>>43520985That's really cool! Almost an entire year before Gold and Silver exactly.
The timeline for all this is pretty interesting. Gold and Silver were supposed to be released at the end of 1997 which was the same year that the anime started airing. With Ho-Oh being in the first episode, he was designed incredibly early, either late '96 or very early '97.
With what we know about the movie's productions, the best guess for Lugia's creation would have been either late '97, or more likely early '98, after production of the first movie wrapped up. That would have also been about the time the anime finished the Kanto games and, if GS were finished on time, when the anime would have moved on to the next games, but instead they had to move along with out them turning into the planning stages for the Orange Islands. So Lugia and the Orange Islands were both most likely planned at the same time, so a little weird the Anime didn't try to tie them together more (but they probably learned there lesson with delay Porygon caused and the Anime/Movie tie-ins not airing together at the right times.)
Though, something doesn't add up now that I'm thinking about the production timeline.
Takeshi Shudō claims that, even up until the third movie's development, they didn't have access to most Gen 2 designs or characters. Yet, Masamitsu Hidaka has said that GS Ball had always contained Celebi inside until that idea was scrapped so Celebi could be used for the 4th Movie. The GS ball was introduced specifically in the anime to eventually tie in with the games, but we now know that Celebi's design was nowhere near finalized when the GS Ball was introduced. Though, the interviewer did claim that Hidaka seemed to pick his words carefully since it appeared he wasn't supposed to talk about it.
This stuff is really fascinating.
