What is the purpose of items having bag descriptions in games where they don't exist?

Question

For most Items, (let's use a Relic Crown as an example,) go to their Bulbapedia page, and you will see two interesting things. They can only be found in the Abyssal Ruins of BWB2W2, but they have a bag description for every game after that.

This is mostly prevalent in Key Items, (probably because most normal items are reoccurring,) and am wondering why Game Freak would bother to do any of this in the first place, as it seems to be a waste of time, (unless they're basically copying large amounts of data inbetween games.)

Comments

your question is so creative, i cant never think a question like this (this is a compliment if you dont get what im saying)

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Thank you so much!

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Hello GmaxWaluigi I Got A Relic Crown In The Pinwheel Forest. Because Im Playing Pokemon Black Randomizer       
What Can I Do With It It Just Says [A Maniac Will Buy It For A High Price]. Where Is The Maniac?

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Idk, but I guess you can trade the items between the games? Im not sure.

@SKYLER.786, Actually he is in the Bunglow (Or whatever you call it) in Undella Town.

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Ok Thanks Tasty Mushroom

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I finally found the answer.

Answer 1

The most likely answer is that the reason these items' bag data are still in-game is that they are just leftovers from other games. If you ever noticed, most items carry their bag descriptions over generations. (this is most prevalent with items from Gens IV-V and Gens VI-VIII) Look at the description for the Full Restore for instance. Seeing how items share similar descriptions over multiple generations, it can be inferred that what Gamefreak does is just copy and paste all the bag description data from one game to another. This isn't actually uncommon, for example, Rhythm Heaven Megamix contains a lot of redrawn graphics for sprites that originally went unused in the original games, most likely because the graphics artists were just redrawing the entire sprite sheets. So yeah, I don't think it's because of scrapped ideas, just lazy copying and pasting :p

Comments

This is a good answer, but it doesn't explain things like the differences in descriptions in items like the Relic Crown and Slowpoke Tail. The relic crown has a different description between Gen 5 and Gen 6, as well as between Gen 6 and 7 (although the only difference is changing 3,000 to three thousand). Interestingly, the Slowpoke tail has a description for HG/SS, but not D/P/Pt. This could be amounted to leftovers from G/S/C but it doesn't seem to be present in the data at all for any of the games between G/S/C and HG/SS, and it was removed after US/UM.
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Relic_Crown
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Slowpoke_Tail

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Hmmm, damn, I have no explanation about this sadly. RIP