Worst Pokemon Sprites?

Conni

katharsis
I thought it was Slowbro.
I feel like the thing with some RBY back sprites are that they are quite hard to define or effort is put less into them then their front counterparts as like the posts above you can hards tell that this is a Rhyhorn, judging on the visible front horn it makes Rhyhorn's face much rounder and egg-faced than it should be while the back it much more sharper than it is making it look like those spiky turtle shells from Mario or something. The legs are also barely definable but I'd assume they'd be the lumps next to the back on the bottom right of the sprite. It is RBY which was released in 1997 so there is some leeway comparing to the other horrendous RBY sprites that exist but I feel like less effort were given here in comparison to greater back sprites in RBY
 
That back Rhyhorn sprite actually looks like Cloyster to me. Just the general roundness of the sprite and all the spikes it has coming out of it... idk.

But looking up Rhyhorn sprites actually made me notice something about Rhydon's sprite in GSC.
Spr_b_2g_112_s.png

This is GSC's back sprite for Rhydon. Notice something about it?
Spr_b_3r_112.png

This is Gen 3's back sprite for Rhydon, which is the exact same in RSE and FRLG. As you can see, the sprite designer literally just took the GSC head, coloured/shaded it differently and just gave it an actual body because of the bigger sprite limitations. Are there more sprites like this? And now that I look at it, Crystal Rhyhorn and Gen 3 Rhyhorn also look to have the exact same pose.
Spr_b_2c_111.png
Spr_b_3r_111.png


But anyways, for a bit of my own commentary...

giratinabeta.jpg


This was the original Giratina-Origin sprite that was used in a mockup screenshot or something. This sprite sucks, and not because the image is a JPEG.
  • I don't like the way that 'Tina's tentacles contort as they do. You can see how sharply they bend and it's just weird to me. Can't really explain it.
  • His head looks really small.
    • And is it me or does his body get bigger as it goes down his neck, and then thins out going into his tail?
  • He also doesn't look particularly imposing.
  • His sprite is also very 2D. It's kind of hard to explain, but he just looks so flat here, whereas Pokemon sprites have typically always tried to be 3D in some way. Idk how to explain this either.
    • It looks to me that Giratina is either giving you a side eye, or is looking at something beside you, or beside whatever's beside you.
Looking at it now, it's pretty much a spritified (lol) version of Sugimori's artwork, which I also dislike for all the reasons here. This is one sprite that should haven taken liberties from the original artwork. In other words, it sucks.
Spr_4p_487O.png

This is the sprite used in the final version of Platinum.
  • Now, Giratina's staring your ass down in the eye, ready to steal your soul or some shit.
  • The way his tentacles are spread out as they also adds another layer of impose to me (if that's even proper grammar), like he could just extend them to stab you with them or something.
  • The size of his body is now consistent. It still kind of looks like his tail thins out, but that's OK because you can't really see it what with it being obscured by the tents.
  • Tina also looks a lot more 3D. There seems to be an actual sense of depth to him, like the rest of the Mons.
But the back sprite sucks as well.
Spr_b_4p_487O.png

I can't stand how his tentacles are folded down as they are, like he's flying or something. The way his tents are folded almost seems like this was drawn when the beta front sprite was "official", and then they forgot to draw a new one that has the tents flying out when Sugimori redrew the front sprite. Or maybe they did this because there was some size limit to the back sprites? Idk.
 
Last edited:
That back Rhyhorn sprite actually looks like Cloyster to me. Just the general roundness of the sprite and all the spikes it has coming out of it... idk.

But looking up Rhyhorn sprites actually made me notice something about Rhydon's sprite in GSC.
View attachment 116299
This is GSC's back sprite for Rhydon. Notice something about it?
View attachment 116300
This is Gen 3's back sprite for Rhydon, which is the exact same in RSE and FRLG. As you can see, the sprite designer literally just took the GSC head, coloured/shaded it differently and just gave it an actual body because of the bigger sprite limitations. Are their more sprites like this? And now that I look at it, Crystal Rhyhorn and Gen 3 Rhyhorn also look to have the exact same pose.
There are indeed. In fact, this is more or less the norm for most Gen 1 and 2 Pokémon in Gen 3. Notable exceptions include the Kanto Starters getting new back sprites in FRLG.
 
