Five silhouetted figures sit in a smoke-filled room, sipping brandy as they vote upon the most important issues of our era: which Pokémon will make it into the next Pokémon game. Every few minutes they make the decision: who will live... and who will die?
That's how I like to imagine the Pokémon Selection Committee, also known as the shadowy caucus that decides whether or not to approve of each design in Nintendo's fictional animal-hunting simulators.
To quote an interview with designer Hironobu Yoshida, published today by Gamasutra's Christian Nutt:
The studio has a committee of five people who decide which designs will go into the game — and which do not make the cut. "And they also will leave feedback on all of the designs, even the ones that are rejected, to say why they got rejected or why they didn't choose a certain one. What that lets us do is improve for the future, so we can use that knowledge for the next series of titles," Yoshida says.
Yoshida says tons and tons of potential Pokémon are left on the cutting room floor, but hey, that's life in the Pokémon Selection Committee.