SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon

[Yung Dramps]

Aight time to go sicko mode and make some of y'all depressed.

Ya ever seen BDSP concept art? It sure is something.

Come inside, it's fun inside

Veilstone City

Solaceon Town

misc.

Got it memorized? Good. Now let's ask the question that's on all our minds now.

What the fuck happened to this game?
This concept art doesn't come a smidgen close to being representative of the... to put it diplomatically, rigidly faithful map design and art direction of the BDSP we ended up getting. It's all so much more grandiose and sprawling with details the final game doesn't have so much as a hint of: For example, Jubilife City and Veilstone City depicting Pokemarts embedded into buildings with floors above them. But the most egregious discrepancy lies in the Solaceon Town art, which of all the Pokemon they could've chosen depicts Mareep, a Pokemon that straight up isn't in any known version of the Sinnoh pokedex. It IS obtainable postgame... at Valley Windworks, a location that isn't even close to Solaceon or its surrounding routes geographically. If any of y'all can find a single piece of concept art from another mainline Pokemon game that makes a similar blunder please show it to me ASAP, because right now as far as I'm aware this is an uncharacteristically amateur oversight. A dishonorable mention also goes once again to the Jubilife City art which shows a Tropius casually walking around. Tropius, a Pokemon only in the Platinum dex and therefore not in BDSP's main story, not even in the Underground.

Now, I already know what some might say. "We get it Dramps, BDSP bad, but this is just concept art, it doesn't represent the final game and therefore doesn't mean anything." You can click this link for my intro thoughts on that statement. Now to back up said thoughts!

Enter: Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee Concept Art

Pallet Town

Pewter City

Huh, that's interesting. The art for the settlements in LGPE doesn't depict any unrealistic, overly idealized versions of what's in the final game. In fact, it's very much keeping to the grid-based design the product itself sticks to through and through. Almost like the whole point of concept art is to lay down a foundation for the vision the developers seek to realize, for even if they don't get every last bit of minutae down they at least want to reach that general bar of scale and detail, however high or low it is set.

Speaking of which, let's also take a look at that caption in the BDSP concept art book. "The images were drawn to share common understanding of the settings' mood, climate and luminosity amongst the development team." Now it's a bit vague and flowery so maybe it's not worth reading too much into, but I still can't help but wonder why this was a needed step. Making art this intricate as a "mood setter" for a supposed Faithful:tm: Remake:tm: insinuates that despite maintaining the top-down grid structure some level of original artistic interpretation of these familiar locales was intended much like LGPE, and yet there's absolutely none of that in the final game because they just ctrl + c'd the DP maps wholesale and put 'em in 3D. The only thing you can argue for on that front is lighting, but did they really need the art team to make such gorgeous pieces to direct them on something relatively simple?

Of course, that rhetorical question is placed under the assumption that from the moment BDSP was conceived it was always intended as a stiflingly safe recreation of OG DP with little new brought to the table. And considering what I've just shown and explained I would be lying if I said I didn't have some doubts about that idea. I mean, come on, let's cut the crap here. We all saw the dismal state of the final game. We all saw the memes about its bugginess and how it needed oodles of patches to fix those up. And now with some extra info we know pretty definitively that development wasn't anything resembling smooth. Is this the production you want to give the benefit of the doubt? Is it such a stretch to suggest that maybe, just maybe some things didn't go according to plan for reasons that we may never really grasp? Because I don't know about you all, but when I look at that Veilstone drawing my heart aches, for I know deep in my soul this isn't the work of someone who knew full and well their vision for this classic location wouldn't come close to being realized.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

This is of course speculation, but in all honesty piecing everything together, especially with the recent announcement that Gen 9's debut games Scarlet and Violet still hitting stores for Holiday 2022 despite PLA coming out earlier this year, I am fairly confident that BDSP in and of itself was an afterthought and was not intended to even exist in the first place, or at least what I'm trying to say is that the BDSP we see today, the "Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl" games we have right now, were not meant to ever be a thing and were a last minute afterthought that they felt they "needed" to do after several factors led to changes in plans.