That back Rhyhorn sprite actually looks like Cloyster to me. Just the general roundness of the sprite and all the spikes it has coming out of it... idk.

But looking up Rhyhorn sprites actually made me notice something about Rhydon's sprite in GSC.
View attachment 116299
This is GSC's back sprite for Rhydon. Notice something about it?
View attachment 116300
This is Gen 3's back sprite for Rhydon, which is the exact same in RSE and FRLG. As you can see, the sprite designer literally just took the GSC head, coloured/shaded it differently and just gave it an actual body because of the bigger sprite limitations. Are there more sprites like this? And now that I look at it, Crystal Rhyhorn and Gen 3 Rhyhorn also look to have the exact same pose.
View attachment 116305View attachment 116306
Actually, they even didn't shaded differently, even the amount of light pixels on the rhydon's chin is the same...
 
I feel like the thing with some RBY back sprites are that they are quite hard to define or effort is put less into them then their front counterparts as like the posts above you can hards tell that this is a Rhyhorn, judging on the visible front horn it makes Rhyhorn's face much rounder and egg-faced than it should be while the back it much more sharper than it is making it look like those spiky turtle shells from Mario or something. The legs are also barely definable but I'd assume they'd be the lumps next to the back on the bottom right of the sprite. It is RBY which was released in 1997 so there is some leeway comparing to the other horrendous RBY sprites that exist but I feel like less effort were given here in comparison to greater back sprites in RBY
All the back sprites in RBY are actually based off the original R/G sprites, which were never changed throughout all of Gen 1. One place this is particularly obvious is the height of Magnemite's top screw.
 
I was looking at the battle frontier page(gen 4) on the Pokemon Wiki and came upon these sprites of the frontier brain Thorton.

What the heck is that blue smartphone looking thing he's holding?
 
Care to elaborate?
Sure - On the first part, Wikia's made a number of moves that have 'encouraged' low-quality, low-effort edits. The biggest of these is defaulting to their VisualEditor instead of the source editor, and making it hard for individual Wikias to change this preference. The VisualEditor is slow and laggy and effectively prevents all but the lowest, most basic levels of text/article formatting. The impact is plainly obvious - edits made with the VisualEditor get a label, and on the Wikias I [used to] frequent, anywhere you look you can find loads of (non-vandalism) all-lowercase or all-bold sentences invariably made with the VisualEditor. This never happens with the source editor. Then a snowball effect happens where more seasoned editors or mods/admins get sick of cleaning up after the low-quality edits, they use the Wikia less, and more low-quality edits can proliferate.

(An honest recreation of how the average VisualEditor edit looks would be something like:
Pokémon X and Y introduced 72 new Pokémon to the series, for a current total of 721.
and then pokemon sm usum came out added 86 more making it 807
It's not wrong, and it technically updates an article that's over a year and a half out-of-date, but it makes the article look hideous and someone has to go back and do it right. Then similar stuff happens all over the place and you can see why seasoned editors leave.)

On the latter parts, Wikia has prioritized revenue/income heavily over content lately. This includes autoplay video ads, full-screen ads, ads that circumvent AdBlock, and ads for themselves stickied to the bottom of every page. Then they limit the kinds of design customizations that individual Wikias are allowed to use, including absolutely no customization allowed at all on the mobile version of the site (which breaks quite a few things that they have no intention to fix). Finally, they recognize that all of this pressures people to pack up and move their site elsewhere, but they will make this as hard as possible on them, such as by refusing to close any old Wikias no matter how outdated and low-quality they are. This inevitably leads to (numerous) wiki 'forks' where old seasoned editors aren't aware that many other seasoned editors have moved to another site, causing the effort and good edits that used to go to one place be split across two places instead. This causes even more quality downgrades and a loss of available information for the users. Just as long as Wikia gets their cash.
 
Last edited:
On the first part, Wikia's made a number of moves that have 'encouraged' low-quality, low-effort edits. The biggest of these is defaulting to their VisualEditor instead of the source editor, and making it hard for individual Wikias to change this preference. The VisualEditor is slow and laggy and effectively prevents all but the lowest, most basic levels of text/article formatting. The impact is plainly obvious - edits made with the VisualEditor get labeled as such, and on the Wikias I [used to] frequent, anywhere you look you can find loads of (non-vandalism) all-lowercase or all-bold sentences invariably made with the VisualEditor. This never happens with the source editor. Then a snowball effect happens where more seasoned editors or mods/admins get sick of cleaning up after the low-quality edits, they use the Wikia less, and more low-quality edits can proliferate.

