Pokémon Yellow beta

is a special edition of the Generation I games. It introduced the friendship system, which was improved and completed in and has since become a staple of the core series. It also added other features, such as walking Pokémon, which are exclusive to Pokémon Yellow and, and the Pikachu's Beach minigame. Some aspects of the game's initial design did not make it to the final release, either due to time constraints or due to its heavy reliance and basis on.

Evolution levels
In a news article on Pokémon.com about upcoming Pokémon games, it was mentioned that Pokémon would evolve at different levels to what they would in. However, the game had already been released in Japan at the time, so this may have just been misinformation.

Hidden battle system
Data exists for a situation when the  has no, though it isn't actually used when entering a battle with no Pokémon in the final release. In this case, selecting any option other than Run shows the message "Hurry, get away!" In the Japanese version, this dialogue is written in an "old man" dialect, so this may have been intended to be used for Professor Oak during the initial battle with the wild at the start of the undefined's adventure, as the player has no Pokémon at that point.

Leftover music theme
An unused music theme has been encountered in the internal data. It is not known where it would be used, but it is possible that it relates to the aforementioned "no Pokémon" system. However, it is not stored in either the battle, overworld or cave soundbanks. It is located in the minigame and "special Trainer" (Jessie and James) soundbanks, where the Pikachu's Beach music is stored, which is partly why this track only exists in.

It may be worth noting that it closely resembles the battle music theme with Madake from BUSHI Seiryūden: Futari no Yūsha for the Super Famicom, a game that Game Freak developed and released in January 1997 after the release of, but before the Japanese release of Pokémon Yellow.

Scrapped Pikachu's Beach bonus score
There is unused radness data for a score of +750 points in the Pikachu's Beach minigame. It is impossible to achieve this score, regardless of how many flips does, or how they were performed.

Unused in-game trades
The -for- in-game trade from remains. The Japanese version of kept the Beedrill's name from the Japanese Blue while the English version renamed it to Stinger.

Two additional in-game trades were also planned but scrapped, probably to compensate for the removal of the in-game trades in Cerulean City and Vermilion City. One is a Pidgeot for Pidgeot trade while the other is a Mew for Mew trade. In the Japanese version of Yellow, both received Pokémon have the same nickname, まつみや Matsumiya; however, in the English localizations, is nicknamed Marty while  is nicknamed Bart.

Default player and rival names
The unused default names for (Ninten) and  () remain unaltered. In the Japanese version, Blue's unused default name remains unaltered from while Red's was subtly altered by gaining an extra digit (ゲーフリ１).

Unused Pikachu Cries
Pikachu's voice actress Ikue Ohtani recorded 42 cries for Pikachu but 16 of them go unused.

Semi-unused yellow palette
In Japanese Yellow on Game Boy Color mode, the game uses a yellow palette similarly to how Red, Green, and Blue use their respective red, green, and blue palettes. In Western Yellow, Game Boy Color mode instead uses the Super Game Boy palettes but with more saturated colors.

The yellow palette from Japanese Yellow is used by Western Yellow in certain situations like Pikachu's Beach hi-score screen and it can be reinstated completely by modifying the ROM.