One of the most interesting facts about Gen 2 is that Lugia is never once mentioned by name in either game ⁉️
In fact, it was never intended for Lugia to be added to the games at all
Here’s the wild story behind Lugia’s inception
To best understand this story, there���s some important context we need to cover first. In Japan, Pokémon Gold & Silver were heavily delayed
The games faced a number of delays due to Game Freak’s smaller staff/lack of programmers, their work on creating Red & Blue for the U.S., and some internal disagreements on the game’s direction
For this reason, Gold & Silver took over 3.5 years to be released after Red & Green were released. And without these delays, it’s likely that Lugia would have never been added to the gen 2 games
See, at the time, Lugia was unique. Most Pokémon were developed for the games first, and adapted to all the other Media Pokémon would begin producing. But not Lugia
Lugia was originally developed for the anime, and the only reason it made its way into the games are because of these delays
Back in 1997, Pokemon Gold & Silver were demo’d at the Nintendo Space World event. This was before a number of these delays took place
Lugia was not mentioned once during this event
In fact, from leaked Pokémon documents, we can see that the title screen for both Gold & Silver featured Ho-Oh, not Lugia (Picture 2)
Lugia’s first appearance was with the release of the Second Movie, Pokémon: The Power of One, or, Pokémon: Lugia’s Explosive Birth, in Japanese (Picture 3). Lugia’s creator, Takeshi Shudo, developed Lugia for this movie specifically, not the games
In fact, in a blog post written by Shudo, he stated, “Since Lugia was a Pokémon I created solely for the new movie, I was surprised it ended up being used later in the games and TV show”
But again, Gold & Silver were delayed between 1997 and their release in 1999. During this delay, the second Pokémon movie was developed. And it was only after this that Game Freak opted to add Lugia to the games
Ultimately, Lugia’s addition to the games was rushed. Again, Lugia’s name isn’t mentioned a single time in the games. The only lore for Lugia comes from the movie, and all subsequent titles
There’s a lot more to this story too. Shudo’s struggle with Lugia’s depiction in the movie, who actually designed Lugia (this was likely not Shudo alone), and what caused all the delays at Game Freak
If you want to know more, ask me any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!