some pro tips like to make sure you always buddy up to the head nurse social director's subordinates to give you the best care he says one time he even attended a pokemon script meeting with an iv needle in his arm but now his youth was spent and those days were gone he wrote they didn't treat me like a man exactly more like an uncle there was also an apprentice nurse who acted like i was in elder care they were certainly kind but it was the sort of kindness that makes you stand up and offer your seat to an old man on the train i was in a private room staring at the ceiling on an iv drip without having any real conversations with the nurses the question that naturally came to mind was what is this world i live in this was the state he was in when he suddenly grabbed a pen and paper and started writing the first day of a six month process crafting a brand new pokemon movie a third film to follow up on the success of pokemon the movie 2000. the theme of the first movie mewtwo strikes back was the existence of self the second movie was coexistence and now this third movie's theme would be what is this world i exist in chuda explains that real world animals can be found in early anime episodes but later on their existence was pretty much erased as the anime's canon changed to include just pokemon and humans so he wanted to reintroduce animals in the most dramatic way possible people digging up an ancient fossil of a tyrannosaurus at this point in the story shootout suddenly disappears for 13 days when he returns with his next blog post he starts off saying i'm sorry for the sudden absence lately i've been struggling trouble sleeping no appetite getting sick then i fainted while i was on the computer my body was on the road to recovery last year but suddenly fell into a tailspin okay let's pick up the story where we left off shooto continues the discovery of the tyrannosaurus fossils sends kanto scientists into an uproar as they question what it could mean for their understanding of the world they live in he likens it to when humans in the real world found out the earth was round or what charles darwin's theory of evolution meant for human existence he writes is there some great secret to this world's very existence with the discovery of the tyrannosaurus fossil people begin to wonder about the world in which they live but there's no time to waste thinking about it because a blue light appears in the eye of the tyrannosaurus fossil and it starts to move it's headed somewhere it doesn't care about the human world or the wild world of pokemon in its path it crosses rivers and oceans in a straight line anything that gets in its way is crushed the tyrannosaurus just keeps making a beeline for who knows where destroying everything in its path eventually it reaches pallet town and stomps professor oak's lab into dust leaving oak just stammering i knew this day would come but i don't know why it's happening i knew this day would come shuto summarizes the script saying a lot of the screen time focuses on pokemon habitats and human dramas that are unfortunate enough to get between the fossil and its destination to be clear this isn't a living breathing dinosaur it's a fossil made of stone that for mysterious reasons suddenly became sentient ash and his friends as well as jesse james and mouth all try to stop it along with pretty much every human in pokemon in existence they don't know why but their gut instinct tells them that the tyrannosaurus could destroy the entire world one of team rocket's secret bases lies within its path of destruction so team rocket joins the resistance as well as old animosities and rivalries all fade away in the fight for existence the only living being who remains calm is mewtwo who as usual is brooding and wondering about his own self-existence [Music] shooter says that the introduction of the tyrannosaurus was partially motivated by the fact that gold and silver weren't finished yet which meant he had to rely on the same 151 pokemon he had already used in the first two movies in anime episodes he thought maybe a new pokemon could be made for this movie just like he had created lugia for the previous film but in a meeting shuto wasn't invited to game freak and the movie's producers decided that unlike the last time third movie wouldn't get a brand new pokemon of its own so he wanted to add a new sort of creature and got the idea of a tyrannosaurus from sue one of the largest and best preserved t-rex specimens ever found it was named after its discoverer sue hendrickson then auctioned off for nearly a billion yen shortly before shuttle started writing his script he says he would have bid on it himself if he could but unfortunately he didn't have a billion yen just sitting around so instead of shooto's garage nowadays sue can be found in the field museum of natural history in chicago he also cited shonen kenya as inspiration one of his favorite childhood manga shona in kenya tells a story of a japanese boy whose family moves to africa during world war ii the british kidnap his father so he has to go on a series of adventures to get him back including one adventure where he gets chased by dinosaurs shooter poured his heart and soul into the third pokemon movie but in the end it never got made he said it took me six months after leaving the hospital to write it ultimately the script got rejected the reason wasn't that it would destroy world building of pokemon or that it was confusing or that it had a heavy theme the reason they gave me was that a story where an inorganic object becomes conscious and starts moving wouldn't be a hit i was in no mood to talk after all i had been working on this script for almost half a year i went