A Comprehensive Guide to "Capsule Creatures"
When you're working with designs from a global franchise who have Top Class Lawyer money, there's always the fear you'll receive a cease and desist letter in the post for copyright infringement. In our best efforts to avoid this, we here at Little Pixel Palace have come up with a system for naming everything that aims to be close enough to the original that you can recognise it, whilst keeping us out of that legal red zone. These Monsters might be a little big for your Pockets, but they've been infiltrating hearts - and homes - for three decades.
Regions
Firstly, to avoid the names of the made-up places these Creatures come from, we're using the real world places they're based on. This means the original 151 Creatures come from East Tokyo, while the friends we first met in the year 2000 are from West Tokyo - it is a very large city. We take a trip to the islands of Okinawa, before heading up north to Hokkaido, then leave Japan entirely to head for New York. From there we progress to France, head halfway around the world to Hawai'i, then back to Europe to visit Great Britain and Iberia.
These are mostly used to distinguish the generations of games from one another, rather than specifically referring to the actual region the Creatures are from. As such, Creatures #0808 and #0809 are included in the Hawai'i portion, the seven that probably should be called "ancient Ezo" or something of that ilk get lumped in with Great Britain, and anything from the ScarVi DLC comes under Iberia, even though that's not the geographical location where those DLC take place.
Got all that? Great! Moving on.
Classes
The Creature Classification system probably didn't need renaming, necessarily, but you can never be too careful. Plus, it was kind of fun coming up with them all, and that's kind of what gaming's all about.
Insect Class - whilst this term has a different scientific meaning to the Type it's referencing, most people tend to use the words interchangeably.
Night Class - what is night-time if not rather dark?
Folkloric Class - one of the trickier ones, this is trying to name without naming the giant, scaly, sometimes fire-breathing or wingéd beasts of folklore the world over.
Lightning Class - nature's electricity was an easy pick here.
Fae Class - we probably could have gone with 'Pixie' here and it would have made just as much sense, but 'Fae' just feels more whimsical.
Combat Class - nothing like a little hand-to-hand to raise that fighting spirit.
Flame Class - like Insect, these words are fairly interchangeable. Unless you're talking about breathing techniques from Demon Slayer, then they're totally not the same thing in the slightest.
Falling-with-Style Class - this is a reference to the first Toy Story movie, and just the kind of thing that happens if you decide to leave a Disney adult in charge of... anything.
Spirit Class - the term 'Undead' felt a little bit too zombie-leaning, so we'll go with 'Spirit' instead. There's Spirit Mediums in the games, right?
Plant Class - may have been influenced by the name of plant magic from The Owl House, I don't remember. Regardless, it feels more inclusive than the official term that only names one family of vegetation.
Land Class - not the sea, this is the land. Makes good mud. Probably.
Cold Class - I suppose we could have gone with 'Snow' here, but that implies a fluffiness that a lot of these Creatures simply aren't about, so 'Cold' it is.
Ordinary Class - how vanilla do you want me to get? Because there are only so many synonyms.
Toxic Class - the warning label on bottles of poison, seems appropriate enough.
Mind Class - we all know this Type is all about people with mind powers, right?
Stone Class - a small rock is a stone, a big stone is a rock, and an even littler one's a pebble.
Metal Class - like Plant, we've expanded beyond a specific metal to include all the others.
Wet Class - no time for the "Is water wet, or does it just make things wet?" debate here, we've got Creatures to discuss.
If you're wondering why the Classes are consistently listed in this order, it's because this is alphabetical order for the official Types, and that's the only way I can remember them all. I know there's a set order that Type charts are usually in, with the Types that were introduced in later generations at the end, but I can never remember that order so you get this instead. Sorry not sorry.
The Creatures themselves
Now this is where it gets confusing. We all know these Creatures by their names, which are often two or more words smashed together that explain what the creature is or what it does. Some Creatures have the same or very similar names across multiple languages, other vary wildly. They're one of the most recognisable aspects of this franchise, which means they're also definitely going to be one of the most the copyrighted. So what do we do?
The first part of the title for all our Creature listings is their National Dex number. These haven't been changed and, now that they're all four digits long instead of three, they're not going to. If you know the National Dex number of the Creature you're looking for, search for that and you should find it pretty quickly.
The next part is the Creature's category. Every Creature has an official category (eg #0059 is the Legendary P***mon) that can't be copyrighted if you only use the first half, so that's what we've done. It might not be the most intuitive solution but it works for us. Again, if you know this, great, and if you don't then go by the National Dex number and the picture.
And then, after the word "Monster", you'll notice a number. These are numbers that we at Little Pixel Palace have made up entirely; you won't find them anywhere else, don't bother looking. They only exist because some Creature categories are VERY popular - there are currently eight Mouse P***mon, six of which come from East Tokyo, for example. This is just our internal way of differentiating one Mouse from the next.
The Farm*
Where we can, we use the official menu sprites from the Gen5/6 games. Any Creatures introduced in Gen 7 or SwSh (including DLC) also get their official sprites. But, starting in PLA, the menus switched to using 3D models. This means that Creatures with a NatDex number of #0899 or higher, as well as things like the new Mighty forms from Legends: Z-A, don't have official sprites.
In these instances, we turn to an online game called PokéFarm Q. They have designed or collated sprites for every official Creature: every one available in the main games; sprites of comparable size to the Gen 6 ones for Creatures from the Switch games that got massive sprites because of the console's increased graphical capabilities; additional gender variants; a left-handed #0655; #0037 and Hawai'ian #0037 with 1-5 tails because the official material says it gains tails as it grows but never shows that, etc. They also, as a breeding-focused game, have created eggs for every Creature family, including Creatures who had baby forms introduced in later generations.
We would like to distinguish these unofficial sprites from the official ones, so they will be marked with a *.
Additionally, PokéFarm Q have designed their own variants - including Mighty forms (aka mega evolutions) and fusions - of canon Creatures, as well as Creatures exclusive to their site. We hope to bring you these Creatures in the future, and we might even be able to use their actual names since I don't believe they have categories like canon Creatures do, but we've got 1000+ official guys to get through first so don't hold your breath.
And that's it! We hope you found this field guide helpful, and that you now have more confidence in seeking out your preferred Capsule Creature on our site. Good luck out there, trainers, and have a wonderful day.