I think Game Freak originally had plans design Sinnoh remakes that looked more like Sword and Shield as the follow-up Gen 8 games on the Switch, and these concept arts may have been remnants of an intended DP-remake that looked more like Sword and Shield (and actually developed by Game Freak lol), that they were originally planning to do. I remember a rumored leak even before Gen 8 was announced that a person who leaked info said during the Gen 7 days that Gen 8 would be on the Switch and have two games: a base pair of games called Sword and Shield, and then Sinnoh remakes (under a tentative name) following, which if said leak is to be seen as a genuine leak at the time, which could've been true considering they got the Gen 8 games being named Sword and Shield correct, would imply that they had Gen 8 planned out long before it started and to have Sinnoh remakes serve as the second "Gen 8" games.

And then at some point when the time came to actually do the Sinnoh remakes they planned, they likely decided to change direction and turn what would've been the FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS of Sinnoh into a Sinnoh "pre-make": a game set in Sinnoh of past, with a new story and experience. Possibly because they might have thought that the Sinnoh people knew from Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum would be unrecognizable in a proper reimagining a la HGSS and ORAS in the modern Gen 8 engine, with a largely grid-based game with an intricate map design that worked specifically with 2D in mind that has, mind you, more routes than Sword and Shield and more landmarks, and they would've had to have some way to incorporate the Wild Area concept into it too without taking what made Sinnoh and ruining it. Given how different the design philosophies of Galar and DPP Sinnoh are there might've been some...issues there. Also perhaps because they wanted to pull their philosophy of surprising people with something new: Game Freak probably thought "Yeah people saw FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS and expect us to do the same for Diamond and Pearl now, but instead we should pull our surprises. Remember how they expected Pokemon Gray back in the Black and White days, but we surprised them with Black 2 and White 2? Or how they expected Pokemon Z but we gave them ORAS instead? Or how they expected Pokemon Stars, but we gave them Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon? Let's do the same this time, since they're all expecting DP remakes, but we should do a Sinnoh 'Pre-Make' instead!". Maybe it was a mix of both of those lines of thought.

Either way, this led to a change in plans and turned what would've been a remake of Diamond and Pearl into a completely new game: a "pre-make" of Sinnoh that does the usual remake job of reimagining an older region in a modern engine and updating the game to modern standards, so reimagines Sinnoh in the Sword and Shield engine and artstyle, while completely altering the experience and gameplay to align with Gen 8, including taking the Wild Area concept from SwSh and turning it into the entire game for this. In other words, it ended up being what we now know as Legends: Arceus. All the while, this new direction for a past-gen revisit allowed them to also take some bold steps and different changes in gameplay that they felt would be fun, with how different PLA's gameplay is from past ones. Instead of a "Diamond and Pearl" remake that would be constrained to align with Gen 8 philosophies, this game would make itself the Gen 8 game but become a totally new experience in doing so, and they figured a Sinnoh in the Gen 8 engine would be very different from Gen 4 Sinnoh anyway, so might as well go all the way with it!

