Pokemon Snap’s Scrapped Stages & Monsters

[Update: This article has now been turned into an 11 minute video, which also includes additional information not included below. Lava recommends the video over the article.]

Pokemon Snap developed quite the cult following back in the late 90’s. Fans who have spent the past two decades clamoring for a sequel have been forced to console themselves with the fact that at least we got Pokemon Go, which you could argue is Pokemon Snap’s spiritual successor. What was particularly irksome is just how short a game Snap really was — there were only 7 stages. But the game could have been little bit lengthier. Fact is, two stages were cut: a safari stage, and a horror stage.

Pokemon Snap began development for the Nintendo 64DD, a disc-based add-on for the N64 that was discontinued after only selling 15,000 units of its initial production run of 100,000. Like many of the 64DD games then in development, Snap had to be downgraded to run on a standard N64 cartridge. But at the time that it was still being developed for the 64DD, screenshots were being showcased in various gaming magazines (pictured below), and a video of the game’s beta build was released via IGN. Although IGN later deleted that video, someone managed to download a copy and re-upload it to Youtube. The quality is very poor, but you can watch it here if you like.

Safari Stage

The beta build appears to have had only a single location. The stage was primarily in a safari setting, but the player was also taken through forest and plains environments. Pokemon that could be found in this beta location included Pikachu, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Mankey, Snorlax, Pidgey, Meowth, and most interestingly, an Ekans. Ekans didn’t make it into the game’s final build, but if it had, it would have pushed Snap’s total monster count up to 64. In fact, it makes sense that the developers’ original intention may have been for Pokemon Snap to include a total of 64 monsters. Because, you know, Nintendo 64.

This safari stage may have just been a proof-of-concept in the early days of its development. Or it may have once been meant for inclusion in the game’s final build. Regardless, it’s a shame that it was omitted — a safari setting would have fit perfectly in Pokemon Snap, and even just one more location in a game with only seven stages could have made a big difference. But as it turns out, the safari stage isn’t the only stage that didn’t make it into the game’s final build.

Horror Stage

In 1999, Pokemon Snap’s musical composer, Ikuko Momori, posted all the game’s music tracks to her Japanese language website — including two unused tracks she titled “Fantastic Horror” and “Theme of the Horror Boss.” Along with download links to the tracks, she posted these two comments:

Fantastic Horror – “This is a tune for a stage that was cut for various reasons.”

Theme of the Horror Boss – “This is a tune for the boss of a stage that was cut for various reasons.”

You can check out an English translation of Momori’s site if you’re interested in hearing these two tracks for yourself. You’ll need to scroll down to the post marked “1999.” Note that this page’s English appears to be Google translated from Japanese, so its track notes are slightly different to the more fluent-sounding translation used above.

Based solely on the tracks’ names and the short descriptions left by Momori, rumors have found their onto websites like Bulbapedia and TheGamer, asserting that the cut stage was a ghost stage. You might also hear that the stage was scrapped because at the time the game was in development, there were only 3 ghost Pokemon (Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar), and that’s just not enough Pokémon to base a stage around.

Of course, that doesn’t really explain why the stage got as far as having music composed for it. Presumably the game’s developers would have known all along how many ghost Pokemon were in the original 151. So without more information, the true nature of the stage and why it was cut remains a mystery.

A Scrapped Boss?

It’s also unclear what Momori meant when she said “the boss of a stage that was cut.” Pokemon Snap doesn’t have any bosses, unless you count the final stage’s Mew encounter. But even calling Mew a boss is a bit of a stretch. Is it possible an entirely different kind of boss encounter was once planned for the game? Without any further information provided by the developers, we could only speculate — which we typically try to avoid on this site. So at this time, I can only say that Momori describing the second track as belonging to a scrapped boss encounter is pretty mysterious as well.

We’ll update this page if more information ever becomes available regarding the cut stage and/or boss encounter.

L