If the contents of this recent Pokémon leak are to be believed, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl - and every game thereafter - could have been very different indeed.
Dr. Lava, known for sharing and dissecting cut content from a wide variety of Nintendo games, has shared an article exploring a supposed leak that first surfaced just yesterday. The 'leak', which was first dumped on a Pokémon-focused forum on 4chan, showed "hundreds" of sprites that would have been created for already-existing Pokémon in the fourth generation games. These sprites are considerably different to those that made it into the final build, with a large number of Pokémon being treated to noticeable gender differences.
Now, some Pokémon do have different designs depending on their gender anyway, but this leak suggests that Game Freak may have been considering giving almost every single monster a different design, rather than the current handful. In most cases, the female sprites are seen to have smaller body parts like ears, horns, and the like, but there are other differences, too. Some interesting ones include Bulbasaur, where the female has larger spots, and Chimecho, where the male has yellow markings rather than red.
There's even a difference for Charizard, with the female only having one horn:
Of course, it can't be guaranteed that the leak is entirely legit, but as Dr. Lava points out, the evidence certainly leans in favour of it being the real deal. Not only would faking such a large leak take hundreds of hours, but a 2006 issue of Japanese magazine Corocoro - which was sharing new info on the upcoming Diamond and Pearl games - reportedly noted that "Male and female Pokémon will now be visibly distinguishable in most, if not all, cases". The translation, provided by Bulbapedia, goes on to say that "Most female Pokémon will be smaller or will have reduced or lacking physical features.”
Naturally, this never made it into the final game, but it certainly seems like it was the plan originally. Perhaps these designs really do show what could have been?
[source lavacutcontent.com]
Comments 43
Interesting, I wouldn't have minded more gender differences., personally.
So does Gamefreak define females by being "lesser" hence the smaller ears etc.? Or is it that a pokemon's ears also work as their pee-pee? Is that why Ditto can breed with anything? Because it's whole body is ear??
This wouldn't have been that big to be honest, a lot of pokemon do have gender differences like male Sneasel and their big, hard throbbing ears.
@KingKRoolMain To be honest it's Gamfreak's fault for using "gender" rather than "sex".
Making Epstein jokes on a Pokémon thread? That's gastly.
Interesting to see that in one case (Chimecho) the female form would have been the default (at least, we usually think of the male forms as the ones we think of first, but Chimecho’s female form matches the one we ended up getting for both genders).
They should have stuck with this, just because they would have to double their workload with every future game and be forced to cut even more Pokémon come the Switch generation.
I'd be fine if those Bulbasaur differences stuck. Some of those I like, but I'm glad others were scrapped.
@DanteSolablood I don't think GameFreak is at fault at all.
I don't know... Something just seems... off. Or maybe it's just the fact that the sprites look horrendous thanks to being blown up and saved as jpg. Plusle's mouth is a pixelated mess. I have hard time imagining anyone thinking it looks good, even for a prototype.
EDIT: Looked at pixel perfect images on Twitter and I'd say they look a lot nicer that way. Even the mouth doesn't look all that bad after scaling it down to its original size but it's still a bit weird.
@DanteSolablood It's just mimicking our own animal biology where the males have larger stabby horns and such. Most other Pokémon gender differences are cosmetic. Besides, female Bulbasaur have larger, visually more interesting spots, so that's not a "lesser" quality/quantity at all.
A Charizard only having one flesh-horn does look pretty cursed, though, so I'm glad they took their time with this. Still wouldn't mind this happening en masse, though.
@KingBowser86 You're likely right, looking at it from that point of view, peacocks makes have the large plumage to attract a mate, similarly with deer & antlers.
Though it still could be that pokemon use their ears to breed. No evidence to the contrary.
@Zuljaras There is no real "fault" really, though sex is more often associated with biological difference, while gender is more associate with sexual preference.
That change to many 'mons would've been too much work for Gamefreak to continue now. Having to make a new model for a marginal difference like smaller horns and such.
There is just something so intensely off putting about monohorn charizard
@DanteSolablood I wouldn't say lesser. In nature the male is usually (obviously exceptions exist) the one with more pronounced features its species is known for (color, defense mechanisms, size, etc.) while the female is generally the opposite. There are two reasons: 1) It is often the female that chooses the male, rather than the other way around, so many of these features are necessary for attracting a female. 2) The male becomes the target for predation in place of the female to protect the young, while the female is generally more difficult for the predators to locate. So a lot of this makes at least some sense in reference to nature.
@DanteSolablood I thought that "sexual orientation" is used for sexual preference. In my language (Bulgarian) sex and gender have only one word. I think that the same goes for English as well. Or at least until recently.
It's one of those features they introduced in gen 4, and ignored in pretty much every other gen. There's an exception here and there, like that little creep that stands behind the counter in the poke centres in sword and shield, but other than that, I don't think we've seen it like it was in gen 4 ever again.
It's a good thing they didn't stick to this, as this would have massively increased their workload going forward.
And seriously, Nintendo Life, are you even bothering to moderate comment sections anymore? I feel like half the time I go into one, it has veered way off topic.