I also strongly believe that PLA was by all means supposed to be the intended Holiday 2021 release, and that it was supposed to be released in November 2021 and serve as the 2021 game for the series, with the upcoming Scarlet and Violet serving as the 2022 game. However, it may have been delayed by a few months, probably because the arise of the COVID pandemic in early 2020 threw a bit of a wrench in PLA's development, and so because of that sudden worldwide issue arising the development was hampered by a few months so PLA ultimately got pushed a few months to the beginning of 2022, unable to make it in time for the holidays. Since they couldn't get PLA to release in time for 2021 Holiday season, combined with the vastly different direction PLA was taking compared to FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS, they had to get *something* out there to appease the corporate higher-ups and also sponge the social need for a "remake" since PLA wouldn't immediately register in people's heads as the true Sinnoh revisit a la HGSS and ORAS. So they basically contracted ILCA out to do a hard faithful "remake of Diamond and Pearl" with hard faithful map design, and make everything exactly as it was in DP so that they could say they had something to sponge the need for a Gen 4 remake, and appease the corporate overlords in the Pokemon business machine for the holidays to generate holiday sales, all the while it would absorb the need for a Sinnoh remake and tide fans over until PLA finally released a few months later and revealed itself as the true "Sinnoh remake" in the vein of FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS, the real next Gen 8 after Sword and Shield, and the true 2021 game for the series. This decision likely arose around 2020 after COVID threw a wrench in things and given the business schedule and whatnot they had ILCA do BDSP as faithfully and as hard as possible in around a two-year timeframe, which is likely why the end product ended up being so...well...sloppy...to say the least.

In other words, had things gone as planned for them, this would've been the release schedule over the past few years:
2019: Sword and Shield
2020: Sword and Shield DLC
2021: Legends: Arceus (which is what we ended up getting as our "Sinnoh Remake", but either way this would've been the Holiday 2021 game and the true 25th anniversary project and "BDSP" would straight up never have happened)
2022: Scarlet and Violet

Long story short and a TL;DR, BDSP was very likely an afterthought, the BDSP we know now was created as a last minute decision, DP remakes were originally supposed to look more like SwSh but then turned into Legends: Arceus, which is the real Sinnoh in SwSh style we have now, PLA was supposed to be a November 2021 release but was pushed back due to COVID, they needed to appease the corporate overlords to get a "Holiday release" out there but PLA couldn't make it so they contracted an outside company at the last minute to do a hard faithful "remake of DP" at the last minute and said "remake of Diamond and Pearl" was done within less than 2 years which is why it's as sloppy as it is now. The concept art we're seeing here may have originally been what would've been the DP remakes originally before they turned into PLA, if they are to be indicative of anything, and ended up in the BDSP artbook since that actually...uh...has the locations of modern Sinnoh despite not doing much with them graphically sadly.

 

[Yung Dramps]

This is of course speculation, but in all honesty piecing everything together, especially with the recent announcement that Gen 9's debut games Scarlet and Violet still hitting stores for Holiday 2022 despite PLA coming out earlier this year, I am fairly confident that BDSP in and of itself was an afterthought and was not intended to even exist in the first place, or at least what I'm trying to say is that the BDSP we see today, the "Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl" games we have right now, were not meant to ever be a thing and were a last minute afterthought that they felt they "needed" to do after several factors led to changes in plans.

I think Game Freak originally had plans design Sinnoh remakes that looked more like Sword and Shield as the follow-up Gen 8 games on the Switch, and these concept arts may have been remnants of an intended DP-remake that looked more like Sword and Shield (and actually developed by Game Freak lol), that they were originally planning to do. I remember a rumored leak even before Gen 8 was announced that a person who leaked info said during the Gen 7 days that Gen 8 would be on the Switch and have two games: a base pair of games called Sword and Shield, and then Sinnoh remakes (under a tentative name) following, which if said leak is to be seen as a genuine leak at the time, which could've been true considering they got the Gen 8 games being named Sword and Shield correct, would imply that they had Gen 8 planned out long before it started and to have Sinnoh remakes serve as the second "Gen 8" games.

