Ever wondered what Arcanine’s original name was before Pokemon Red & Blue? A collector recently unveiled a potentially huge piece of Pokemon history online.
Pokemon has changed immensely since its original generation. The games are bigger, the cards are shinier, and the Pokemon themselves have gone through a lot of changes. But how much has the franchise changed since the pre-release of Pokemon Red & Blue?
A vintage collector recently attempted to answer this question by unveiling a potentially huge piece of Pokemon history on their Instagram page. They posted a Reel showing an alleged “Nintendo Employee 1998 Meeting book” with a heap of intriguing Pokemon designs and lore snippets.
Screenshot of the Reel showing the Pokemon Kick-off Meeting handbook.
The original poster describes the handbook as being “used at a retreat to teach Nintendo employees about the up-and-coming Pokemon! The Retreat in WA at a country club was 6 months before the launch date of Red and Blue.” Pokemon Red & Blue came out in the US in September 1998.
Items like this are rarely officially claimed by Nintendo but it’s intriguing to see nonetheless. One of the most interesting things about the handbook was the apparent changes to Pokemon names – for example, Growlithe and Arcanine were listed as Flamie and Blaze respectively.
One of the most popular names in this book was the name for Gyarados – which was Skulkraken. An excited fan in the comments said, “Skulkraken goes hard though” and another joked, “just wait til Red Skulkraken comes out.”
Fans were split on the authenticity of the handbook, with some complimenting OP on their incredible ability to find rare pieces of history and others claiming that the handbook was fake or that the dates simply didn’t line up.
Either way, fans were thrilled by the notion of uncovering a long-lost piece of Pokemon history. The franchise has come so far in terms of Pokemon names and concepts, and it’ll be exciting to see what the next installment brings with Pokemon Legends Z-A.
