This page is for major Lewtwo project updates, related to YouTube, the site, or general archival efforts. All posts are written by me -- Lewtwo.
2025
Pokémon Red and Green Character Art restoration
2025-02-23
Given that the site is still incomplete, you can't currently click on any images to enlarge them.
Please see the existing Asset Archive for all assets in high quality.
2024
Hikeru Ka Na? Restoration
2024-08-28
Given that the site is still incomplete, you can't currently click on any images to enlarge them.
Please see the existing Asset Archive for all assets in high quality.
The full booklet may be found here.
We've restored the original Hikeru Ka Na booklet, which contains full-body artwork for most characters in Pokémon Red and Green— including Blue, all of the Kanto Gym Leaders, and other various characters, like Lance or a Bug Catcher. As of today, this means we now have high resolution art of all Ken Sugimori character artwork for Pokémon Blue!
Hikeru Ka Na was a Japanese booklet, (published by the now retired Pikachu Records) released in 1998, with the purpose of teaching kids how to play various tunes from the original Pokémon Red and Green, gamifying it for the reader! It mostly contains sheet music alongside its illustrations, with some unique art and backgrounds. We know for certain that the blurry background art wasn't generic and absolutely representative of the world at the time, with Giovanni's page representing the seedy back-end of the Viridian City Gym, Poké Balls astrewn across the floor. This may be the earliest interpretation of the Pokémon world in 3D outside of possibly the TCG, which makes some pages like the detailed Pallet Town more interesting than we initially thought while scanning!
For technical details, these were scanned by me, from a brand new, sealed copy of the booklet that hadn't been opened by the original owner! Due to the way it was made, it was actually possible to completely de-bind the book without ruining it, letting us get the scans we need. They were done at 1200DPI, with level adjustments to bring the black and white detail to their original values.
Having all of these characters is such a big win— at the time of writing we only need a handful of character art from Pokémon Red and Green, and some from Generation 1 TCG material. Head to SugiArt/Characters to see the most up-to-date, sourced art!
Notably, it also came with a great deal of Red and Green item artwork in high resolution. They're a part of a sticker set included alongside the CD, where the reader would stick to a separate sheet when they had "passed" a certain point in the booklet!
Pokémon Green Manual Restoration
2024-06-03
Given that the site is still incomplete, you can't currently click on any images to enlarge them.
Please see the existing Asset Archive for all assets in high quality.
The full manual may be found here.
We've restored the original Pokémon Green manual, some of the first officially printed material for the Pokémon series. This 40-page manual included with the original Pokémon Green box contains basic instructions on how to play the game, with a variety of Pokémon and character illustrations throughout, mostly by Ken Sugimori.
All RAW scans were initially offered by PokémonHound, and subsequently uploaded to archive.org, with all pages scanned at 1200DPI. Restoration efforts (by me) include; acute color-correction applied to shift the colors away from a slight yellowing tint, to more neutral colors reflective of the original intent; level adjustments in order to properly correct the white and black-balance; and proper cropping to the very edge of the paper for each page.
Most notably, all tears, creases, and paper damage caused by age (it's 28!) were healed by-hand in order to make it appear as close to an official digital upload, as if it were scanned at the same quality in 1996. A comparison between it and the RAW can seen below!
This book contains several pieces of art that weren't released elsewhere at the time, including the Kanto Gym Leaders, as well as various items:
Unfortunately, some of the art in the manual has strangely shifted line-art, which makes a handful of pieces unfit for general preservation. Interestingly, the doodles on both covers feature design revisions that barely made it into the final game, such as Mewtwo's shoulder plates.