And then at some point when the time came to actually do the Sinnoh remakes they planned, they likely decided to change direction and turn what would've been the FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS of Sinnoh into a Sinnoh "pre-make": a game set in Sinnoh of past, with a new story and experience. Possibly because they might have thought that the Sinnoh people knew from Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum would be unrecognizable in a proper reimagining a la HGSS and ORAS in the modern Gen 8 engine, with a largely grid-based game with an intricate map design that worked specifically with 2D in mind that has, mind you, more routes than Sword and Shield and more landmarks, and they would've had to have some way to incorporate the Wild Area concept into it too without taking what made Sinnoh and ruining it. Given how different the design philosophies of Galar and DPP Sinnoh are there might've been some...issues there. Also perhaps because they wanted to pull their philosophy of surprising people with something new: Game Freak probably thought "Yeah people saw FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS and expect us to do the same for Diamond and Pearl now, but instead we should pull our surprises. Remember how they expected Pokemon Gray back in the Black and White days, but we surprised them with Black 2 and White 2? Or how they expected Pokemon Z but we gave them ORAS instead? Or how they expected Pokemon Stars, but we gave them Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon? Let's do the same this time, since they're all expecting DP remakes, but we should do a Sinnoh 'Pre-Make' instead!". Maybe it was a mix of both of those lines of thought.

Either way, this led to a change in plans and turned what would've been a remake of Diamond and Pearl into a completely new game: a "pre-make" of Sinnoh that does the usual remake job of reimagining an older region in a modern engine and updating the game to modern standards, so reimagines Sinnoh in the Sword and Shield engine and artstyle, while completely altering the experience and gameplay to align with Gen 8, including taking the Wild Area concept from SwSh and turning it into the entire game for this. In other words, it ended up being what we now know as Legends: Arceus. All the while, this new direction for a past-gen revisit allowed them to also take some bold steps and different changes in gameplay that they felt would be fun, with how different PLA's gameplay is from past ones. Instead of a "Diamond and Pearl" remake that would be constrained to align with Gen 8 philosophies, this game would make itself the Gen 8 game but become a totally new experience in doing so, and they figured a Sinnoh in the Gen 8 engine would be very different from Gen 4 Sinnoh anyway, so might as well go all the way with it!

I also strongly believe that PLA was by all means supposed to be the intended Holiday 2021 release, and that it was supposed to be released in November 2021 and serve as the 2021 game for the series, with the upcoming Scarlet and Violet serving as the 2022 game. However, it may have been delayed by a few months, probably because the arise of the COVID pandemic in early 2020 threw a bit of a wrench in PLA's development, and so because of that sudden worldwide issue arising the development was hampered by a few months so PLA ultimately got pushed a few months to the beginning of 2022, unable to make it in time for the holidays. Since they couldn't get PLA to release in time for 2021 Holiday season, combined with the vastly different direction PLA was taking compared to FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS, they had to get *something* out there to appease the corporate higher-ups and also sponge the social need for a "remake" since PLA wouldn't immediately register in people's heads as the true Sinnoh revisit a la HGSS and ORAS. So they basically contracted ILCA out to do a hard faithful "remake of Diamond and Pearl" with hard faithful map design, and make everything exactly as it was in DP so that they could say they had something to sponge the need for a Gen 4 remake, and appease the corporate overlords in the Pokemon business machine for the holidays to generate holiday sales, all the while it would absorb the need for a Sinnoh remake and tide fans over until PLA finally released a few months later and revealed itself as the true "Sinnoh remake" in the vein of FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS, the real next Gen 8 after Sword and Shield, and the true 2021 game for the series. This decision likely arose around 2020 after COVID threw a wrench in things and given the business schedule and whatnot they had ILCA do BDSP as faithfully and as hard as possible in around a two-year timeframe, which is likely why the end product ended up being so...well...sloppy...to say the least.

In other words, had things gone as planned for them, this would've been the release schedule over the past few years:
2019: Sword and Shield
2020: Sword and Shield DLC
2021: Legends: Arceus (which is what we ended up getting as our "Sinnoh Remake", but either way this would've been the Holiday 2021 game and the true 25th anniversary project and "BDSP" would straight up never have happened)
2022: Scarlet and Violet

Long story short and a TL;DR, BDSP was very likely an afterthought, the BDSP we know now was created as a last minute decision, DP remakes were originally supposed to look more like SwSh but then turned into Legends: Arceus, which is the real Sinnoh in SwSh style we have now, PLA was supposed to be a November 2021 release but was pushed back due to COVID, they needed to appease the corporate overlords to get a "Holiday release" out there but PLA couldn't make it so they contracted an outside company at the last minute to do a hard faithful "remake of DP" at the last minute and said "remake of Diamond and Pearl" was done within less than 2 years which is why it's as sloppy as it is now. The concept art we're seeing here may have originally been what would've been the DP remakes originally before they turned into PLA, if they are to be indicative of anything, and ended up in the BDSP artbook since that actually...uh...has the locations of modern Sinnoh despite not doing much with them graphically sadly.

