Discover Meowth’s Pre-Evolution, The Pokemon That Was Scrapped Twice

Over the years, there have been many Pokemon designs that do not make it to the games’ release. However, few share the fate of Konya, who was scrapped not once, but twice.

Konya was a normal type Pokemon that would have evolved into Meowth, one of the most well-known faces of the Pokemon franchise. Like many Pokemon, Konya’s name was a pun, and could be understood as “Baby Meow” or “Coin Meow”.

Konya was first discovered when an anonymous individual uploaded a demo of Pokemon Gold and Silver to the Pokémon Reverse Engineering Tools (PRET) Discord in 2018. An elusive piece of media that was mostly historical trivia to fans, the demo was first shown at 1997’s Nintendo Space World, a trade show that was hosted by Nintendo until 2001. Upon its dumping online, the demo’s content was swiftly analysed and shared with The Cutting Room Floor, a website dedicated to unearthing unused content in video games.

Among both familiar Pokemon as well as other scrapped designs was Konya, who was discovered and revealed to evolve at level 14 into Meowth.

However, the scrapped Pokemon’s story would take a sadder turn. In February 2019, assets of a Generation 1 Pokemon Red and Green beta were revealed and published by the Helix Chamber. Among these assets were a back sprite of a cut Pokemon, Meowth’s Pre-evolution.

Taken together, this would mean that Konya was first designed and cut during Generation 1, returned during the development of Generation 2 but ultimately scrapped once again.

Today, Meowth has gone on to gain 2 other regional forms, Alolan and Galar, an alternate Galar evolution Perrserker and even a third temporary form as Gigantamax Meowth.

Would you like to see the twice scrapped Konya return?