Pirate Pokémon Translations

Pirate Pokémon translations are pirate Pokémon games that have been unofficially translated by bootleggers for distribution in foreign regions. They usually only edit the text of the dialogue, the menu and items, as well as the names of the Pokémon, along with replacing the original title screen with a custom one in the translated language. The other assets of the games are typically left untouched. Due to their common origin of Taiwan and China, the translations are often very poor with tons of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes to the point of unintelligibility.

Consoles and Background

Most pirate translations of Pokémon games were made during the first three generations, from Pokémon Red/Blue to Pokémon Emerald, on the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance due to the wealth of tools accessible to edit such ROMs and translate the texts without much of a technical hurdle. The immense popularity of Pokémon and the potential for great financial gain during this era created a huge incentive that drew in many pirate companies. Some, but not all, pirate Pokémon translations were released ahead of Nintendo's official release to drive sales. For the same reason they were also translated into languages not officially supported by Nintendo. With the release of the Nintendo DS and the advent of flash carts that read ROMs from an SD card, and the newer hardware pirate companies had to adapt to, hacked translations became far less prominent and instead pirate companies would load multiple different localizations of the same game onto the SD card flash carts.

List of Pirate Pokémon Translations

Pokémon Green / Pocket Monsters Green

Pokémon Green is a bootleg translation for the Game Boy of the Japanese version of the same game supposedly released in 1999 by an unknown company. If the date is accurate, this translation would have been published after the official release of Pokémon Red/Blue in North America in September 1998. It's notable for the heavy use of broken English and nonsensical sentences while the rest of the content seems to be untouched and directly taken from the Japanese release.

Title screen

Blue's reaction to losing the final battle

Pokémon Gold (Pikachu inc.)

Pokémon Gold for the Game Boy is a pirate translation of Pocket Monsters: Gold released in the year 2000, ahead of the North American release in October of that year.

Its developer is unknown but it frequently appears on multicarts by Ka Sheng, JY, and Game USA. The game was also distributed on stand-alone cartridges. The hack starts with a custom splash screen reading "Pokémon World" before the Gamefreak logo screen, which has been replaced with a Pikachu sprite and "PIKACHU Presents" instead of "Gamefreak Presents". The game then jumps to the official title sequence but the Japanese text on the title screen has been changed to "Pokémon GOLD - Pocket Monsters" and Game Freak's copyright has been replaced with "(c)2000 PiKACHU inc.". The translation includes many small grammatical mistakes and minor spelling errors typical of that of a non-native speaker but the text is intelligible. The names of the second-generation Pokémon aren't the official ones, as is the case with the towns and new characters. The game however uses the correct names for the first 151 Pokémon. Another detail is that Pokémon names are limited to five characters leading to names like "Pdgey" (Pidgey) and "Metap" (Metapod).

The title screen of Pokémon Gold

A cartridge and PCB of Pokémon Gold

Pocket Monsters Gold/Silver (Hong Kong Gold)

Pocket Monsters Gold/Silver are English pirate translations of the Japanese games of the same name. The Gold version is more widely known as "Pokémon Hong Kong Gold" while the Silver version is seemingly lesser known. Both games were translated by HC Translations and published by Ka Sheng and NGCA, ahead of the official North American release in October 2000. The games were released on a dedicated multicart containing solely Pocket Monsters Gold and Silver, but also on generic multicarts with more games on them.

As usual, the quality is relatively low with the game containing many spelling errors and weird sentences. Many aspects are simply mistranslated, such as the names of items and cities. Due to the character limit of the Japanese games most Pokémon names as well as the items and attacks are truncated to five letters. Second-generation Pokémon use their Japanese names isntead of the official English ones.

HC Translations sounds reminiscent of fan translation groups from the early 2000s although their existence isn't documented anywhere on the internet making the game's origin unclear. The fact they credited themselves at all suggests they were fan made, however, the poor quality gives ample reason to doubt that theory, instead speaking for a pirate translation from Southeast Asia. Either way, the people behind this translation weren't fluent in English.

Title screen of Pocket Monsters Gold

Title screen of Pocket Monsters Silver

Generic multicart that contains both versions (Ka Sheng)

A mutlicart containing only Pocket Monsters Gold and Silver with box and manual (NGCA)

Another dedicated multicart containing solely both games (NGCA)

Pocket Monsters Crystal Version (Vietnamese Crystal)

The title screen of Pocket Monsters Crystal Version.

Pocket Monsters Crystal Version, popularly known as "Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal", is an infamous English pirate translation of the Japanese version of Pokémon Crystal by an unknown company. The game was released sometime in the year 2000 before the official North American release in July of 2001 as indicated by the copyright on the title screen which follows the Japanese layout but has been translated into English. It is notorious for the extremely poor quality of the translation with grammatical errors in virtually every "sentence" and many spelling errors. The names of the Pokémon are completely off from their official ones and other aspects of the game have also been mistranslated, such as items, types and attacks. The game was released on stand-alone cartridges as well as on multicarts.

Pokémon Sapphire

Pokémon Sapphire is a pirate hack translation of the Japanese version of the official Pokémon Sapphire into English for the Gameboy Advance. It was published sometime between November 2002 and March 2003, after Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire came out in Japan and before they were released in North America, by an unknown company.

The gameplay is very typical for a pirate translation. The developers didn't change much about the actual game and instead merely translated the Japanese text into broken English with many typos. As such, the title screen follows the layout of the Japanese games though they now feature English text and all the Pokémon names are limited to five characters as in the Japanese release.

The Title Screen of Pokémon Sapphire

A Cartridge containing Pokémon Sapphire

口袋怪兽 火红版/绿叶版 (Pocket Monsters Fire Red/Leaf Green)

Pocket Monsters Fire Red/Leaf Green, alternatively Pocket Monsters Fire Red/Leaf Green 386, are Chinese translations of the Japanese version of the same game released sometime between 2004 and 2006. They were fan-made due to the lack of an official localization by Nintendo, however, they did find their way onto pirate cartridges for the Chinese market.

The title screen of Pocket Monsters Fire Red

The title screen of Pocket Monsters Leaf Green

A cartridge with box of Pocket Monsters Leaf Green

Pokémon Leaf Green

Pokémon Leaf Green is an English pirate translation of the Japanese version Pocket Monsters Leaf Green made by an unknown company presumably ahead of the North American release in September 2004. The game uses a custom title screen replacing the Japanese text with Pokémon Leaf Green following the layout of the Japanese version. As usual, the quality of the translation is very poor with awkward sounding sentences due to a wrong use of grammar as well as frequent spelling errors. In addition, many names of Pokémon and moves or items are truncated to the Japanese character limit that doesn't allow displaying most English words in full.

The title screen of Pokémon Leaf Green

A cartridge of Pokémon Leaf Green

Pocket Monsters Leaf Green LGTR

Pocket Monsters Leaf Green LGTR is a pirate translation of the Japanese version of Pokémon Leaf Green made by an unknown company. It was likely released in 2004 and appears to be a standard hack translation of questionable quality, though it is notably higher when compared to previous ones.

The title screen of Pocket Monsters Leaf Green LGTR

The start menu of Pocket Monsters Leaf Green LGTR

A cartridge of Pocket Monsters Leaf Green LGTR

See also

• Pirate Pokémon Hacks
• Pirate Pokémon Hacks (GBA)