(An honest recreation of how the average VisualEditor edit looks would be something like:

It's not wrong, and it technically updates an article that's over a year and a half out-of-date, but it makes the article look hideous and someone has to go back and do it right. Then similar stuff happens all over the place and you can see why seasoned editors leave.)

On the latter parts, Wikia has prioritized revenue/income heavily over content lately. This includes autoplay video ads, full-screen ads, ads that circumvent AdBlock, and ads for themselves stickied to the bottom of every page. Then they limit the kinds of design customizations that individual Wikias are allowed to use, including absolutely no customization allowed at all on the mobile version of the site (which breaks quite a few things that they have no intention to fix). Finally, they recognize that all of this pressures people to pack up and move their site elsewhere, but they will make this as hard as possible on them, such as by refusing to close any old Wikias no matter how outdated and low-quality they are. This inevitably leads to (numerous) wiki 'forks' where old seasoned editors aren't aware that many other seasoned editors have moved to another site, causing the effort and good edits that used to go to one place be split across two places instead. This causes even more quality downgrades and a loss of available information for the users. Just as long as Wikia gets their cash.
I was actually unaware of all this, definitely will no longer be using wikia frequently
 
More.......
DP_Lucas_Back.png
DP_Barry_Back.png
DP_Buck_Back.png
DP_Riley_Back.png

These trainer backsprites aren't that much of a problem, but to me it looks like they were reskins of each other due to the way they hold their pokeball. (Dawn and the female companions had this issue too)

Spr_b_g1_007.png

Once again thanks to the original Red/Green we had to suffer with some weird backsprites in Gen 1. Squirtle's looks like he's slightly turning it's face towards you. It's even worse in-game because the backsprite makes Squirtle look huge.

Speaking of face turning.......

Spr_3r_007.png

Squirtle, whatcha pointing at?

slowpoke.png

I like how Slowpoke's face describes me.
๏ __ ๏

Spr_1y_080.png

"My shell is too heavy"

Spr_2s_080.png
Spr_2s_199.png

Slowbro: "Ohhh, a piece of candy!"
Slowking: "Hahahahaha, that guy got hit on the head by a Alolan exeggutor's head!"

Spr_2s_195.png
Spr_3e_194.png

*Buldges into the door*
"Whatcha doing?"

Spr_2s_195.png
Spr_4d_194_m.png

"Oooooouuuuuu, big brother is on his compooter. Especsally since he's not supposed too. He's also on those inappropriate stuf"

IMG_29052018_000912.jpg
Spr_4p_194_m.png

"Better tell mommy and daddy to ruin your life once more!"

1527566719915.png
ditto.png
quagsire (1).png

Quagsire(left): "But mom and dad, it was just a video about a exploration team fighting a legendary! I swear!"
Quagsire(right): "What's that I hear? The bull**** excuses I'm hearing from you?! No more technology for you!" Go to bed now!"
Ditto: "Why did my child had to be born with a bad nature?"

Seriously though, some of Quagsire's sprites were bad. Especially the animation for the Gen 5 sprite.

How come my pictures end up as attachments? >_>
 

Attachments

Last edited:
Slowking: "Hahahahaha, that guy got hit on the head by a Alolan exeggutor's head!"
Nice spongebob reference

*Buldges into the door*
"Whatcha doing?"


"Oooooouuuuuu, big brother is on his compooter. Especsally since he's not supposed too. He's also on those inappropriate stuf"


"Better tell mommy and daddy to ruin your life once more!"


Quagsire(left): "But mom and dad, it was just a video about a exploration team fighting a legendary! I swear!"
Quagsire(right): "What's that I hear? The bull**** excuses I'm hearing from you?! No more technology for you!" Go to bed now!"
Ditto: "Why did my child had to be born with a bad nature?"

Seriously though, some of Quagsire's sprites were bad. Especially the animation for the Gen 5 sprite.
No comments about this...
 
