>>58979233>>58979277I was here when /vp/ was made and the Gen V starters started as silhouettes that we got some good memes out of like Acornduck. The evolutions were highly debated, but we got Dewott and Servine early from anime settei, and nobody had issues with them, it was the final stages that were debatable (Emboar more because of its type). Even with Platinum, I remember the silhouettes for the new Rotom forms and thinking they were related to Pikachu.
Gen IV's pre-launch period was really long. It technically started with Munchlax in the Deoxys movie around July 2004, and Masuda finally gave the names Diamond and Pearl on his blog around October 2004 after that conference for the DS. We didn't have many other Pokémon for a while though. In 2005, we got Rukario (Lucario), Manene (Mime Jr.), Bonsly (Usohachi), and Manyula (Weavile) from the Lucario movie, but I tuned out of Pokémon news for most of 2006, so I wasn't paying attention when they revealed the DP starters the month before DP actually came out. Even on 4chan at the time, Pokémon had its fans, but for a website where the majority of people were 18+ and they would have heard about Pokémon 8 years prior at the earliest, there wasn't a large adult fanbase for it, just some dedicated threads. A one month heads-up really wouldn't have given much time for there to be a negative reaction.
Gen II and III were similar with their starters where they were reveals close to the release date (Spaceworld oddness excluded).
Gen VI onward have all followed a fairly similar format where the games and the starters are revealed at the same time around the world for a worldwide release later that year, XY just happened to be in January instead of February. But I don't remember anyone having issues with the Kalos starters until Delphox, and Popplio, Primarina, and Incineroar were also questioned for Gen VII.
