What is old is now new with the reveals from this old game!
Back in 1997, Nintendo Space World Convention had a demo of Pokemon Gold. People were able to play this game to receive a sneak peek of what will later become Pokemon Gold & Silver. These people were one of the few who could tell others what the Water Starter Pokemon would be. The thing is that it looked nothing like Totodile. The problem was that this was all just words that were eventually lost as time passed.
Twenty years later, a rom has been leaked on the internet! Pokemon fanatics have now dug into the rom and TheCuttingRoomFloor has started their data mine. They have gather plenty of information from the rom including Pokemon, trainers and maps.
The image above shows all the new Pokemon that were in the Pokemon Gold demo rom. This roster of new Pokemon features a lot of Pokemon that we know but also a few that never made it into the game.
One thing to notice is that there were a lot of Baby Pokemon in the game. Some of the most notable ones include Tangela who originally planned to have a single eyed Baby form. Tangela also seem to have an evolution as well.
It is interesting to note that some Pokemon also had some evolution. One of them included Ditto and Pinsir. Ditto may have never got his evolution. Though, Pinsir’s evolution looked as if it had become Heracross.
Some of the Pokemon that were cut from the game look rather familiar to some that we eventually got. One that I want to point out is the duck-like Pokemon. It looks similar to Swanna in it’s built. Beta Raikou looks similar to Zebstrika in color and form. Some of these designs may have came in handy when Game Freak was designing new Pokemon for Generation 5.
Some of the Johto Pokemon that were included had a few draft changes before the official release. Girafarig originally had a creepy back sprite based on the demo. It seems like the team at Game Freak thought children wouldn’t want Girafarig’s tail scaring them.
It looks as if the trainers in Pokemon Gold & Silver had went though some changes. Above is the gym leaders from Johto. These include: Falkner, Bugsy, Jasmine and Morty.
By the looks of it, Game Freak had an idea for Falkner and Bugsy but changed them a bit to match their final product. Meanwhile, Jasmine had a completely different design. She looked more like an idol-like character compare to her more down to earth design.
Other interesting bits about the human character is the Elite Four. It looks as if Misty, Lorelei, Bruno and Giovanni were originally planned to become Elite Four members. That is almost completely different from who were made into Elite Four members. This change may have happen due to these players having easily exploitable weaknesses to types such as Grass.
Kurt apparently had a sprite as well. Apparently he was suppose to be battled against. For the beta rom, his sprite was used as a placeholder for certain characters who didn’t appear early in the rom.
The last interesting thing to note is that map. Apparently Gold & Silver had a much bigger map that was based on Japan.
Game Freak apparently wanted to fit all of Japan into this game. Either this game was going to have Johto be made up of the other islands of Japan or simply have each island be a ‘mini-region’. You can see certain Johto cities in the map above on different islands.
One of the most surprising things on the map is that Kanto was made into one giant town. On the bottom left hand corner is a city that looks like Kanto. You can see certain landmarks such as Pallet Town, Celadon Dept Store and Pokemon Tower. Satoru Iwata must have saw what Game Freak was trying to do and decided to help them out to make Johto and Kanto to be much more fleshed out for the finished product.
This Gold beta rom is providing an interesting insight on Game Freak and their developmental process for Generation 2. You can see all the data that TheCuttingRoomFloor has gather by clicking here.
The Pokemon fan base are split if this is real or simply an elaborate hoax. As of right now, it seems real but only time will tell if this rom is real or not. Either way, it is interesting to see how far Pokemon has came.
