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Interview about the origins of Pikachu

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Earlier today the Yomiuri newspaper (link here) posted an article about the origins of Pikachu.
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Dogasu translation (source):
When the Red & Green team were designing that first batch of pokemon, they came up with a lot of "rugged" creatures (Ken Sugimori designed Mewtwo, Gyarados, Kabigon, and Laplace, for example) but decided that they also needed some cute ones to help balance things out.
At the time, the pokemon design team was made up of only three men and so Ms. Atsuko Nishida was hired to help the team come up with cute pokemon. Like Pikachu.
Her orders were simple: make an Electric-Type pokemon who evolves two times. She wasn't told what animal to base it off of or given any other guidelines, really. Just 1) electric pokemon, 2) evolves two times.
Evolve *two* times? Originally, the evolution was going to be Pikachu, Raichu, and an unreleased creature named "Gorochu" (ゴロチュウ). Gorochu would have had fangs that stick out and also two horns but was eventually removed from the game to help balance things out.
When it comes to the name, Ms. Nishida says that she chose "Pika" because it was going to be an Electric-Type. She also says she doesn't know why she added the "chu" there but is certain that she hadn't settled on making it a mouse at that stage.
It wasn't until after they came up with the name that Game Freak decided to make Pikachu a mouse. The whole team gave their input into its design which basically boiled down to "make it cuter."
The staff says that Pikachu's first design looked like a "daifuku," a type of round Japanese cake. Ms. Nishida says that this first draft design is so different that fans wouldn't recognize it as Pikachu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daifuku
During this "daifuku" stage, Pikachu didn't have its red cheeks. Ms. Nishida modeled Pikachu's cheeks, which are used to store electricity, after chipmunks storing food in their cheeks. The black bits at the end of its ears are left over from this "daifuku" design.
Ken Sugimori decided to color Pikachu yellow to help make it clear that it's an Electric-Type. The stripes on its back were added to give players something to look while its back is facing the camera during battles.
Kouji Nishino admits that he really loved the Pikachu design and so he made its spawn rate really low in an effort to kind of "hide" the pokemon and keep it all to himself. But in the end its rarity helped make it popular and so *everyone* ending up having to catch one.
The rest of the interview covers Pikachu's popularity and doesn't reveal any new information other than the fact that Ken Sugimori designed Pippi as an attempt to make his own "cute" pokemon. But obviously Pikachu's more popular.

The Japan News (source):
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The Yomiuri Shimbun
The design for Pikachu, one of the main characters in the popular game franchise Pocket Monsters, better known as Pokemon, was based on a squirrel — not a mouse — developers of the game at the time of its 1996 debut have told The Yomiuri Shimbun.

This is the first time the designers have revealed the story behind Pikachu’s origin. The Pokemon Co., the Tokyo-based brand management company for the Pokemon franchise, will add this information to its website as early as late May.

Pikachu has been a fixture of the franchise since the first Pokemon game debuted in February 1996 for Nintendo Co.’s Game Boy handheld game console.

According to the developers, including Ken Sugimori, 52, an executive at game developer Game Freak Inc., and illustrator Atsuko Nishida, who was working at the company when Pokemon was released, Nishida was tasked with designing a “cute monster” character that met two specific conditions: It must be an “electric type” that used electric attacks and must have two stages of evolution.

Nishida said she initially created a character that resembled a “vertically long daifuku rice confection with ears.”

After being told it needed to be cuter, she created a new design based on a squirrel, an animal she wanted to own as a pet at the time.

Nishida eventually created the prototype design for what would become Pikachu using large pixels on a computer screen, while Sugimori drew the illustrated version. The initial daifuku-like character, which Nishida also drew using large pixels, was erased and no longer exists.

The name combines the words “pika,” an onomatopoeic term for flashing light, and “chu,” which has a cute sound. Although the character was not modeled after a mouse, Game Freak President Satoshi Tajiri called it a mouse character.

Among the more than 800 “pocket monsters” available today, Pikachu is classified as a mouse character.

“I hope people will feel closer to Pikachu by understanding the story behind its creation,” Nishida said.
 

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I resume this thread because in an interview with GameSpot, Masuda talked about Gorochu
"None of the Pokemon that we worked on, got to a point, and then discarded them have actually ever re-appeared yet, so I would say the chances are low"
"[W]e always have this base criteria at Game Freak of being able to explain why a certain Pokemon is in the world or why it exists in that world, trying to make it feel believable within the fantasy," Masuda said. "And usually the ones that get rejected are Pokemon that we weren't able to justify, I think. Usually there's a reason for why they weren't implemented, and as long as that reason still exists, they probably won't be put in the game.

"We always say Pokemon isn't a 'character game.' It's not a game where it's just the characters, but it's a game that shows this world where these living creatures are existing in a space. That's kind of a slight nuance, but that's what we always try to go for at Game Freak. It's not good enough that they're just cute. They have to have something more to it."
 

unownzone

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This was an extremely interesting read.
I'm surprised how all this history about Pokemon seem to be being revealed after so long, but I'm happy to see it.
It's funny how Pikachu's design was initially based on a food. People can't complain about Vanilluxe now :coffee2:

I love how they mentioned that there's should always be something more to Pokemon than just being cute.
It needs a justifiable place and role in the Pokemon world, and I believe this should always be considered when creating fanmade Pokemon too.
 

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People can't complain about Vanilluxe now :coffee2:
They will complain anyway :yeahyeah:

I really hope that in the future they will show the prototype of rejected Pokémon :yesyes2: :sisi2:
 

unownzone

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They will complain anyway :yeahyeah:

I really hope that in the future they will show the prototype of rejected Pokémon :yesyes2: :sisi2:
Yeah, maybe they'll never bring back scrapped pokemon like they said, but it would be cool to see what they were visualizing for them.
 
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