Pikachu Was Supposed To Evolve Into This Beastly Critter

Source: TORU YAMANAKA / Getty

Here goes some immature nostalgia.

According to this interview with veteran Pokémon graphic artist Atsuko Nishida, The game’s creators originally had very different plans for everyone’s favorite electric rodent.

First, Nishida revealed that he designed the original Pikachu after a squirrel he wished he could keep as a pet. He says he tried to hide Pikachu at first, making him a rare breed because he “didn’t want to let other people touch Pikachu as much as possible”

That’s understandable, but here’s what has Poke-stans going wild: initially, the evolution of Pikachu was supposed to be Pikachu >>> Raichu >>> Gorochu.

According to Nishida, Gorochu had “fangs and two horns” but the development team removed the character to “maintain game balance” — whatever that means.

Obviously, this is big news to those still fielding to “catch ‘em all.”

https://twitter.com/lusamine/status/992640338140348416

Super-stan @lusamine almost lost it when she heard the news. She demanded her followers create visual versions of this forgotten Pokémon immediately in a caps-lock-laden message.

”Apparently pikachu was supposed to have a third evolution called gorochu?!?!,” she typed frantically. “WTF… IT WAS GOING TO HAVE HORNS AND FANGS… ART WORK OF IT HAS NEVER COME OUT THO… SHOW ME. GOROCHU… YOU COWARDS.”

Lo and behold, the tweets responded to her to demands.

Flip the page to see some fan art renderings of what Pika’s future self “Gorochu” would look like if he didn’t get scrapped at the drawing board.

@Yafusa and @AHoldway answered the call to create versions of Gorochu that we all could imagine falling in love with.

Going off the limited description from Nishida, they did a solid job.

Can you imagine your own version of Gorochu?

Hit us up @GlobalGrind to share your skills and we might just show you off to our followers.