Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Leak Reveals More Than 100 Scrapped Designs, Including Unseen Creatures and Missing Evolutions

Pokémon Diamond and Pearl fans are celebrating the unofficial reveal of more than 100 previously-unseen designs, including early drafts of known creatures, numerous scrapped species, and cut evolutions.

Evidence of a discarded Delibird and Kecleon evolutions, Stantler and Lapras pre-evolutions, plus what look like a baby Plusle and Minun are all briefly seen. Completely cut Pokémon include creatures based on a crane, crickets, snails, molluscs, goats, mice, a platypus, and a swordfish can also be seen, as well as plants such as beansprouts and clover. There's even different designs for the region's starter Pokémon, such as a foam-headed Water-type dog, and a Grass-type wolf.

The source of these designs is a long-lost documentary made by Pokémon developer Game Freak that has never previously been seen in public. Made for the game's own staff as a record of their work, the film was originally handed out to employees on DVDs, who were sworn to keeping it private.

Now, 20 years later, the documentary has finally been obtained, and painstakingly sifted through by a team of fans — with the best archive of the material found on Lewtwo. The full documentary itself can also now be seen on YouTube (for now) and more permanently via the Internet Archive.

Scrapped Delibird evolution pic.twitter.com/CyGP2thilM

Scrapped Water Starter Pokémon pic.twitter.com/1OO5j0VD7B

EVEN MORE NEVER BEFORE SEEN BETA POKÉMON pic.twitter.com/i8PXnoYwnl

As you might expect, fan excitement around the documentary's contents is huge — thanks to fact that the film was made originally for Game Freak staff, and is completely unfiltered in the content it shows. Game Freak guards its Pokémon design process with enormous secrecy, and it's unlikely this documentary would even be made today.

For many fans, the creation of games such as Pokémon Diamond and Pearl is something to be explored and celebrated, as a part of gaming's history that they want to see preserved. Of course, there's natural interest in the many, many Pokémon designs that have been left on the cutting room floor, but also a peek behind the curtain at the series' development. The documentary includes almost an hour of footage shot within Game Freak's offices, showing employees alternately working and goofing around, and the process used to design the Sinnoh region — from sketches to paper maps to real-world models made using blocks.

With such enormous secrecy around the creation of new Pokémon games, chances to get a peek behind the curtain are few and far between. The only release of scrapped Pokémon details to rival this in recent years has been the infamous Pokémon Teraleak, which originated in an illegal hack of data from Game Freak's internal servers.

Even 20 years on, there's even clues to Pokémon that may feature in future. New Pokémon generations have regularly featured updated versions of previously-cut designs (and indeed, the documentary shows creatures that strongly resemble the finished looks of Rowlet and Sandygast, finally released years later). One particular design here catches the eye — a yellow Shellos. This is a creature fans expect to pop up in next year's Pokémon Winds and Waves for Switch 2, after mention of it in this year's Pokémon Pokopia.

Yellow Shellos pic.twitter.com/IiU8Dm8ZKm

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social