Worst Pokemon Sprites?

Gen 3 certainly had some pretty iffy sprites, just like these ones:
Sceptile deserved a far better sprite. It has an incredibly stiff and unoriginal pose, it doesn't seem to have claws on its feet but ball like toes instead (similar to Treecko), its head is way too big and its eyes just seem off to me.
This thing just looks terrible. Nidoking's body is way too small on this one, the shading is lacking and that face... Fire Red and Leaf Green showed us how it should be like:
Oh, and the poses from both of them are unoriginal.
Even Deoxys suffered from bad sprite syndrome. It lacks five fingers as it is shown in the original artwork, it looks way too skinny, even for a deoxys, its legs are way too short and its pose is just goofy in my opinion.
God...where do I even begin with this one...Firstly, it has only four fingers as opposed of five from the original artwork and the later sprites similar to Deoxys, secondly, its eye looks (no pun intended) lazy, it doesn't seem to belong there and its pupil is too small and thirdly, it should have had darker colors. Speaking on darker colors...
These ones all needed to be darker colored:​
Gen 3 in my opinion had the worst sprites of any generation, they were just so lazy looking, yeah the gen 1 ones were also pretty bad but they had a lot of personality going for them as opposed to essentially every single gen 3 sprite.​

EXTRA SPRITE
Just try staring at this thing. I guess they decided to go realistic with this one.
 
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God...where do I even begin with this one...Firstly, it has only four fingers as opposed of five from the original artwork and the later sprites similar to Deoxys, secondly, its eye looks (no pun intended) lazy, it doesn't seem to belong there and its pupil is too small and thirdly, it should have had darker colors.
Also, it looks like it's about to grope some poor woman.
 
It's not exactly the sprite that's bad, but...

Toucannon's standard pose being standing means that the Elite 4 trainer giving it a Flynium-Z makes it look... unfinished and Gmoddy. Of course this happens with a lot of Pokémon due to the Z-move being intended for Pokémon with idle poses like Swellow and Skarmory, but it's notable in this case due to it being a required story trainer.


But again, one specific instance. And I didn't hate it, I just found it really hilarious.
 
It's not exactly the sprite that's bad, but...

Toucannon's standard pose being standing means that the Elite 4 trainer giving it a Flynium-Z makes it look... unfinished and Gmoddy. Of course this happens with a lot of Pokémon due to the Z-move being intended for Pokémon with idle poses like Swellow and Skarmory, but it's notable in this case due to it being a required story trainer.


But again, one specific instance. And I didn't hate it, I just found it really hilarious.
You should see when Bewear uses it.
 
It's not exactly the sprite that's bad, but...

Toucannon's standard pose being standing means that the Elite 4 trainer giving it a Flynium-Z makes it look... unfinished and Gmoddy. Of course this happens with a lot of Pokémon due to the Z-move being intended for Pokémon with idle poses like Swellow and Skarmory, but it's notable in this case due to it being a required story trainer.


But again, one specific instance. And I didn't hate it, I just found it really hilarious.
This is the time when I start to not take these guys seriously.
 
I personally don't like Espeon's sprite, esp. in B2W2, because it looks small and well…different from the official artwork

BUT Feraligatr in Emerald/Gen3 makes you regret completing the Pokèdex…
 
I'm not about to go as far as to say these are the worst, but the most common ones from the Game Boy era have likely already been done.
I'm gonna nitpick about DP's Charmander.

I feel like in this and a few Charmander sprites, there is never enough space to capture the eyes. The real ones are very shiny and quite big, and it's not easy to fit into such a tight space with a limited amount of pixels. Despite the best efforts, the eyes don't give Charmander the cheerful and shiny look that the models of current gens have. However, I feel Heart Gold and Soul Silver even managed to get this right. This sprite gives Charmander a more animalistic and expressionless face.

I wish I could link the other things for comparison, but I don't know how to resize pics on here and I think you can tell what I mean. I will have to do it for this next one.

Something about Lucario's sprites have always left something to be desired. It seems a bit more glued-together in terms of anatomy. Just the way the head is planted on that skinny body. The model really brought out a lot in Lucario and gave it that better anatomy that more complex mediums like the anime could give it. I'm not good at explaining things like this, to be honest, but I still wanted to participate. I think you can tell the better difference between the sprite and the model, and not just because one's a model.
 

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Delphox irks me more because of its design as opposed to its 3D model per se. I loved Fennekin and Braixen, but man, what a disappointment Delphox was. Once you have seen the similarities between her dress and a mustache, there is no going back.

