3 Pokemon spinoffs we discovered from Game Freak leaks 2024

As many Pokemon fans know by now, Game Freak suffered a massive data leak after one employee reportedly clicked on a link in a malicious email. This ended up revealing tons of information about the development history for many games in the Pokemon franchise and other properties.

Through the massive waves of information coming from the series of leaks, three side projects have captured the attention of the community. Here are the spin-off Pokemon titles discovered from the Game Freak leaks.

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3 Pokemon spinoffs discovered from the Game Freak data leak

1) Pokemon Rodeo/Synapse

There’s been some mixed information on a leaked Game Freak side project initially called Synapse, which turned out to be a codename for Pokemon Rodeo. However, according to the leaks shared by @CentroLeaks, Rodeo was scrapped during its development.

From what is known about Rodeo, it was going to be a spinoff game with a strong battling focus and multiplayer elements similar to Splatoon. It was to feature co-op multiplayer online play, likely involving multi-battles where teams of two would face off in double battles.

This could’ve been a fresh direction for the Stadium series, where players could transfer their creatures from the main games to battle in titles with enhanced graphics and animations, a concept not explored since Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii.

As the franchise moved to home consoles in the latter half of the seventh generation, Game Freak seemingly shifted focus away from such spinoffs. With no new high-powered Nintendo console for transferring Pocket Monsters, this idea would be a bit redundant in the modern era.

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2) Project Swallow

Another scrapped Game Freak project, according to the leaks, is Project Swallow, a mobile title intended to be a minigame collection like WarioWare. News about this game is still emerging, so it's unclear if it was supposed to have a greater objective.

Project Swallow was supposed to feature minigames involving different Pocket Monsters from the franchise. One of the recovered minigames featured three Magnemites, and the player's objective was to tilt their device to assemble the trio, evolving them into Magneton. It is unclear why this spinoff was scrapped.

Pokemon mobile games rarely succeed. While GO and Unite are still quite popular many years after their release, the former was developed by Niantic, while the latter is also available on the Nintendo Switch.

Game Freak likely anticipated Project Swallow’s failure, especially with monetization challenges. Being a minigame collection, it was likely hard for Game Freak to find a way to make money from the game, outside of making players pay to download it. Mobile gamers are also less likely to pick up a title if it is not free, which would have significantly harmed the company's profits.

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3) Present Party

Present Party was another creature-collecting game by Game Freak, featuring toy battles instead of Pocket Monsters, and was seemingly planned for the Nintendo DS. From discovered artwork, the title would have revolved around battles between toys controlled by microphone headsets.

This project was likely cancelled for a couple of reasons. Since so many of the recovered character designs so accurately reflect real-life toy designs, the title likely raised legal concerns.

Game Freak also may not have wanted to compete with its own better-known franchise, as Present Party would have easily been outshined by Pokemon titles of the time, like Platinum and the fifth-generation games.