Alternative early names for Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire have reportedly been discovered

videogameschronicle.com:

Early alternate names for Pokémon Ruby version and Pokémon Sapphire version have seemingly been discovered.

The games, released in 2002, were the third generation of the Pokémon series, and the first to be released on GameBoy Advance. Now, Pokémon fans looking through the game’s original code have discovered what they believe to be alternative titles for the games, suggesting they weren’t originally planned to be released as Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire.

According to Farore.Gba on X, files in the game’s code include references to “Indigo Version,” and “Crimson Version,” when translated. It’s unclear if these names were ever planned to be the final names of the game, but their inclusion in the data suggests they were at least considered at one point.

This is far from the first time that such discoveries have been made from the code of a Pokémon game. In the past, Pokémon games have included data entries for every game that proceeded them, usually in order to categorize Pokémon from different games, which is necessary for trading, or importing from Pokémon Home.

Using this data, players have been able to find not only planned entrees in the series, but alternate forms of Pokémon that were never included in the series. In 2020, when source code for Pokémon Red and Blue was leaked online, references were found to a Pink version of the game, which is speculated to have been originally planned as a companion to Pokémon Yellow Version, which was released in 1998.

Pokemon Yellow was a re-release of Pokémon Red and Blue versions which focussed largely on the plot of the anime. While mostly the same game, players began the game with Pikachu as their first partner Pokémon, and faced an anime-accurate version of Team Rocket on their journey.