Back in 1997, Nintendo showcased a playable demo of Pokemon Gold and Silver at the Space World trade show. Now, over 20 years later, The Cutting Room Floor has sifted through the demo's files, discovering a number of unused Pokemon designs that didn't make it to the final versions of Pokemon Gold and Silver.

These unused Pokemon designs include baby Pokemon for generation 1 creatures, as well as evolved forms of gen 1 Pokemon. For example, Farfetch'd has an evolved form called Flygon, and there is a baby version of Meowth called Meowsy, along with a baby version of Vulpix called Trifox. There are also completely original unused Pokemon included in the files, like Rayleep and Numpuff.

Click on the image below to take a closer look at the unused Pokemon designs that were originally in Pokemon Gold and Silver (this image also includes the original 151 Pokemon and generation 2 designs that did make it into the game):

Besides new Pokemon designs, The Cutting Room Floor has discovered some other things that were cut from Pokemon Gold and Silver during development. For example, it appears as though poison-type attacks originally did half damage to steel-types, instead of no damage at all. There were also tweaks to some other moves in the games, with Bite starting out as a normal-type move before being changed into a dark-type attack in the final release.

Other moves were completely removed from the games, as were some animations. Apparently, there were animated sprites of Poliwhirl and Chansey that were cut, and the introduction sequence once featured Aerodactyl alongside Pokemon that were ultimately kept in the intro, like Lapras.

For longtime fans of the Pokemon franchise, it should be interesting to see some of the unused Pokemon designs that were once part of Gold and Silver, and speculate as to how they would have changed the franchise. In particular, one has to wonder if the unused starter Pokemon from the demo would have become as popular as the Pokemon that eventually took their place.

Pokemon Gold and Silver are out now for Game Boy Color.

Source: The Cutting Room Floor