>>43492814considering every other instance of mismatched front and back graphics on those banks has been dummy data (esp. considering it has matching back graphics that existed since at least 1998) how rough larvitar's front sprite was in the SW99 demo and the alternate design present in the scratchpad, I'd say yes.
from what I can gather at some point in '99 they stopped including each monster as individual sprites and switched to including them all as separate image banks instead, and there's also some .isx files (that you can convert into ROMs and open in an emulator) with no monster image data included so there's also a motive for GF to not update the graphics for each monster every time they make a change.
the tail of the monster list seems to be the place where they tested new ideas (proto-leafeon, proto-sneasel, togepi and snubbull in SW97) so there's a high chance the proto-cyndaquil front graphics is leftover data from when they were working on cyndaquil that was never cleaned up for when they were working on larvitar because there wasn't graphics for it, let alone a design for it.
it's all just speculation of course, i have no idea what was going on back then. maybe it was ice/poison/transgender.