This honestly feels like the best "solution" I've seen to this whole conundrum. I myself have also considered the idea of BDSP being a rushjob made as a result of an abrupt change of plans, and this seems to put together all the pieces of the puzzle as best we can with the information available. If we use Lewtwo's proposed BDSP production start date of March 2020 it seems to fit this little timeline fairly snugly considering by that point the delay would've been built in and the decision to abandon a traditional in-house DP remake woulda been finalized.

The only wrinkle is that Game Freak themselves apparently actually adapted to COVID rly well as they were one of the first major Japanese game companies to get their work from home infrastructure fired up fully. Still tho, even with that considered a relatively small delay of 2 months doesn't sound super unrealistic especially considering that some other games got pushed back a year or more by the pandemic.

 

[Lightchao42]

Legends starting life as a straightforward DP remake is something I considered before, but making an entire new game just because your other game was delayed by two months doesn't seem realistic, even by Pokémon's standards. I think BDSP was conceptualized after L:A's shift in development mainly to appeal to those who wanted faithful Sinnoh remakes, since Legends would no longer fill that role, and Legends was pushed back to give it time to breathe.

 

[R_N]

Somehow I don't feel like the BDSP concept art was necessarily drawn up during the PLA production phase...
Ultimately I think it comes down to a combination of COVID, some extra development problems that could have arose for one reason or another (problems with porting to new engines? trouble getting new contractors? just inexplicable errors? etc etc), and tbh probably the most important of all

ILCA was not used to the Pokemon Production Pipeline. You can unfortunately give GameFreak this, their recent games are clearly lacking in various regards but putting out a BDSP they are not.

So at the onset they have these really grand plans, but they had to scale them back. I suspect the scale back likely occurred very early on in development. If I had to offer a full timeline guess...:
the game started preproduction around 2019 with plans to start earnest development in 2020 -> covid happened, likely setting ILCA back by some unknown amount. Very possible at this point that development on all their projects were slowed down considerably if not put on full pause. But the PPP still requires games; charitably I believe both games were probably delayed by 2-4 months.
So we stil lhave a game set for 2021, but due to the above issues (and probably other, unseen, unmentioned issues) they have to scale it way back to be much mroe traditional.

 

[Siggu]

This concept art doesn't come a smidgen close to being representative of the... to put it diplomatically, rigidly faithful map design and art direction of the BDSP we ended up getting. It's all so much more grandiose and sprawling with details the final game doesn't have so much as a hint of: For example, Jubilife City and Veilstone City depicting Pokemarts embedded into buildings with floors above them. But the most egregious discrepancy lies in the Solaceon Town art, which of all the Pokemon they could've chosen depicts Mareep, a Pokemon that straight up isn't in any known version of the Sinnoh pokedex. It IS obtainable postgame... at Valley Windworks, a location that isn't even close to Solaceon or its surrounding routes geographically. If any of y'all can find a single piece of concept art from another mainline Pokemon game that makes a similar blunder please show it to me ASAP, because right now as far as I'm aware this is an uncharacteristically amateur oversight. A dishonorable mention also goes once again to the Jubilife City art which shows a Tropius casually walking around. Tropius, a Pokemon only in the Platinum dex and therefore not in BDSP's main story, not even in the Underground.

Possible alternative is that unused room present in Arceus. Perhaps they initially intended to have it set in the present but quickly changed their mind?