back to odawara and drank a lot of sake the film's director kunihiko yuyama just didn't have the confidence in shudo's movie yuyama worked on a similar film a few years earlier about a car that gains consciousness and runs amok which failed to meet financial expectations shuda was confident in the quality of his script but he couldn't guarantee its success at the box office he felt an extraordinary weight on his shoulders as he walked around tokyo and saw countless street merchants selling pokemon merchandise most of it unlicensed and handmade he figured a lot of the knockoff pikachu dolls were probably stitched together at home by the city's poorest and most desperate residents if the next movie flopped the pokemon company would take a hit but ultimately they'd be just fine however it was the street vendors selling pirated goods and their families that relied on them to bring home the bacon who'd get hit the hardest considering the demands of his superiors as well as the plight of the pirates shudo reluctantly scrapped the script in the end shudo would co-write a completely different script with hadeki sonoda game freak and the film's producers approved four pokemon from gold and silver to be included in this new script with two of them being entei and unknown so they wrote a story around them that eventually became the spell of the unknown although she's called mali in the english version the japanese movie's main character is a young girl named me who'shudo named after his daughter he said my daughter was born when i was 45 years old which means that by the time she reaches adolescence i'll be an old man i might even be dead so i decided to make this film a little present for my daughter the producer and the staff didn't know anything about it as for the ending of the tyrannosaurus script judo purposefully left it a mystery the fossil spends most of the movie stomping in a straight line so the big question is where exactly has it been going this whole time at the end of his post shiro tells his readers and the place where the tyrannosaurus fossil finally stops is well i don't think i'll tell you actually he goes on to say he'll publish a small novel with more information at a later date just as he had done for the first two movies it would have been volume 3 in the animation series books shudo wrote with extra lore and information not seen in the movies or tv show but tragically he collapsed in the smoking area of a naro railway station eight months later and died at a hospital shortly after so the novel was never published his death was caused by subarachnoid hemorrhage which is essentially a brain bleed most likely caused or at least exacerbated by a lifetime of heavy drinking and smoking and what eventually became of shuto's lost pokemon movie and where it ended up after his death remains a mystery even to this day did you know there are 50 e-reader cards for fire and leaf green that were never released outside japan a lot of the content the card's unlocked can't be accessed by any other means and since e-reader cards are region-locked most fans never got a chance to experience any of that content although it was eventually made compatible with other franchises like mario and animal crossing the e-reader was originally marketed as a pokemon device called the pokemon card e-reader scanning the strips on select pokemon tcg cards into the e-reader unlocked exclusive content for your game boy advance like a space invader style minigame where tyranitar fights an active volcano you could also scan e-reader cards into ruby and sapphire for trainer battles unique berry types and the eon ticket that took you to the southern island most of the cards were released in the us but due to the e-reader's lack of popularity outside japan functionality for the cards and international versions of fire and leak green were deactivated as a result this 50 card set remained exclusive to japan containing 37 trainer cards and 13 tower cards scanning a trainer card imports up to three trainers onto one floor of the trainer tower in the sevi islands and the trainer tower is eight stories tall so you'd need to scan eight trainer cards lots of these cards are themed like shiny evolutions and kanto starters each card shows you just a few of the trainers pokemon and only a few of their attacks so you won't know the rest until you battle them their pokemon are all scaled to match the level of the strongest pokemon on your own team so they'll always be a worthy challenge you can mix and match trainer cards to make any tower you want but ideally fans are encouraged to build towers curated by game freak themselves which is where the tower cards come in there are 13 different tower cards and each one is ranked by difficulty beginner intermediate and advanced a tower card tells you to scan 8 trainer cards in order to build the tower shown on the card tower cards also have an option for time attack which gives players the option to have an extra layer of challenge for thrill seekers and completionists climbing towers doesn't reward you with experience but you can win some decent prizes like dragon scales metal coats and upgrades some of these trainers were incorporated into international versions of the game without use of the e-reader but a lot of them weren't which makes these cards especially valuable to collectors 44 cards in the game set could be found in five card booster packs similar to tcg cards one promo card was also distributed to fans in may 2004's issue of corocoro magazine and the last five cards could only be acquired through club nintendo nowadays these five club nintendo cards four trainers and one advanced tower are incredibly rare costing upwards of