Datamine Spoilers/Speculation: Pokemon #808?

Before reading, just know that there might be some possible minor spoilers.



As I'm sure many of you know, the newest Pokémon added to the dex is #807, Zeraora. Well, with the release of Pokémon Quest and the new Pokémon hinted at during the Let's Go trailer, it seems that a new Pokémon, #808, might be lurking somewhere in the near future.

Recently, Pokémon Quest was datamined, and apparently it was done very easily because the encryption for the Pokémon games hasn't changed since X and Y, which were broken many years ago. It's the same encryption that led to the entirety of the gen 7 dex being leaked after the release of the Sun and Moon demo. Why hasn't the encryption been changed, even with the move to a different console? I have a couple of theories on that, which I'll get to momentarily, but first, let's take a look at some of the info from the datamine. Here, we have a list of some of the Pokémon names, cropped to the last few for the sake of space:

Spoiler: Pokémon from Pokémon Quest

This list of numbers goes all the way to Zeraora at #807, as you can see here:

Spoiler: Break after #807

This would suggest that Pokémon up to Zeraora will be added for future updates, with the numbers currently there in place of the Pokémon names to act as place holders until then. But here's the strange part; further down in the document, there's a list of the Pokémon species, the descriptive text you can normally find in the Pokédex:

Spoiler: Pokémon Species

You'll notice the number 0 at the top. That's Victini, which is recorded in the national dex as #0. #0 is also listed at the top of the Pokémon names list. Since Victini is a gen 5 Pokémon, it makes sense that it wouldn't be listed yet. I want to mention this, because if Victini wasn't listed, that would throw the number off by one so that there really would be 808 Pokémon, but as you can see, that's not the case since it's listed as #0.

Just to show you that the numbers continue sequentially from this point on, here's another screencap of the legendary Pokémon, and a few of the numbers after Mew, picking up at #152, with Mew, the New Species Pokémon, being #151.

Spoiler: End of Gen 1 Species list

But now, if I were to scroll down to the end of the species list...

Spoiler: ... we have #808

So what does this mean? The Pokémon numbers only go to #807, but the species names go to #808. I have three theories based on this:

1. Nintendo is either bad with coding or trying to cut corners and decided to keep the same decryption for over 2 generations now. They also happened to make a typo, adding in a placeholder for an 808th Pokémon that doesn't exist.

2. Nintendo purposely kept the decryption the same, counting on people to datamine the game in order to hint at a new Pokémon. While adding in the Pokémon's numbers as placeholders for future updates makes those updates easier, it wouldn't be impossible to add them in without placeholders, meaning that having #808 listed under the Pokémon names wouldn't be necessary. There's also no point in not just adding in the Pokémon's names/species ahead of time, unless they were just attempting to save time and release the game a little earlier than they would have been able to otherwise. In this case, keeping the Pokémon hidden behind numbers while including the #808 is enough to hint at there being a new Pokémon while keeping its identity hidden.

3. Some combination of the previous two theories. Maybe they didn't intend for it to be datamined (in which case they're still bad at coding/are trying to cut corners), but there really is something else going on, such as a pre-existing Pokémon, for some reason, getting a second species listing. In other words, a variation of a currently existing Pokémon that's similar enough to go by the same name, but different enough to be referred to as a different species.

These all seem like equally likely possibilities to me. What are your thoughts? Typo, new Pokémon, new variant of an already existing Pokémon, or something else?