i made some discoveries!!! i thought that, assuming it hadn't already been done, using wayback machine to look at the sprite lists on the wiki could help us recover some old sprites- and it worked! (the majority are still lost- but still, very big that we have these!) here are all the sprites i found this way, with a comparison to the current one!

That is fantastic! I didn't think about using the wayback machine and I'm shocked to see that some of it was archived. And now looking at the current albino ditto I didn't notice that it was a very light shade of lavender, not pure white, and I kinda love that. I'm happy we're able to discover the old works of the sprite artists. We can appreciate how they have grown and see things that have once been~ I really do like the old Mega Skarmory

Wow that IS a cool find! I’m surprised I’ve never even seen some of these sprites before, the old Sylveon, Mega Skarmory and Mega Flygon are new to me.. I actually really like the old a mega Flygon!

OH NO I never noticed that the new early birds have a weedle instead of just a worm, I haven't really looked at them much. NOW I FEEL SO BAD THAT POOR BOY

Woah, very cool discovery!! I love seeing how far the art team has come over the years-- and I actually really dig the pose on the old Mega Flygon :o I got inspired to do some poking around Pokéfarm with the WayBack Machine-- didn't think I'd actually find anything, but surprise surprise, I stumbled across a few more old sprites!

I know the melan ralts line all got recolors, but I still have a picture of melan Gallade in his OG colors! Also, the change to melan Litwick is still a change that I'm very smad (sad-mad) about because my drive to get a melan candle was because it was a pitch black candle with a teal flame — I loved and was so upset when I came back from a break and saw it was changed. :'(

I'm actually surprised nobody thought to use the wayback machine previously! I decided to do some digging myself as well, and here are the ones I've found! I don't think I saw any of these on the wiki, but I could be wrong!

same energy

hahaaaa i was about to post my boy here!! ngl i loved the older colour scheme, but the new colours look nicer on the mega :) my shiny and albino also have their old sprites saved!

Oh my God why didn't anyone inform me about those placeholder sprites those are amazing