SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon

Whatever happened to the second Mythical that was pseudo-leaked for Gen 8? We know the first slot eventually became Zarude, but that was the only Mythical this Gen, so the other one just... kinda went poof.

Though, maybe A) Another legendary that was supposed to be the second Mythical was made a standard Legendary, probably because COVID, or B) They postponed it a Gen, also because COVID
 
Whatever happened to the second Mythical that was pseudo-leaked for Gen 8? We know the first slot eventually became Zarude, but that was the only Mythical this Gen, so the other one just... kinda went poof.

Though, maybe A) Another legendary that was supposed to be the second Mythical was made a standard Legendary, probably because COVID, or B) They postponed it a Gen, also because COVID
I also wondering we haven't got any Mythical since Darude? I thought they're gonna create Mythical of the Year that will be updated to the ongoing game, live-service style
 
Whatever happened to the second Mythical that was pseudo-leaked for Gen 8? We know the first slot eventually became Zarude, but that was the only Mythical this Gen, so the other one just... kinda went poof.

Though, maybe A) Another legendary that was supposed to be the second Mythical was made a standard Legendary, probably because COVID, or B) They postponed it a Gen, also because COVID
I assume it never got past the "placeholder" stage. Like "yeah we'll probably have another one of these, we'll leave a spot in as a placeholder for later design work".
 
So guess we should be on a lookout for suspiciously British Mythical/Legenady in Scarlet & Violet. "Huh, odd this Big Ben Pokemon wasn't in Galar".
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"Odd that this French maid mythical Fairy type that absorbs the life force of nearby Pokemon to power a devastating laser wasn't in Kalos"
Small consolation is that Magearna had a larger presence in Gen 6's TCG than Gen 7's.
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That's a 6-1 difference compared to Zygarde and its forms appearing at the same time in Gen 6.
 
In fairness a lot of those are re-releases. The first one is the standard EX print, the second one is the full art of that, the fourthone is was a promo release of the same EX card.
The 3rd & 4th one are also the same card (for some reason)

Zygarde in Gen 6 actually is equivalent also in fairness, Fates Collide was still a gen 6 set which gave us 3 distinct cards (10%, 50%, 100% EX), 2 extra variants of the EX and then 2 variants of the 50%

But i wanted hard numbers so behold the "we're so sorry zygarde" parade you alluded to for gen 7
-2 distinct cards for 10%
-4 (!) distinct cards for 50%
-2 variants on the same card for 50% GX
-3 distinct cards for 100%
-4 variants on the same card for a 100% GX

e: Okay turns out 3 of those disticnt cards were sword & shield but still
 
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In fairness a lot of those are re-releases. The first one is the standard EX print, the second one is the full art of that, the fourthone is was a promo release of the same EX card.
The 3rd & 4th one are also the same card (for some reason)
That's still more in total than the actually 2 cards Magearna had for Gen 7, the same number as Gen 8 so far.
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Kalos had it good in every aspect except for the main games.
 

So like can anyone figure out what the common link between these 4 fangames is and why they could've possibly been taken down? Glazed and Flora Sky especially are baffling due to their age
sometimes it is just genuinely the whims of nintendo*. Or someone malicious faking a take down. or someone malicious putting in a thing pertaining to these to get nintendo to do a take down.

*replace nintendo with tpc as needed
 

So like can anyone figure out what the common link between these 4 fangames is and why they could've possibly been taken down? Glazed and Flora Sky especially are baffling due to their age

Crackpot theories ahead: Pokemon Prism, the other (only?) major case of a romhack being taken down before this, happened before the release of USUM focused on Necrozma, the Prism Pokemon. This could means that all these games are related to Scarlet/Violet in some way, perhaps with features being described that could be common search terms. I haven't really played these so I'm just going off descriptions from random sites.

Pokemon Glazed:
description said:
Today's the day you turn twelve years old, which means today is the day you get your first Pokemon. But if you were expecting an uneventful journey across the Tunod region, you'd be dead wrong. A mysterious power is sending the Pokemon world and the real world on a collision course. A mysterious team lurks around the ruins of ancient Tunod, with a mysterious purpose. You'll meet allies in three roaming trainers from the Johto region, as well as a scarfed Pikachu hell-bent on revenge. Will you be able to handle it?

A selling point about the game is that it has a lot of content and even 3 regions (Tunod, Johto, Rankor) and 20 badges to collect. Incidentally, you could visit a small part of Tunod in Pokemon Prism. Maybe there will be a glazed glass pokemon or the game will be really big. We haven't really seen what the entire region looks like yet.

Pokemon: Giratina Strikes Back:
Pokemon Giratina Strikes Back is a ROM hack of Pokemon Ruby. The hack was started back in 2011 and it has been getting updates and it is at a state where it is good to go. It has an interesting story with the villains trying to call forth Giratina to wreak some havoc in the world.

