A new crop of unused Pokémon designs has made its way online and these ones come from the Sinnoh region, as the recent beta leak of Pokémon Diamond & Pearl has revealed some unusual early concepts for some Pokémon.
There have been a number of Pokémon video game leaks over the past few years, starting with the Space World '97 demo of Pokémon Gold & Silver, which featured a number of unused designs and Pokémon that were never meant to see the light of day. This was followed by a leak of an early build of Pokémon Red & Green, showing one of the earliest iterations of the franchise.
The past few days have seen a lot of new Nintendo leaks making their way online, including prototype versions of Super Nintendo games like Super Mario World, as well as N64 games, like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. An early version of Pokémon Diamond & Pearl has made its way online, featuring a number of early designs for the Pokémon. All of the beta sprites can be seen in a video below from the Hwd405 YouTube channel.
There are several notable differences among the sprites, including different designs for Rampardos, Combee, Vespiquen, Bronzong, the Garchomp line, the Hippopotas line, the Finneon line, the Snover line, Togekiss, Yanmega, Rotom, Darkrai, Shaymin, and Arceus. Lickilicky and the Lake Spirits also have drastically different back sprites.
There are several Pokémon that appear to have their final design, but their sprites are a work in progress, including Monferno, Carnivine, Magmortar, Nosepass, and Regigigas. The only completely new design appears to be the brown creature with three gems on its side, that takes Giratina's slot in the Pokédex. It's possible that this was a very early design for Giratina, or that its design was later altered and used for Arceus.
This new leak isn't quite as mind blowing as the Pokémon Gold & Silver leaks from the past, but there is a lot of interesting content here. A lot of fans assumed that Game Freak had more of an idea of what they were going to include in the games by the time Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire rolled around, but it seems that's not the case.
Source: YouTube