Sprite Era

One Pokemon sprite, straight out of a cartridge. Which game drew it? Pick one, then see that Pokemon in every game from 1996 to 2010, side by side, and watch the pixel art grow up.

How Do You Play Sprite Era?

Sprites, I love them! Before 3D models took over, every Pokemon in a battle was a little hand-placed grid of pixels, and Game Freak kept redrawing those grids, game after game, for fifteen years. Sprite Era shows you one front sprite exactly as a game stored it, plus up to four games to choose from, and you pick the one that drew it. Answer, and the whole family album opens up: that Pokemon's sprite from every game it appears in, from Pocket Monsters Green in 1996 to Black and White in 2010, lined up so you can watch the art grow up.

The Daily is ten sprites, the same ten for everybody on the same UTC date, pulled from all twelve games and all 493 Pokemon of Kanto, Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh. Endless keeps going until your third miss, and you can shrink it to the Game Boy era (Green, Red and Blue, Yellow, Gold and Crystal) or to the regions you know best. Scoring is simple. A right answer is a full block, a wrong game from the right generation is a shaded block (so close!), and anything else is a light one. Unova sits this one out, because every Unova Pokemon has exactly one sprite in this span, Black and White, and a one-option question is not much of a question. Spinda sits out too, since every Spinda has its own random spot pattern and its sprites never agree with each other anyway.

Which Games Are in Here, and When Did They Come Out?

Twelve of them, from the very first Pokemon cartridge to the last games drawn entirely in pixels. The answer buttons show the year and place each version came out first. Here is the full schedule:

A couple of those rows need a footnote. Pocket Monsters Green never left Japan. The English Red and Blue kept the Pokemon lineup of Japan's Red and Green, but took their graphics, sprites included, from the Japanese Blue version that followed them (sold by mail order from December 1996, and in shops from October 1999). And Gold is here on its own, without Silver, because Gold and Silver are the only pair of Pokemon games with completely different sprites from each other. Every other row stands for both games of its pair. The dates come from Bulbapedia's page for each game, which cite Nintendo and The Pokemon Company.

How Much Did the Pixel Art Change From Game to Game?

A lot more than you would think, and not always when you would think! I compared every pair of back-to-back releases pixel by pixel, sprite by sprite. "Same pixels" means the two sprites match exactly (maybe nudged a few pixels in the frame), "Touched up" means the same drawing with some pixels or colours changed, and "Redrawn" means a clearly different sprite. The exact rule is further down.

The Game Boy years were a construction zone. Going from Green to Red and Blue, 142 of the 151 sprites were redrawn and the other 9 are reworked versions of the old drawing. Then Yellow redrew all 151 of them again, this time to look like Ken Sugimori's official artwork, and Gold redrew 150 of those 151 drawings once more. (That count ignores Gold's brand-new colours, otherwise it would be every single one.) That is three makeovers of nearly every Kanto sprite in under four years!

Crystal is where it gets sneaky. Comparing only the drawings, 29 of Crystal's 251 sprites match Gold's exactly, 146 are touch-ups of Gold's drawing, and 76 are something else (some of those are borrowed from Silver, which Sprite Era does not include, and some, like Croconaw and Houndoom, are brand new). Add Crystal's new colours and 108 sprites count as redrawn. Crystal was also the first Pokemon game to animate its front sprites, but every sprite here is one still frame.

Ruby and Sapphire started over on the Game Boy Advance in a 64 by 64 pixel frame, so all 251 older Pokemon got new sprites. FireRed and LeafGreen redrew 118 of the 386, and 117 of those are Kanto Pokemon, several of them closer to Sugimori's original artwork. Emerald is built on Ruby and Sapphire, and it kept 340 of their sprites pixel for pixel and touched up the other 46. Nothing in Emerald counts as a full redraw, and the three changes Bulbapedia calls out, Wartortle, Poliwhirl and Mr. Mime, are Emerald borrowing the updated designs from FireRed and LeafGreen. (Most of the other touch-ups are a pixel here or a slight lean there, which may just be a different frame of Emerald's new entrance animations.)