120px-Absorb_PMD_RB.png

Can't be the only one who thought Yanma was a airplane in PMD Rescue Team, with it's idle animation and the way the sprite is made. Yanma's idle animation is going left and right, with it's wings staying still, which is what convinced me that it's a living airplane, not a dragonfly.
 
This one is not exactly "bad sprites" but "lazy sprites" to me.

1527723044695.png
1527722711167.png
1527722722002.png
1527722765942.png
1527722733828.png


For four generations in a row (with the exception of Silver and slight modifications in HGSS), Ho-oh's front sprite had the same pose. Now, I understand Ho-oh has one of the most complex designs among early Pokemon (and that many Pokemon suffered from sprite recycling in their Gen V animations) but seriously... this even applied to the back sprites!

1527722898622.png
1527722906480.png
1527722912302.png


Sure, all pre-Gen III Pokemon have their Gen III back sprites be extended versions of the Gen II ones... but Ho-oh's Gen IV back sprite is still very similar.

Skarmory had kind of this problem in Gen III and IV with its front sprites, but it was just that. Nowhere near as significant.
 
Last edited:
Is it fair to judge sprites that were ultimately thrown out? No.. Am I still going to do? Absolutely.

This is the most gen 1 styled metapod I've ever seen. Remarkable considering Metapod's actual gen 1 sprites. Those angles! The perspective! The eyes!

fearow's backsprite says "kill me"

this is either incomplete or just that much of a mess. The final sprite is provided for comparison purposes

I think this is their attempt at an action pose. This was a mistake

nothing about this is acceptable

i literally cannot believe this was going to be a thing in a game sold to people

And there's just so many more. The gen 2 Pokemon are, on the whole, much better but you still have things like

the scrapped sunfish

ultra angular and haphazard spinarak

ridiculous proportions on this poor miltank

"when will the government stop your sinful hands"

These three, just, in general.

MISTAKES

It's really fascinating how..."gen 1" in style a ton of these sprites (across all the pokemon) are. Very amateur, I guess, with weird decisions when it comes to linework, proportions & perspective. The delay and full restructuring of the game really helped the game as a whole; I think that making Yellow Version also helped.
All the back sprites in RBY are actually based off the original R/G sprites, which were never changed throughout all of Gen 1. One place this is particularly obvious is the height of Magnemite's top screw.
Also this old post suddenly became interesting with respect to this observation
I pointed this out on a YouTube video, but it looks like many of the back sprites for the Gen 1 Pokemon are based on their sprites from Blue. Kakuna even still has its arms out. I'm wondering if it's possible that these back sprites were intended for Blue at some point. Here are a few comparisons (Blue sprites are on the left, demo G/S backs on the right):




It looks very off model, but this back sprite is hilarious.


They literally recycled the exact same small face for each sprite, minus the missing pupil on the back one.


It's possible the intention was to keep using the Blue sprites so they made back sprites to match, but a number of pokemon with blue placeholders either use RG backsprites or have their entirely new ones. Could Blue have had progress done on matching backsprites before they shifted priorities?
 

its hair looks like someone tried to make it into a heart but failed and made it more butt-shaped.

meanwhile vuplix had a sick mohawk in gen 1 despite its front sprite saying otherwise


Nothing more appealing than a pokemon picking its nose >.>

On another note, can we all appreciate how cute Gen 5 Plusle and Minun are?

Their synchronized movements are adorable ;w;
 
Last edited:

Conni

katharsis
Honestly, it looks more like Slaking's punching himself in the face.
If you look closely then it's finger is actually going into its nose but from the looks of it the nose-hole seems much too small for the fingers.


Nothing more appealing than a pokemon picking its nose >.>
Pretty sure this was the intention here. Slaking is a super lazy Pokemon so why not have it pick its nose? Its a really common gesture of lazy people. Also if you interpret this a bit more then you can also make out this along with Slaking's facial expression makes it look smug. This probably means it doesn't care if it's lazy or not. You can tell quite a lot from a sprite... it's not the matter of if a sprite is appealing or not though as this was probably intended as this sprite definitely matches Slaking's known way of life (being lazy), I think it's a good sprite because of these reasons as it conveys what the Pokemon stands for nicely.

If only they can make the nose sticking more clearer though, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be anymore problems, its a good sprite imo.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 2)

Top