two thousand dollars due to the cards rarity and difficulty fire in lake green's ultimate challenge is building the club nintendo tower and completing its time attack of 12 minutes and 47 seconds in japan the original game boy games were red and green but internationally the first releases were called pokemon red and blue since most international fans never played green the remake's director janichi masuda admitted that water blue would have made more sense than leaf green but decided against it to symbolize the harmony of the pokemon world in 2004 masuda wrote if we follow the pattern of the original series the new games would be fire red and water blue but i chose green as a leaf as a symbol of peace fire and water are opposing concepts that suggest conflict but the real world is already full of conflict so we decided on names that suggest a peaceful world just like every previous game in the series fire red and leaf green were localized into english almost entirely by just one man a canadian freelancer named nob ogasawara as a thanks for his years of service and also to provide an easter egg for fans nintendo of america made lots of npcs after him starting with black belt knob and gen 2's cnwood gym as well as another black belt on hoenn route 115. nam told us that in real life he'd make a terrible black belt as he has the coordination of a mechanical monkey nintendo later found out he spent a lot of his time off work hiking so for fire ride and leaf green they changed knob from a black belt into a hiker on his way to bill's house and you can find him on route 25 with three geodude and macha knob was also included in the remakes heart gold and soul silver omega ruby and alpha sapphire and let's go pikachu and eevee but after translating 25 pokemon games almost single-handedly knob got laid off in the middle of gen 4 due to contractual complications between nintendo and the pokemon company so unfortunately he didn't make his way into cinna or any later iterations speaking of nob ogasawara the sevi isles south of kanto are based on the ogasawara islands that lie off the southern coast of the real-life kanto region of japan they're actually named after nob's ancestors who claimed to have been the first japanese to ever set foot on these islands the ogasawara islands were never geographically connected to the continent and as a result they're populated by plants and animals that are nowhere to be found on the japanese mainland which makes their in-game counterparts the sevi islands a perfect home for all of the johto and hoen pokemon found in fire red and leaf green some of the sevi islands represent specific ogasawara islands like deoxys home birth island which is clearly modeled after minami torishima in real life the united states and japanese governments fought over the strategic naval island for nearly a hundred years the u.s finally gained control of the island after world war ii but ultimately gave it back to japan peacefully in the 1960s there are over 30 ogasawara islands and interestingly the game's internal data shows a lot more sevy islands that didn't make it into the final game including names and even some maps for islands 8 and 9 as well as 22 23 and 24 it appears game freak was originally planning on 24 islands or possibly even more but the internal maps are unfinished so the island's count was probably reduced before too much time was spent in development some of the sevis are also based on the izu islands a volcanic island chain that inspired mount ember the dormant volcano on one island and also naval rock whose winding passageways were formed by volcanic lava in addition to the extra islands another aspect of the sevis never saw the light of day and as a result fire red and leaf green ended up with only 46 jota pokemon instead of the 59 game freak intended surfing north of six island players can find a small area called outcast island whose only purpose is being home to altern cave it's a small cavern about four screens large and it only contains one pokemon zubat at first glance it seems like a pointless local but it's actually left over from a series of unused events these events would have given fans a mystery gift that altered the pokemon found inside replacing zubat with eight johto pokemon marie aipom pineco shuckle teddy ursa houndour stantler and smeargle fans would have been met with the following text which can still be found in the game's data thank you for using the mystery gift system recently there have been rumors of rare pokemon appearances the rumors are about all turn cave on outcast island why not visit there and check out if the rumors are indeed true but unfortunately nintendo never got around to actually hosting any of these events so these gen 2 pokemon and their evolutions a total of 13 monsters ended up unobtainable and nowhere to be found in ruby and sapphire either so fans were left with some annoying holes in their pokedex that couldn't be filled until emerald hit store shelves a year later when fire red and lake green launched art director ken tsugi mori drafted a new art set to replace the series original watercolor art and in the process changed the number of fingers and toes on a lot of kanto pokemon haunter golem and raticate all had four fingers on each hand but their updated designs had just three meanwhile pikachu and mr mime sprouted additional fingers now giving them five on each hand according to poker beach founder john zahagian at a 2009 tokyo event a pokemon company staffer told him the pokemon company has an internal list of every change ever made to a pokemon's design for example he told me mr mine gained an extra finger because japanese parents wrote in to complain about its