Diamond and Pearl moved to the DS and an 80 by 80 frame, and 373 of the 386 older sprites were redrawn. The other 13 carry a Game Boy Advance drawing over, among them Unown, Smoochum, Magby, Linoone and Anorith. Platinum redrew 203 of the 493 and left 236 exactly alone. HeartGold and SoulSilver redrew 245 of the 251 Kanto and Johto Pokemon (the six that did not change enough to count are Voltorb, Electrode, Chansey, Ditto, Unown and Piloswine) and kept Platinum's sprite for 239 of the other 242. Finally Black and White redrew 399 sprites, and yet for 246 of the 493 older Pokemon it still uses a drawing from a Generation 4 game, touched up or not at all.

Which Pokemon Had the Biggest Glow-Ups?

Every Pokemon has a story in the timeline, but a few of the early ones are something else. Tap a button to load that Pokemon into the sprite timeline below.

• Pikachu. In Green it is a chubby, heavily shaded ball. Red and Blue sharpened it up, and by Yellow, the game where Pikachu follows you around, it stands up straight with the big round eyes from the artwork.
  Show Pikachu's sprites
• Charizard. Green's Charizard is hunched over like it is carrying the groceries, Red and Blue turned it sideways, and Yellow finally gave it the tall, proud pose it has kept ever since.
  Show Charizard's sprites
• Mewtwo. The Green sprite is almost all outline, like a pencil sketch somebody forgot to finish. Red and Blue shaded it in, and by Yellow it stands tall with its tail curled behind it.
  Show Mewtwo's sprites
• Golem. In Green and in Red and Blue, Golem is a big round boulder with arms. Yellow redrew it as the craggy rock shell everybody knows today.
  Show Golem's sprites

How Does Sprite Era Know Two Sprites Are Different?

By comparing the pixels, never by guessing. Each sprite is cut down to the smallest box around its visible pixels, the two boxes are lined up at the bottom centre (Pokemon stand on the ground, after all), and every nudge of up to three pixels in any direction is tried, keeping the best fit. Colours are compared on the consoles' own 5-bit scale, 32 steps per channel, so a colour that is off by a single step does not count. Two sprites are the same pixels if some nudge lines them up with no difference at all. They are redrawn if their silhouettes differ by at least 15 percent of the bigger sprite, or if at least 45 percent of its pixels change clearly (six or more steps on some channel). Everything in between is a touch-up.

Here is the part that keeps the game fair: a question only offers games whose sprite counts as redrawn compared with the answer. So every question has exactly one right answer. That is also why Emerald can come up as an answer even though it shares most of its sprites with Ruby and Sapphire. When it does, Ruby and Sapphire simply are not on the list!

Where Do These Sprites Come From?

The Game Boy sprites come straight out of the community disassemblies of Pocket Monsters Green, Red and Blue, Yellow, Gold and Crystal. Green, Red and Blue and Yellow are shown in the Game Boy's four shades, the same four for all three games. (Each of them also had Super Game Boy colours, but those differ from game to game, and I want you judging the drawing, not the paint.) Gold and Crystal get each game's own Game Boy Color palette, which is why a few Pokemon change colour between them. Everything from Ruby and Sapphire on is PokeAPI's copy of each game's front sprite: one still frame per game pair, in the default form, checked by eye on contact sheets rather than against the cartridges. Silver's sprites and all of the animations are not included, so if your favourite version of a sprite is the second frame of its Crystal animation, I am sorry, and I understand.

Your homework: pick your favourite Pokemon in the timeline above and decide which game drew it best. If your answer is Green, I respect the chaos. Then come back tomorrow for a new Daily, and if you want more Pokedex games, try Pokedex Riddle, Weigh-In or Size Up. Have an idea for another sprite game? Tell me about it!