>>29040827That's one thing, but the analysis of Gen 1's Pokemon index list (which shows the order in which the Pokemon were developed) shows some other interesting things.
For one, it suggests that Dragonite wasn't even considered to be in its final evolutionary family at some point. It was created earlier than Dratini and Dragonair, and way before Game Freak thought of three-stage lines (there were two stage lines only for the longest time, then in the late development period they started filling in the holes, like Nidorina and Nidorino between their respective evolutions). One has to wonder if Dragonite had a scrapped pre-evolution before that.
Another thing is that Crobat was probably the first Pokemon of its evo line that was created. Its cry is still in the games and Zubat was conceived as its direct pre-evo at first. Golbat is a relatively late addition. It would explain why Zubat and Crobat have the most similar body shapes.
Then we've got Blastoise which was unrelated to Squirtle and Wartortle at first, and the decision to make it their final form was last-minute, while their original squirrel-turtle evolution was scrapped, but I already wrote about that on /vp/.