four fingers being associated with gangs i later learned the yakuza get their fingers cut off so i guess parents thought mr mine was a yakuza reference there's a taboo in japan against cartoon characters with four fingers not only because of the yakuza but also because it's considered offensive to lower class workers like butchers and meat packers who've lost a finger some pokemon also sprouted extra toes like how zapdos and dodria went from three on each foot in gen 1 to 4 on each foot and fire on leaf green but this probably had more to do with consistency than taboo articuno moltres and odio had all four toes from the very beginning so the designers probably thought it was weird that zapdos and dodrio only had three and revised their designs accordingly all these pokemon's original designs were never seen again and future generations permanently replaced them with fire and link green redesigns according to satoru okada the general manager for the ds games the diaz might not have had built-in wi-fi if it wasn't for fire and leak green as you can still see on the game's box art fans who bought fire in lake green also received a gba wireless adapter which allowed for trading in battles without a link cable in an interview with japanese nintendo online magazine okada said we started development with a wireless adapter bundled with pokemon fire and leap green when we saw it we thought we can definitely make it happen some people find the cable annoying and you can't really walk around or move when connected to another system so we wanted to develop the wireless capability even further we thought making it part of the system itself rather than an adapter would make it even easier to use if okada's team hadn't built wifi into the ds many of the special events in gen 4 and gen 5 wouldn't have been possible [Music] did you know dozens of pokemon are based on prehistoric animals and other extinct species lots of pokemon have some dinosaurian inspiration though many are filtered through a lens of monster movies and tv shows that game freak watched as kids especially ultraman and godzilla nito king looks a bit like a dinosaur but he was probably inspired by baragon from frankenstein conquers the world and of course tyranitar was modeled after godzilla himself but for the most part we'll leave the mazda movie references for another video today we're just gonna focus on a few of the pokemon based on specific animals that have gone extinct so let's dig in and explore how paleontology shaped the world of pokemon the dragapult family and in particular its final evolution draw inspiration from diplocollis these were amphibians with boomerang-shaped skulls that existed even before the dinosaurs all three stages of the dragopold family exhibit the theme of amphibian metamorphosis the way real-life amphibian bodies transform as they grow older dreepy has visible gills and only two underdeveloped arms draycloak loses the guild and starts growing a second pair of legs and dragapult completes the metamorphosis with fully developed legs these pokemon also pay homage to diplocolis via their elemental types being half dragon and half ghost to reference the extinct amphibian yanmega is based on prehistoric giant dragonflies called meganura with massive wingspans up to 28 inches wide these ancient dragonflies were seven times bigger than the largest dragonfly living today janmega being inspired by a mega nura isn't only hinted at by them both having mega in their names but also by its method of evolution yanma evolves into yanmega when it levels up knowing the attack ancient power as mentioned earlier game freak were hugely influenced by giant tv monsters who in japanese were called kaju game freak's long-held affection for kaiju helped explain how mega nura out of the countless different prehistoric animals came to have a pokemon based on it this is because there's an actual kaiju who is a mutated mega nura it made its first appearance in godzilla versus megagiris a film released in late 2000 just six years before janmega made its debut in pokemon diamond in pearl aerodactyl or terra in japan is based on a pterodactyl or to use the scientific term pterosaur aerodactyl's about six feet tall but pterosaurs could grow to 20 feet tall they weren't all that big though with some pterosaurs being tiny in fact in 2014 a new kind of pterosaur was discovered that was so small it could actually fit in your pocket the paleontologist who discovered this pocket monster named it aerodactylus stating the name derives from the nintendo pokemon aerodactyl a fantasy creature made up of a combination of different pterosaurian features in addition to their confessed love for ultraman and godzilla gamefreak were also influenced by the movie jurassic park which debuted halfway into red and green's six-year development in the games scientists say aerodactyl is extinct but if you give them an old amber they can bring aerodactyl back to life examining the official 90s artwork for the old amber reveals that there's an ancient mosquito trapped inside referencing how dinosaurs were resurrected in jurassic park with the exception of aerodactyl all fossil pokemon from the first three generations were inspired by creatures that existed long before dinosaurs evolved around 230 million years ago omni and amistar are based on ammonites prehistoric relatives of the squid and octopus kabuto is essentially a mix of two ancient animals trilobites and horseshoe crabs trilobites were among earth's most successful prehistoric creatures populating the world's oceans for nearly 300 million years this real world timeline is reflected in the pokedex which tells us that kabuto hid on the seafloor 300 million