News

New manga tells origin of Pokémon, shows unused designs

Check out our translations of the first few pages, and see what prototype Pokémon looked like – including unreleased ones!

A new educational manga has given us some tasty details on how the Pokémon franchise was born. Satoshi Tajiri: the Man Who Created Pokémon released in Japan yesterday. This manga tells intriguing stories on how the series’ creator started it all.

The first few pages can be seen for free. The general story is that Satoshi was into bug catching as a child, and when in game development decided that a game about catching them all would be a fun idea. Below we have included a translated version of those beginning pages. Remember that in Japanese manga you read from right to left.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This origin story isn’t the only interesting part either. A page was shared separately which shows prototype designs of Pokémon. Crucially, a few on the page were of designs that never came to light!

The Pokémon that never were.

Which of these would you like the most to have been fully made and put into a Pokémon game? Maybe you have tried coming up with some Pokémon designs – how do they compare?

Big thanks to Cherrim for the translations.