In a few months, the long awaited 3DS remakes of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire would be announced, but this post made no claim to predict anything upcoming. Written by a contributor who went by “XYSider”, it was a description of cut content and various scrapped ideas that never made in into the release of Pokemon X & Pokemon Y. After all, Mega Evolution was announced - a feature that brought to mind the heady Grade 3 afternoons of trying (unsuccessfully) to ascend your Charizard into godhood.Īlleged leak posts of the time usually promised insider information on future implementations and titles. And with good reason: the first ambitious jump into full 3D was truly a watershed moment for the franchise, and speculation ran wild as to what surprises were on the horizon. In 2013 the hype cycle for Pokemon X and Pokemon Y was in full swing. Thankfully the mechanic made a triumphant return in Let’s Go Eevee and Let’s Go Pikachu, and were likely not included in the “Ultra” iterations of Sun and Ultra Moon to push the wow factor of the first Switch titles. Heartbreakingly, Sun and Moon contained walking and running animations for every single Pokemon, suggesting that the much loved overworld walking partner mechanic (not seen since 2009) was scrapped very late on in development. Once hackers like Kaphotics and SciresM cracked them open, data involving dialogue, plot, models, and the entire Pokedex could be pulled from just the demo.įurthermore, once the games were released, information could be datamined that either wasn’t implemented, or not yet announced. Notoriously, the free demo versions of Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire and Sun and Moon versions contained massive amounts of superfluous data. In the transition from 2D to 3D games, the studio’s hodgepodge packing of data allowed for some unintentional information getting out there. Partly, this new wave of leaks is a problem of Game Freak’s own doing. In recent years however, things have been… especially leaky. It didn’t help that the franchise was born along with early widespread internet rumours of Pikablu and Pokegods ran rampant on schoolyards during the heyday of Pokemania.

This secrecy has engendered a history of speculation regarding upcoming games and Pokemon designs.

Everything remains in the vault, even the garbage. Alpha and Beta builds of their games are almost mythic in rarity, and we so rarely get to see early or scrapped Pokemon designs. Game Freak and The Pokemon Company have always been very secretive.

Pokemon xy hacker