years ago horseshoe crabs on the other hand are prehistoric arthropods that have survived into the modern era and can still be seen washed up on beaches since they're twice as old as dinosaurs and have barely changed at all in 450 000 millennia horseshoe crabs are sometimes referred to as living fossils a term also used by the pokedex to describe kabuto kabuto's evolution kabutops is a mix of two prehistoric animals as well trilobites and sea scorpions ocean dwelling arthropods that could grow up to eight feet long twice as big as kabutops the lilipe family are based on sea lilies and are even classified in the pokedex as the sea lily pokemon real-life sea lilies live deep in the ocean attached to the seabed by a stalk even though they're animals they look more like plants which is why the leaf and credit are half grass type anarith is classified as the old shrimp pokemon which is fitting as its evolutionary line is based on anomalocaris an extinct relative of arthropods whose name means odd shrimp at three feet long anomalocaris were the apex predators of their day when all life was confined to the oceans half a billion years ago shrimp were at the top of the food chain starting in generation four game freak began basing fossil pokemon on dinosaurs rather than the prehistoric creatures that came before kranidos and rampardos draw inspiration from pachycephalosaurus dinosaurs whose skulls were 10 inches thick making them the thickest skulled animals ever to have walked the earth the pokedex says kranidos toughened their already rockhard skulls by headbutting one another a habit inspired by the speculated behavior of pachycephalosaurus the shieldon family are based on ceratopsians the most formidable plant eaters of the cretaceous period they could grow up to 30 feet long and were more than capable of defending and sometimes even killing a tyrannosaurus shieldon and bastardon are herbivores as well with the pokedex telling us the grass and berries some viewers might think that all pokemon are plant eaters but the pokedex makes it clear that some actually eat meat some even eat other pokemon the polka dots says ferret hunt rattata talonflame's favorite food is wingle and pikapak and sneezels scare pidgey away from their nests so they can feast on their eggs tertuga and karacosta the proto-turtle pokemon are based on extinct proto-staged turtles proto-staged were among the biggest turtles that ever existed measuring up to 15 feet long and weighing 5 000 pounds the largest protostage arcalon was the size of a car and lived in the shallow oceans that once covered north america which is probably why the tortuga family was introduced in the american based region of yunova the arkhan family was based on archaeopteryx the earliest known bird explaining why the pokedex classifies arkhan and archaeops as the first bird pokemon and says they're the ancestors of all bird pokemon archaeopteryx were an ancient evolutionary stage between feathered dinosaurs who couldn't fly and their descendants including modern day birds archaeopteryx could grow up to 20 inches which is the exact height of an arkham tyrant and tyrantrum are based on the world's most famous dinosaur the tyrannosaurus you may have seen some jurassic park debunked videos claiming that tyrannosaurus were actually scavengers rather than apex predators depicted in the movies but most paleontologists believe they were actually both they scavenged when the opportunity arose but they were primarily active predators tyrannosaurus had one of the most powerful bites of any land animal allowing them to crush the bones and meat of any creature that stood in their way the amarra family are based on the long-necked dinosaur amargasaurus whose next fails may have been used for peacocking to attract a mate only one amargasaurus fossil has ever been discovered it was dug up in southern argentina which just so happens to be one of the best places on earth to view the southern lights or to use the technical term the aurora australis this is probably why amara and aurora's sales look like the aurora astralis and why amara can only evolve into auroras at night as the aurora astralis can only be seen at night the gala region introduced four new fossil pokemon who are all strange mishmashes of various fossil creatures some pokemon fans believe they're a reference to the crystal palace dinosaurs outside london but the paleontological expert that advised us for this video's production disagrees with the fan's interpretation the crystal palace dinosaurs weren't multiple species combined to create frankensteins rather they only contain minor errors like scientists putting an iguanodon skeleton's thumb bone on its nose thinking it was a horn our expert believes the galler fossils aren't based on these sort of errors but rather on paleontological forgeries forgeries are multiple fossils combined into frackensteins sometimes created by hucksters who want to claim they've discovered a brand new species one of history's most famous forgeries was the piltdown man a supposed missing link between ape and human discovered by a british archaeologist in 1912. it wasn't until 40 years later that scientists were able to prove that pilp down man was a hoax and actually was the combination of human and orangutan bones in 1999 national geographic magazine ran a cover story about a new species of feathered dinosaur discovered in china called the archaea raptor but it turned out to be a forgery as well made up from the head and arms of a bird and the legs and tail of various dinosaurs one of gallar's four fossil pokemon appears to draw inspiration from a real paleontological blunder though the american scientist edward drinker code once