Either way, I'm fine with the BDSP we ended up getting compared to that odd concept art.

 

[Yung Dramps]

making an entire new game just because your other game was delayed by two months doesn't seem realistic, even by Pokémon's standards.

Oh of course not lol. If there was a Game Freak DP remake in development at any point and it was scrapped in favor of Legends I suspect it would've been for 2 main reasons, either 1 of them or a combination of both.

Artistic: Based on the fact GF admitted ORAS was only made due to fan demand, I can imagine that by this point they were getting just a bit tired of remakes. Plus they wanted to try out this whole segmented open world thing and just in general do more creative and fun stuff so their compromise was to do a new Sinnoh game to keep fans pleased while letting them get more wild. This also ties into reason 2

Technical: The Sinnoh remake everyone was envisioning, a full 3D upscaling of the region to fit with SM and SWSH's structure was innately gonna be a way more difficult task than any previous remake. Unlike ORAS and LGPE which stuck to the grid-based design with modern visual refreshments, a hypothetical BDSP at this level would require an intense level of reconsideration of so much of the original design. Not only would cities have to be majorly upscaled, but also dungeons would have to be immensely redesigned too. Sure, they could do all of that, but at that point you're putting in so much work that you might as well make a brand new game that doesn't have the needless limitations of a simple remake

 

[DrPumpkinz]

What's up with these two?

Hoothoot is part owl and part clock. The markings around its eyes look like gears and clock hands, and it hoots at the same time every day. Cool. But also it always stands on one foot, for some reason? It'd be one thing if they just gave it one leg because they liked how it looked better than if it had two, but they go out of their way to mention that "no no, it has two legs, it just always stands on one at a time, and when it gets tired it switches legs so fast that you don't see it". Why? What does that add to the design? How does that have anything to do with owls and/or clocks?



Okay, then the opposite question: how did standing on one leg lead to an owl that's also a clock?

And then Noctowl... it's just an owl. No clock imagery or abilities, no weird leg thing. Most of its Pokedex entries just describe the powers and abilities of real-life owls, with two of them mentioning that it sometimes flips its head around like Kaepora Gaebora when it wants to think deeply, which just seems like pretty standard folklore owl behavior.

 

[R_N]

Well, I mean, it was probably just "lets make a clock-esque cartoon owl" and then the one legged thing was just thrown in because Sugimori liked it. Or the other way around: he designed a cute one-legged (but actually two ho ho ho) owl, then decided to add a clock theme for flavor. The clock thing might have even been played up since they were kicking around the timer at that point too
not everything abotu a design necessarily has to bleed into a concept (it also has teeny tiny wings but we're not sitting down going But Why).

That said you could probably make some stretches: the single leg motif can represent a pendulum clock, the fact it stands on one leg means that it bobs like the gears in a clock or a metronome (that aligns with the ticktock aspect) or whatever.


noctowl is definitely more confusing, especially in light of the prototype showing it originally had a design that while it still downplayed the clock theming, was more visually similar to hoothoot. I could see them wanting to give it another pass, but, why land on a normal owl...? Even Octillery still has some faint aspects of its tank origins.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

I'm being incredibly generous here, but Noctowl's earlier sprites give it a tall, almost rectangular shape that's vaguely reminiscent of a grandfather clock. Its horns in particular made it look very angular back when it was depicted standing rather than mid-flight. I think it's at least a little notable because most real-life owls look more oval-shaped than Noctowl does.

If that's what they were intending to convey, however, they definitely should've pushed it way further haha.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

The fact that Chuck, a Fighting-type gym leader, gives out the Stormbadge has always made me wonder if (some) gym badges are tied to their town or city rather than their specific gym leader.

