Recently, Gamefreak uploaded a new video to their official Youtube channel, sharing some behind-the-scenes insights into one of the Pokemon franchise’s most iconic monsters: Mew.

In the video, Gamefreak veteran and creator of Mew Shigeki Morimoto shares various tidbits about the Psychic-Type Mythical Pokemon. This includes details about Mew’s original release, his reaction to seeing it in the anime, as well as a surprising revelation about the origins of its design.

Check out the video below, along with some translated highlights courtesy of Siliconera:

• Originally, Mew was only released to 20 players via CoroCoro in 1996, with a second distribution to 100 people happening later on. Why so little? Because each Mew was procedurally generated on Morimoto’s PC, even having different Pokemon IDs, and he had to trade it to each chosen player one by one via Link Cable. The third distribution in Japan happened at World Hobby Fair.

 

• Morimoto would later have a hand in planning the Old Sea Map event that would lead players to catch Mew on Faraway Island in Pokemon Emerald, which he was the director of.

 

• When Morimoto first went to see Mewtwo Strikes Back, he was in complete amazement of Mew actually moving around, especially since he created Mew’s design. However, Mew’s movements were decided on by the anime animators, as they would be working on the original 2D pixel art only. Nowadays, they design Pokemon with the intent of turning them into 3D models, so the designers have a hand in saying what the animations will look like. To this end, they’ll draw Pokemon from various angles.

 

• Mew was designed off Mewtwo’s design, which sounds confusing considering Mewtwo is created from Mew in the Pokemon world. Morimoto designed Mew to be a simpler version of Mewtwo’s design, and this was mostly so that Mew would take up less space on the cartridge.

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