incorrectly placed the skull of a newly discovered fossil on the end of its tail rather than on its neck essentially constructing the animal backwards that pokemon is dragovich which has the head of a placoderm fish coming on the tail of a stegosaur-like dinosaur most of the grass starters final stages draw from prehistoric life venusaur might be the first example to pop into your head as the bulbasaur family has the sore suffix in their names implying a connection to dinosaurs but their original japanese names have nothing to do with dinosaurs for example venusaur's name is fushigabana meaning strange flower pokemon developers have said several times that the venusaur family are basically just frogs not dinosaurs but in gen 2 we do start to see the prehistoric theme take hold meganium borrows several traits from sauropod dinosaurs like brachiosaurus meganim is only about six feet tall but in real life sauropods were the largest dinosaurs ever to exist the largest land animals of all time were a group of sauropod dinosaurs called titanosaurus who could grow up to 120 feet tall and weigh as much as 150 000 pounds this dino inspiration likely explains this pokemon's prototype name in gold and silver's 1997 demo before its name was meganium it was called hanaryu which in japanese means flower dragon sceptile draws its inspiration from theropods a group of dinosaurs that includes both dilophosaurus and raptors just like sceptile theropods are bipedal meaning they walk on two legs rather than four with many possessing three fingers and toes on each hand and foot theropods were the ancestors of birds and had many feathers on their arms just like sceptile's pre-evolution grovile despite what you may have seen in the movies like jurassic park theropods weren't especially intelligent at least by modern standards and raptors almost certainly wouldn't have been smart enough to open doors let alone spring traps on paleontologists some pokemon are based on more recent fossils torterra is based on mayolania turtles who only went extinct about 2 000 years ago possibly due to human settlement mayolania turtles were the same size as torterra about 2 meters long and the horns made it impossible to withdraw their heads into their shells like most pokemon torterra actually draws inspiration from more than one source in this case the world turtle from chinese hindu and native american mythologies the world turtle is believed to carry the whole world on its back which explains torterra's half-ground type and why the pokedex says ancient people imagined that beneath the ground a gigantic torterra dwelt mama swine is based on the woolly mammoth relatives of modern day elephants that went extinct fairly recently mostly dying off at the end of the ice age ten thousand years ago this fact is reflected in the pokedex's entry which tells us a frozen mammoth swine was dug from ice dating back 10 000 years male man of swine have larger tusks than female mammal swine which is a reference to the gender differences in some real-life elephant species whose females also have smaller tusks and sometimes no tusks at all and just like john mega mama swine evolves from piloswine when leveled up with ancient power chestnut draws inspiration from lipto dots armored mammals that like the woolly mammoth went extinct around 10 000 years ago glyptodon are closely related to modern armadillos and could grow to the size of volkswagen beetle decidueye on the other hand isn't based on a truly prehistoric animal but rather an animal that's gone extinct very recently decidueye resembles a stilt owl the type of exceptionally long-legged owl native to hawaii they were driven to extinction about 1500 years ago when a new species appeared in their environment humans hawaii emerged from the ocean only a few million years ago meaning the islands aren't old enough to have prehistoric animals living on them this is why the hawaii inspired region of alola didn't introduce any new fossil pokemon instead replacing them with ghost type pokemon based on extinct species decidueye is a hawaiian stilt owl and oricorio is a hawaiian honeycreeper a type of small bird that stills owls preyed upon some honeycreepers have survived into the present but a dozen honey creeper species are presently endangered and about 20 have already gone completely extinct similarly galerian corsola is a ghost type for the same reason it's a species of coral that has been wiped out by climate change another prehistoric creature just like the pocket-sized aerodactylus was named after a pokemon in 2017 an unknown prehistoric creature was discovered in south africa a dysanodont an ancient mammal relative even older than the dinosaurs its discoverer was a huge pokemon fan so he named it bulbasaurus the published artwork showing what bulbasaurus may have looked like even has a bush in the background as a clever nod to bulbasaur did you know magikarp and gyarados come from a piece of chinese mythology the myth is about a dragon's gate that sits atop a waterfall cascading down a legendary mountain carp that are able to swim off the waterfall and leap over the gate are transformed into powerful dragons this explains why you need to knock magikarp into the waterfall to evolve it in pokemon snap the game is referencing their origins there's also some fan speculation on magikarp's evolution some fans believe that magikarp was originally intended to evolve into dragonite and dragon air was supposed to evolve into gyarados this is mostly based on magikarp's color scheme being similar to dragonite and gyarados following dratini and dragonair's color scheme and serpent-like shape but the origin story largely disproves this as it's based on