In Giratina Strikes Back, you are a 13-year-old or girl in the Lunoh Region. Your father who owns EDGE Co. calls you so that you can fulfill his childhood dream of being a Pokemon Master. You are given an Eevee, and you set out in the Lunoh Region fighting trainers, Gym Leaders, and Team Genesis. Make sure to stop Team Genesis from summoning Giratina.
I don't expect Giratina to be too relevant in another plot right after Legends unless they really want to follow up on that, but maybe they used the name "Team Genesis", though searching that up with pokemon mostly just brings up TCG results anyway.

Pokemon Flora Sky:
In Pokemon Flora Sky, You’ll come to a land with many mysteries of the legendary Pokemon. After the battle between Dialga and Palkia, the portal between Torn World – the world of Giratina and the real world is opened. Giratina appears and brings many unanticipated dangers. And you must close this portal before it’s too late. Meanwhile, Team Magma and Aqua are seeking the legendary Fire and Water-type Pokemon to dominate their world. Together with other friends, our hero will prevent the heat of the legendary Pokemon by the actions of Team Magma and Aqua. What will help Groudon and Kyogre calm down? For more stories, let’s play…
This story is a mix of Giratina and the Sky Warrior and the vanilla Hoenn plot, though apparently the actual ingame storyline is very disjointed and it's easy to get lost, so hopefully that's not what gamefreak is going for. It's also the oldest of these hacks, and it seems that the draw of this game is more from its pure content additions, even going so far as to have a second version with a pokedex of all the pokemon not in the main game.

Pokemon Stranded departs from traditional Pokemon games in a number of ways. To begin with, there are no Gyms or traditional Pokemon Trainers, no badges, no Pokemon Centers or Marts, and so forth. In addition, the game’s main story will be relatively short and straightforward, but there will be thousands of side stories to follow along the way. The majority of game updates will focus on adding new side quests.

It was just another ordinary day when you left your house to meet Professor Oak and pick up your first Pokemon before embarking on your own Pokemon adventure. You had no idea it was anything but a “normal” day! You discover that Team Rocket has infiltrated your town and is attempting to steal the Professor’s Pokemon. And you happen to run into one of the grunts, he uses his Drowzee to teleport you to a random island. He doesn’t care what happens to you after that!

And this is where the game’s main plot begins. You’ve landed on the beach of an unnamed, uninhabited island, and your mission is to get back home!

Surf your way through the cluster of islands you find around you to gradually uncover the islands’ dark secrets. Collect information from various sources and piece it together to reveal the dark, gruesome mysteries that remained hidden within the islands, which the rest of the world was unaware of! Some of the unsolved mysteries can be theorized, while others can be solved using clues scattered around the island.

I can see this relating to SV with how it "departs from traditional Pokemon games" by being open world, though it sounds like Stranded goes a different direction with focusing more on puzzles and sidequests on a smaller playing field. Maybe there will be a quest where you get stranded on an island and they expect people to google "pokemon stranded" and don't want this hack to come up first.

Overall these 4 don't have much in common other than the standard pokemon master business and evil teams causing the main plot, but in pairs there are some common themes, mostly to Flora Sky which I didn't really come up with anything for.
Glazed/Flora Sky: portals between worlds colliding
Giratina/Flora Sky: Giratina is involved
Stranded/Flora Sky: lands with mysteries to solve
 
Crackpot theories ahead: Pokemon Prism, the other (only?) major case of a romhack being taken down before this, happened before the release of USUM focused on Necrozma, the Prism Pokemon. This could means that all these games are related to Scarlet/Violet in some way, perhaps with features being described that could be common search terms. I haven't really played these so I'm just going off descriptions from random sites.

If this was indeed Nintendo's doing, I don't think they really cared about the plot of these games. As you pointed out, they may have taken down Prism not because of what was in it, but because of Necrozma being the Prism Pokemon (plus the rainbow Prism which is Necrozma's core being prominent) that they likely wanted any searched for "Pokemon Prism" to be directed to USUM and/or Necrozma.

So my own theories:

Glazed: We've seen a notable presence of "crystal" stuff with SV. The Japense logo has a crystal in it, there looks to be stained glass art here and there, and that last few seconds of the recent trailer was a mass of moving crystal which was surely hinting at something. Glaze has a few connections with crystal: One definition of glaze is to put a shiny coat/finish over something. Another definition concerns with installing glass panes into windows (and someone who does that is called a "glazier").

Giratina Strikes Back/Flora Sky: These takedowns feel a bit more anime related as their titles are references to movies. As I said, I doubt they read the descriptions or even played these hacks, so they saw them and thought "with them referencing the movies they may be showing clips from them or a recreation of them, better take them down".

Giratina Strikes Back/Stranded: And these (and maybe a little of Flora Sky if they did read some of the description, or assumed that it meant Shaymin) could be because they'd want keywords such as "Giratina" & "Stranded" in terms of relating to Pokemon to redirect to BDSP & Legends: Arceus. Why just now as they're essentially done with those games? Aside maybe just now they're getting around to it with the new core series games coming out, SV may have some special connectivity with those two. You know, Save File bonuses.
 
Emerald's treatment of version-exclusive species is weird.