@KingBowser86
The artist who worked on the bulbasaur differences must have had it up to here. "There, its different! Happy Now?"
@Octane Yep! Still cursed!
@Zuljaras There has always been a difference between sex & gender historically but during the 20th Century when homosexuallity started becoming illegal in many societies the words became more interchangeable.
However this is what the Oxford English Dictionary has to say: "either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female."
As you can see, the entry makes a distinction between sex & gender, however Merriam-Webster goes further into the differences and does not link gender specifically to male & female. Lexico actually gives quite a good summation of how the word's usage has changed over time.. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/gender
@DanteSolablood I see but it does not say what are the differences. I doubt that it is this nonsense that is going around the media right?
Two-spirit, polygender etc.? Is it not something like sex that can't be changed?
The lipstick models are dumb as that is a gender (which are social stereotypes forced upon a person based upon biology)/social construct difference but the the physical differences are cool and realistic as those are biological sex differences. It is a shame that gender norms/roles which change constantly are often conflated with biological sex which does not and can not be changed. Cool on Game freak for having the idea to have art imitate life...but that would have been a nightmare to carry forward making two models for every pokemon. For video games I'm ok with gender handwaving as the work involved isn't always worth the realism.
This is interesting, it's pretty cool when Pokemon have differences based on gender. (It would also be cool if I could read the comments on a Pokemon article of all things without immediately seeing blatant transphobia, but I suppose that's on me for reading the comments in the first place...)
@Northwind The Eevee gender difference from Let's Go was, in fact, imported into Sword and Shield for all Eevee. I'm surprised Serebii hasn't picked it up yet, given that the Pokédex points it out.
EDIT: Bulbapedia has it: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_with_gender_differences
@Dogorilla yep, absolutely bewildering some of the comments. It would be a great bit of extra colour if the differences between male and female reflected the differences in the various animals that inspired the pokemons but would be a huge amount of extra zoological research. That said, I'm happy that they didn't just add long eyelashes to the female 'mon.
If Pokemon is going to start limiting how many pokemon in each core game, they should add more differences and things of that nature to the Pokemon.
Gender differences, time differences, and seasonal differences.
These are cool, I would love more gender differences, big - small spots, horns, no horns, small-big wings, etc.
Color variants, etc.
@Ttimer5 They limited the amount of Pokémon just to limit the amount of work they had to put into it. Adding more differences would've just removed more Pokémon from the game.
@DanteSolablood This only applies to English language and you colonists are still trying to impose your order on everyone else. Same as “latinx”, which actual people of those ethnicities hate.
Other languages don’t work the same way as English and you can shove your pronoun madness up xir backside. All that gender constructivism is a direct result of grammar and Anglosphere egomania.
@SmaggTheSmug We're talking about the English translation of the game, I'm not imposing anything. If Gamefreak had used the word sex instead we'd not be having this discussion.. which was my only point.
@ToonStuff Awesome! However, I'm not defending gender labels, it just so happens there is a word which 100% specifies biological sex.. sex, and a word which has been more nuanced for the last 600 years.. gender. I think Gamefreak would have been better off with the former rather than the latter.
I can't even come to NintendoLife anymore without seeing comment sections derail into this kind of nonsense. I think these differences are pretty cool and cute. It's Pokémon. It's fantasy. They're Pocket Monsters.
Oak's words echoed: "There's a time and a place for everything, but not now." Can't we just enjoy the article? Stick to Twitter or something if you want to have philosophical and social debates and discussions.
oh i wish they went with these, plusle and raichu are especially cute
wait...those aren't charizard's ears?
@DanteSolablood You know you can tell differences between male and female animals in certain species, right?
Everybody knows that in certain species females are born with lipstick applied on their faces
Anyway, the rest of them are interesting, it gives more variety to them 'mons instead of this massive army of clones, though it is kinda weird to change the designs retroactively
Maybe procedurally generate some small diferences
Dat Wabafet! Puting lipstick on it doesn't make it any more prettier.
@ToonStuff hm what
You used them with different meanings yourself
I don't think one can prove that a word with multiple meanings actually has only one meaning wtf
Personally, I am glad some of these gender differences didn't make the cut. I recall 10-year-old me jumping back at stuff like Wobbuffet having lipstick on and Pikachu having a heart-shaped tail. Imagine how I would've felt if I noticed one-horned Charizard or short-eared Plusle!
Omg that female Pikachu is so cute, would have loved it.
@RetiredR Haha, I can't see them but I imagine there are a lot! I guess people don't like ear/penis jokes.
I always wanted pokemon to go away from this linear path of design and evolution. Alolan versions and some of the gender plus region or season versions of pokemon where a good start, but sadly to slow, to late and to much on the surface.
@ummyeahnintendo Lol! Yes. It is like one of those "spot the difference" contests in a newspaper. Had to look twice to see what was changed!
Goof thing they didn't. It's kind of crappy that in every one of these the visual we recognise turns out to be male, and then the females are a variant with their ears lowered or a horn less or whatever.
@AnotherGoblin And a lot of those forms will have the option of "other".
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