chinese mythology chinese dragons are traditionally portrayed with serpent-like bodies in a crest just like gyarados dragonite's design appears to have more european influences in pokemon red blue and yellow your progress is halted in viridian city by a grumpy old man who won't let you pass until he's had his morning coffee in the japanese versions however the old man was passed out on the ground drunk his granddaughter says oh grandpa how could you sleep in a place like this and asks you to wait until he's sobered up he later says looks like i was really drunk and my head hurts then asks if you know how to capture a pokemon as he does in the english version this was likely deemed inappropriate and removed by nintendo of america pokemon has a whole range of censorship and controversy attached to it one basic example is the censoring of the game's art assets multiple trainer sprites have been altered in pokemon gold and silver the sprites were changed for the us removing any kind of religious practice or symbol the sage is no longer praying and the medium's prayer beads have been removed the beauty and female swimmer sprites are no longer winking and the beauty has longer shorts there's also a fisherman who was originally smoking a cigarette trainer sprites were also censored in generation 4 pokemon games the male swimmer's briefs were changed to shorts it wasn't just trainer sprites that were censored either the sprite for reggie steele was changed for the european release of pokemon diamond and pearl as reggie steele's original pose resembled the hitler salute the redesign was kept for all versions of pokemon heart gold soul silver and platinum censorship was taken a step farther than altering a sprite for one pokemon jinx actually had its official design altered controversy is what sparked jinx's redesign as some people began comparing jinx's face to a stereotypical portrayal of black people known as black face because of this parallels have been drawn between a pokemon anime episode called holiday hijinks and the slave trade as jinx appears with its original design as santa's helper the pokemon shellos and gastrodon were actually intended to debut in pokemon ruby and sapphire this was confirmed by an interview with ken tsugimori in nintendo power but there's also evidence hidden in the games themselves in the game data for pokemon diamond and pearl there are two unused backsprites for shellows and gastrodon chelos has traits of both west sea and east sea variants from the final games this and only having one sprite for each pokemon suggests there was originally just one variety of shallows making changes to an already fleshed out design and attaching entirely new concepts like multiple varieties also seems suggestive of shallows having an unusually long period of development there are also two unused pokemon cries in pokemon ruby and sapphire's game data that sound very similar and are thought to be the original cries of shalos and gastrodon while we're on the subject of pokemon ruby and sapphire there are rumblings from fans about a possible remake of those games the speculation comes from every key item sprite since the generation 3 pokemon games including the ones not in generation 4 such as the fame checker were added back into black 2 and white 2's game data there are multiple throwbacks to red and blue and newer pokemon games one throwback is in black 2 and white 2. at route 3 in the original games a youngster says hi i like shorts they're comfy and easy to wear this became a popular phrase among pokemon fans it must have been recognized by the english translators because in black 2 and white 2's humalao city a lady will make a reference to the youngster saying this dress is comfy and easy to wear at route 10 in red and blue picnic or carol says the pokemon here are so chunky there should be a pink one with a floral pattern this is actually what the pokemon muna was based on it should also be noted that in pokemon ruby and sapphire there's an employee at the devon corporation who states i'm trying to develop a device that visually reproduces the dreams of pokemon dream mist which is produced by muna can achieve this adding another connection to previous games the pokemon coughing and wheezing were originally named ny and la referencing the polluted state of the cities new york and los angeles another interesting bit on coughing is that his sprite scene in pokemon red and blue is actually wrong the official design that was set before the release of the game has coffin's skull and crossbone design below his face but the sprite in red and blue shows it the other way around in the original games the character bill has a strong interest in computer technology and invented the computer pokemon storage system in the japanese version of the games he was named masaki sonazaki but in the english versions he was named bill it's thought this is a reference to former ceo of microsoft bill gates did you know the original pokemon games contain data for an unused town the name of the town and its proper location can't be found and it simply shows up in a default position above the indigo plateau with the title pellet town there's also unused music and pokemon red and blue the music has been speculated to belong to the unused town data but it's also possible the music was used to test the game's audio engine early in development there's another unused music track this time in pokemon yellow the track is likely connected to an unused battle system that can be found in pokemon yellow's game data but it also resembles a track from another game freak game called bushi sergiuden futari no usha the unused system displays the text hurry get away if the player