Smogon XY Sprite Project showed us that Delphox can look cool with a good sprite:

The model didn't do it enough justice imo.

Something about Lucario's sprites have always left something to be desired. It seems a bit more glued-together in terms of anatomy. Just the way the head is planted on that skinny body. The model really brought out a lot in Lucario and gave it that better anatomy that more complex mediums like the anime could give it. I'm not good at explaining things like this, to be honest, but I still wanted to participate. I think you can tell the better difference between the sprite and the model, and not just because one's a model.
I personally prefer the sprites because of the "action" they convey.

"Right. So... what should I do next?"

"You're going down."
NO BIAS HERE PLATINUM WAS NOT MY FIRST GAME
 

Gen 6 Stunfisk. I'm not sure why you'd want to look at something so flat from the side.


Hitmontop in Gen 5 is bouncing on the spike on his head. That looks painful.


Corphish in Emerald (left) and Gen 5 (right) look like they're trying to fly, for some reason.


Cacnea's Emerald animation is pretty weird.


Fast forward to Gen 4: "Hi there!"


Deino in Gen 5 looks like it's a dog attached to an invisible leash.


RSE Rattata does not look very ratlike. Bonus points to Emerald animations again.


More weird animations, this time Beedrill in Crystal.


Machop has some weird sprites, but Yellow's takes the cake.

Also, I don't have a good picture for this one, but Pheromosa's model has blue wings, but its official artwork does not.
 

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This may be off topic, but the shiny event Pokemon of Gen VII feel like they should be mentioned here. You can't even tell if they're shiny by just looking at them. As far as I can tell with Magearna you can only tell the difference with if its in its Original Color form. The other event Pokemon has a slight color change with its head thing that's near impossible to spot until you see it in action where the color becomes extremely noticeable instead of a slight tint to the gray body.

Also, I don't have a good picture for this one, but Pheromosa's model has blue wings, but its official artwork does not.
They're transparent and the pics of them you've seen were probably taken with the Pokedex's Blue Background.
 
This may be off topic, but the shiny event Pokemon of Gen VII feel like they should be mentioned here. You can't even tell if they're shiny by just looking at them. As far as I can tell with Magearna you can only tell the difference with if its in its Original Color form. The other event Pokemon has a slight color change with its head thing that's near impossible to spot until you see it in action where the color becomes extremely noticeable instead of a slight tint to the gray body.
Aren't all the events likely to be shiny-locked (or locked into being shiny) anyway?
 
I know this is minimal, but...



Nosepass looks too smooth here.


Just what the hell did they do to Lombre??? It looks like it has a pretty weird mouth instead of its... beak... thingy

Also, I would like to mention the RSE male Swimmers, they look like they are... polluting the sea to put it mildly.
 
Look at R/S Salamence.
189.gif

Pretty badass, right? Now look at Emerald.
373.png

"oh I gotta get those leaves at the top of the tree now"
"If I don't fix my posture I'll get neck problems!"

Maybe it's just me, but Emerald's sprite just looks goofy for me. Having Salamence have its head straight up just looks plain comical.
(Sprites courtesy of Serebii, dunno why they had one with a background and one without)
 
Look at R/S Salamence.
View attachment 75740
Pretty badass, right? Now look at Emerald.
View attachment 75742
"oh I gotta get those leaves at the top of the tree now"
"If I don't fix my posture I'll get neck problems!"

Maybe it's just me, but Emerald's sprite just looks goofy for me. Having Salamence have its head straight up just looks plain comical.
(Sprites courtesy of Serebii, dunno why they had one with a background and one without)
Serebii's Emerald sprites are just the mid-animation poses. Emerald's 'main' sprites are still RS's; so that pose is simply it rearing it's head back to roar. Not meant to be like that for more than half a second. Any split-second motion is gonna look ridiculous; like when you're eating for instance.
 
Look at R/S Salamence.
View attachment 75740
Pretty badass, right? Now look at Emerald.
View attachment 75742
"oh I gotta get those leaves at the top of the tree now"
"If I don't fix my posture I'll get neck problems!"

Maybe it's just me, but Emerald's sprite just looks goofy for me. Having Salamence have its head straight up just looks plain comical.
(Sprites courtesy of Serebii, dunno why they had one with a background and one without)
Never looked at it from this perspective. Emerald's sprite indeed looks awful compared to the one in R/S.
 

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