A prominent figure within Game Freak has mass-deleted old tweets explaining the design philosophy behind different Pokémon, as Pokémon Sword & Shield art designer James Turner has scrubbed trivia from his Twitter after it had been repeated on the Dr. Lava Lost Pokémon page.

James Turner is an important figure in the history of the Pokémon franchise, being the first westerner to create and design Pokémon, starting with Shadow Lugia in Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. Turner is from Great Britain and became the art director on Pokémon Sword & Shield when it was decided that the Galar region would be based on his homeland.

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Turner used to share insight regarding the designs of different Pokémon on his Twitter page, but he deleted them when they started to be shared by the Dr. Lava's Lost Pokémon Twitter page. The Dr. Lava page (and its accompanying website) gathers information regarding the Pokémon that have been cut from the series, and he has quoted Turner's Twitter in the past. Dr. Lava has uploaded a series of posts on Twitter, explaining that Turner deleted all of the posts regarding Pokémon design and the inner-workings of Game Freak the day they were first shared on the Dr. Lava page.

Dr. Lava speculated that Turner could have removed the tweets on Game Freak's request, though it's possible that this was a preemptive measure on Turner's part. There are other people associated with Game Freak who have shared Pokémon information on Twitter in the past, such as when Ken Sugimori revealed the unused design for Giovanni in 2015.

There have been a ton of leaks involving the old Pokémon games over the past few years, most notably in the form of the Space World '97 demo of Pokémon Gold & Silver and the early assets for Pokémon Red & Green finding their way online. It's possible that Game Freak wants to stem the flow of information regarding unused content from the Pokémon series, even though there isn't much need. The cut content from the Pokémon series offers a fascinating glimpse into what could have been and it's due to the work of people like Dr. Lava that this knowledge stays in the public consciousness.

Source: Twitter

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