attempts to select any menu option besides run giving the player no option but to flee from battle it's thought that this system would also been used for whenever the player went into a battle without a pokemon this also suggests that the player could have originally encountered wild pokemon outside of pallet town before they were given a pikachu there's also an unused move entry for a hidden machine or hm in the code of the original games the entry sits between the hm's fly and surf in the japanese pokemon red there's text that translates to ground rows up somewhere the text is stored next to the message that displays when the player uses the strength hm in the game's overworld and is formatted in a similar way based on this it seems likely the games originally had a sixth hm that somehow manipulated the ground there's also an unused pokemon type in the original games called bird type the type has no strengths or weaknesses against any other pokemon and can be displayed in the stance of the glitch pokemon such as missingno some leftovers including the bird type are still in the code of pokemon gold and silver one piece of hidden content in pokemon gold is actually right on the title screen by using a glitch to alter the way the game's palettes are loaded it's possible to see that ho-oh is actually not a silhouette but a full-color sprite the sprite itself is unrefined this suggests that the idea to have full-color pokemon on the title screen was scrapped fairly quickly lucious title screen sprite and silver backs this up as it's just a silhouette with no color in an early version of pokemon gold and silver shown at nintendo's space world event in 1997 the game starting town wasn't new bark town it was a completely different town named silent hills it's thought that the name was at least changed to avoid comparisons to the horror game silent hill which was released during gold and silver's development period another strange change is that the lake of rage was a full town and even had a gym the lake remained an important part of the game and this original town classification is possibly why you can still fly to the location on the world map several areas in the kanto region were at one point planned to be in gold and silver the safari zone was planned to make a return as were pewter city museum and the cinnabar island laboratory there have been many changes during the localization of pokemon games over the years although a lot of these changes were due to censorship from nintendo of america some of the changes were made erroneously by mistranslating the source material or reworking something because it didn't make sense to those who didn't have a thorough understanding of japanese culture the move thunder was inaccurately translated the japanese name to the move kaminari can be interpreted as either thunder or lightning because the animation for the move shows a lightning bolt the japanese name was most likely referring to lightning and not thunder a similar situation occurred to the move thunder punch although the translators didn't have much of a choice this time pokemon moves could only be 12 characters long so calling the move lightning punch was out of the question the move splash was also mistranslated the move's japanese name is haneru which can mean both splash and hop in this case the move is meant to be called hop which explains why splash is a normal type move and not water type pokemon like hobbit can use splash his japanese name haneko even shares the same root as the japanese word for hop the move knight slash is called crossroad killing in the japanese games the english name is still relatable to the meaning behind the japanese name but it's nowhere near specific crossroad killing refers to a method in which some of the more morally corrupt samurai would test their swords in feudal japan in this method known as tsujigiri a samurai would hide at a crossroad waiting for an unsuspecting commoner to pass by they would then test the sword by attacking the commoner with the intent to kill one renaming of a move actually seems to make a lot of sense the move softboiled was originally called egglay in the japanese games even though it could be learned and performed by male pokemon the pokedex entries of certain pokemon have also been altered in the english games several pokedex entries for the pokemon drift loom suggest that it tries to steal children away saying things like it is whispered that any child who mistakes drifloon for a balloon and holds onto it could wind up missing however drifloon's japanese pokedex entry in pokemon pearl specifically mentions that it takes children to the world of the dead this disturbing fact did make its way into the english speakers but not to the core franchise pokemon games in the north american version of super smash bros brawl drifloon's trophy information states that it tries to drag children into the underworld by their hands did you also know that silver the hedgehog from sonico6 was inspired by trunks from the hit anime dragon ball z or that sonic mania has a hidden tribute for an entire hour of sonic facts check out the video on screen [Music] you

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Keywords: pokemon, pokémon, pokemon games, pokemon facts, one hour of pokemon, 1 hour of pokemon, pokemon dykg, pokemon easter eggs, pokemon secrets, pokemon red and blue, pokemon red, pokemon blue, pokemon gold and silver, pokemon gold, pokemon silver, pokemon diamond and pearl, pokemon diamond, pokemon pearl, nintendo, game freak, lugia, takeshi shudo, lost pokemon movie, pokemon movie

Id: 2yT4tQGHxAM

Length: 59min 20sec (3560 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 09 2022