In RS, Mawile and Sableye are version-exclusive counterparts, appearing in the same locations (Granite Cave, the Cave of Origin, Victory Road, and the Sky Pillar). Emerald includes them both, but leaves Sableye in all four of its original locations while removing Mawile from everywhere except Victory Road. Literally the very end of the game. What gives?

This isn't done with any other pairing. Seedot is absurdly rarer than Lotad, with a 1% appearance rate on all the routes it appears on (it can also be obtained via an in-game trade if you catch a Ralts, another incredibly rare species) as is Nuzleaf on the sole route it appears, but they're still catchable with some effort. The other RS exclusives are divided up equally: Emerald gets Solrock but not Lunatone, and Seviper but not Zangoose, thus incorporating one exclusive from each of the other titles and leaving one out. But that means that there's still a bias against the Ruby-exclusive species for some reason.

A similar but unrelated issue arises when you look at version-exclusives between titles. Pokemon XD includes all the missing Pokemon from Emerald (Surskit, Meditite, Roselia, Lunatone, Zangoose), meaning that it only takes Emerald+XD to complete the Hoenn Dex.

Similarly, a Sapphire player would only need XD to complete the Hoenn Dex as well (Seedot, Mawile, Solrock) if we assume that they have an Eon Ticket to obtain the missing Lati. But a Ruby player is out of luck - they need Lotad, Lunatone, and Seviper to complete the Hoenn Dex, but only one of those is obtainable from XD. Seriously, what gives?
 
So like can anyone figure out what the common link between these 4 fangames is and why they could've possibly been taken down? Glazed and Flora Sky especially are baffling due to their age
Slight update:
I heard today that apparently these takedown notices are coming from a company called Appdetex on TPC's behalf, who seem to have a history of sending these requests to apps and things that use pokemon characters. Notably, they also took down "Pokemon Grape" from romhacking.net before this as well, and grapes are a common theme in what we've seen so far of Gen 9. I found this notice from the google cache of the pokecommunity thread (which is a screenshot from romhacking.net).
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Why is there no Hyper Repel? We got Super Potion -> Hyper Potion -> Max Potion, and in Japan there's Super Ball -> Hyper Ball -> Max Master Ball, but for some reason repels jump from Super to Max.
 
I mean the boring answer is that they only ever envisioned having three Repel items compared with four Ball items, Potions, Contest ranks, and so on. With that in mind, they're still following the same pattern with Repels if you think of it in a slightly different way. Instead of being purely sequential, the devs prioritised having a basic modifier (or no modifier at all) for the standard item and a supreme modifier for the top-of-the-line version (Max, Master, etc.). Then, for the items in the middle, the pattern (at least in Japanese) is Super, then Hyper if needed.

Super Training and Hyper Training break this version of the pattern in English, but Hyper Training's Japanese name translates to Amazing Intensive Training so I doubt they were really intending to draw a direct line from regular training (defeating Pokemon to gain experience) through these two unconnected mechanics.
 
In RS, Steven's self-introduction on the PokeNav's Trainers' Eyes list is "When it comes down to it, I'm still the strongest!" which is a pretty bland and non-specific bit of text for him but does make sense given his insistence that he's "not just a rock maniac". In Emerald, this gets changed to "I'd climb even waterfalls to find a rare stone!" which is more fitting to his personality and provides a helpful hint as to where to go looking for him at the end of the game.

Except that this line disappears way before you've beaten the Elite Four. When Team Magma invades the Space Centre, his introduction changes to "I'm the strongest and most energetic after all!" and stays that way for the rest of the game.

...is it just me, or is the second line incredibly out of place? The "climb waterfalls" bit of text makes much more sense for him, or at the very least should have been his line post-Elite Four. The bit about him being the strongest sort of works during the main story; an NPC in Fortree rhapsodizes about how powerful Steven is (and we get a preview of his team in Mossdeep) but it's a weirdly out-of-place descriptor given that he needs the player's help at that point to defeat Team Magma.
 
...is it just me, or is the second line incredibly out of place? The "climb waterfalls" bit of text makes much more sense for him, or at the very least should have been his line post-Elite Four. The bit about him being the strongest sort of works during the main story; an NPC in Fortree rhapsodizes about how powerful Steven is (and we get a preview of his team in Mossdeep) but it's a weirdly out-of-place descriptor given that he needs the player's help at that point to defeat Team Magma.

Or perhaps he could have beaten Team Magma alone the whole time and just needed an excuse to have someone to chat with.
 
given that he needs the player's help at that point to defeat Team Magma.

I always assumed the same for Steven here as I did for Lance in Gen 2: He could clear them out himself, but the player's assistance when they've proven capable makes things go faster and smoother in doing so, doubly so in Steven's case since Team Magma does have some SE mons against his team that would let them put up some level more resistance than the joke of Gen 2 Rocket.
 
Apparently Emerald was rushed through development, so his Trainer's Eye quote changing could've been a mistake.
Are there any other points where the PokeNav text changes mid-game, preferably one that's definitely intentional? If not, I don't see how Steven's changing could possibly be an accident. Why would they store two separate lines of text and have a way to switch between them if they only intended to have one consistent line?
 
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