The names of badges generally quite specifically reflect the typing of their gyms: Boulderbadge for Rock, Cascadebadge for Water, etc. But there are a few which don't - Rainbow for Grass, Balance for Normal, Cobble and Rumble for Fighting, Fen for Water. And then of course there's the most famous case. Sabrina gives out the Marshbadge while Koga gives out the Soulbadge. Yes, out-of-universe this seems like a pretty cut and dry error. But who's to say the Saffron Gym Leader wasn't once a Poison-type trainer, and Sabrina just inherited the badge? Sure you can make a vague connection with a stormy disposition or a fighter having the ferocity of a storm (Chuck's description is "His roaring fists do the talking" which does bring certain stormy associations to mind). But it's not inconceivable that Cianwood's gym was originally founded as a Water or even Flying gym given its location, and why it gives out the Stormbadge.

We know that several gym leaders have additional duties connected to their local areas - Morty explicitly says that Ecruteak's gym leader has to learn and be an expert on all of Ecruteak's myths and legends, and it's implied that Pastoria's gym leader has to maintain and protect the Great Marsh. So that probably does influence what type the gym leaders of those areas end up being - given the preponderance of mediums and sages in Ecruteak, it's hard to imagine the leader there being anything other than Ghost, Dark, or Psychic. Similarly, considering what's in the Great Marsh, the leader of Pastoria's gym could easily use Poison- or Grass-type Pokemon instead of Water (all of which suit the Fen Badge very well) but it's difficult to imagine a Fire-type trainer being accepted or even interested as the Pastoria gym leader. Pewter City's character is strongly shaped by being a town at the foot of the mountains (the city's sobriquet, of course, is "a stone gray town"); it may be that Pewter City has only ever had Rock-type gym leaders because of that heritage.

Blue, of course, inherits the Earthbadge from Giovanni and doesn't change the name.

Going against this idea is the fact that we do see a badge go from one gym to another. Cheren inheriting the Basic Badge from Lenora would seem to imply that that is Unova's official Normal-type badge and that there can only be one Normal gym in Unova, with whoever runs it having to use that badge. But both these ideas could exist together - Nacrene City has no gym in B2W2, so it's not inconceivable that it simply passed the legacy onto Aspertia.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

And then of course there's the most famous case. Sabrina gives out the Marshbadge while Koga gives out the Soulbadge. Yes, out-of-universe this seems like a pretty cut and dry error. But who's to say the Saffron Gym Leader wasn't once a Poison-type trainer, and Sabrina just inherited the badge?

Sabrina's an interesting example, because it's stated the Fighting Dojo used to be the town's Gym before Sabrina usurped them. The Fighting type doesn't really have anything to do with marshes either, but it's always possible there was another Gym before them.

On the topic of gyms, what word do people in the Pokemon world use when referring to places where people (or I guess Pokemon too) work out and exercise? There are a few dojos dotted around, but that carries connotations of martial arts as opposed to more general fitness. Does that distinction not exist in the Pokemon world? Or do they still refer to fitness places as gyms and differentiate them from capital-G Gyms through context?

 

[Siggu]

The Gen 1 badges sort of let it slide in Japanese because they are named after colors.

But, for Chuck's Storm Badge, it's no less weird in Japanese because it's called the Shock Badge.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

(The BDSP discussion reminds me, I have a pet theory that Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer was made because EAD2 were testing features they were going to put in New Horizons like outdoor furniture, rugs, and a bunch of new animations, then the higher-ups ordered them to make an Animal Crossing spinoff, so they used HHD to test the waters.)

Yesterday, I was thinking about a couple of European localisation changes in Pokémon games:

• They removed part of the ledge in Victory Road B1F in Ruby and Sapphire.
• We all know about Registeel in Diamond & Pearl.

But wait! There's more! These are only the case in non-English European versions. Why would they program it that way? Does Game Freak have something against the British? The Diamond & Pearl one particularly baffles me, because at least it seems like RSE only had one language per cartridge:

...So it's possible that the version sold in the UK has exactly the same ROM as the American version.

For comparison, here's a game which DID have 5 languages per cartridge

 

[Ironmage]

(The BDSP discussion reminds me, I have a pet theory that Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer was made because EAD2 were testing features they were going to put in New Horizons like outdoor furniture, rugs, and a bunch of new animations, then the higher-ups ordered them to make an Animal Crossing spinoff, so they used HHD to test the waters.)

Yesterday, I was thinking about a couple of European localisation changes in Pokémon games:

• They removed part of the ledge in Victory Road B1F in Ruby and Sapphire.
• We all know about Registeel in Diamond & Pearl.

But wait! There's more! These are only the case in non-English European versions. Why would they program it that way? Does Game Freak have something against the British? The Diamond & Pearl one particularly baffles me, because at least it seems like RSE only had one language per cartridge:

For comparison, here's a game which DID have 5 languages per cartridge

I don't think that's a fair comparison. An RPG has loads more text that would need to be stored multiple times for each language than a platformer.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I know. I was just trying to draw people's attention to the "screentext" labels at the top of the boxarts. Also, apparently there was a GBA Fire Emblem game that had its languages split across multiple versions, too?

 

[QuentinQuonce]

So here's something curious I just spotted.

In HGSS, the aide you meet in the gatehouse on Route 2 gives you a Sacred Ash. Wow, that's an overgenerous gift but a welcome surprise for sure. This wasn't the case in GSC, in which the Sacred Ash is only obtained via catching Ho-Oh.

But it turns out that this was the case in the 1999 demo version of GS. Between the demo and the final release, this was scrapped for some reason. Did they include this in HGSS as a hyper-obscure shout-out to the original plan? Someone on the production team might have had a long memory.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Ok so y'all remember the Nvidia leak that happened last year? The leak that made the public aware of the existence of several huge titles before their official reveals like Kingdom Hearts 4, the God of War PC port, the Chrono Cross remaster, etc etc?

Well among all the fervor, there was ONE data point that is relevant to us that, for whatever reason, seems to have fallen under the radar way harder than it should've.

...?

 

[Millky95]

Yesterday, I was thinking about a couple of European localisation changes in Pokémon games:

• They removed part of the ledge in Victory Road B1F in Ruby and Sapphire.

Wait, why was this ledge removed?

 

[Nokocchi]

Wait, why was this ledge removed?

Because if you jumped down that ledge in the original version, you have to take a long and time-consuming detour to get back above it so you can actually reach the end of the dungeon.

 

[ZettaiRyouiki]

I know. I was just trying to draw people's attention to the "screentext" labels at the top of the boxarts. Also, apparently there was a GBA Fire Emblem game that had its languages split across multiple versions, too?

Yeah, Blazing Blade. English/French/German and English/Spanish/Italian. The Spanish localization was Typo Town.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

There's one animal that hasn't been retconned out of Pokémon: coral. It's appeared in games from at least Ruby and Sapphire to as recent as New Pokémon Snap, where it co-exists with Corsola. They probably got away with it because corals are basically wannabe plants, but I like making observations.

 

[rickdrw424]

Two BW-related mysteries -

In BW, there's a woman that says that bad stuff occurs upon a bridge on the weekend evenings. Does this actually happen?

Also, Lacunosa citizens work all day...does that mean they return home at night?

I can look this up, but could be fun to see if anyone knows....

Pokemon Crystal - Were game developers aware of the low leveled Pokemon by the 5th gym? I'd say. While hard to find, there are useful training spots before the 5th gym: i.e. Dark Cave

 

[Imperial Magala]

Also, Lacunosa citizens work all day...does that mean they return home at night?

Yup. Due to the legends of a monster from the nearby Giant Chasm eating people when night falls, the entire town is indoors at night. They're the only NPCs with this behavior.

 

[Esserise]

In BW, there's a woman that says that bad stuff occurs upon a bridge on the weekend evenings. Does this actually happen?

I believe this refers to the Black Empoleon biker gang, who take over Tubeline Bridge on Friday nights