Pokémon Gold is a bootleg port of the Game Boy Color game of the same name to the Famicom. It was developed by Mars Production.
Overview[]
Screenshot of a typical battle.
The game mainly follows the plot of Pokémon Gold, but the gameplay mechanics are somewhat different and the text in the game itself is in Chinese. For example, the player can find wild Pokémon who could not be caught in the wild in the original game, such as Level 2 Meganiums. Oddly enough, in this particular version of the game, random encounters almost never happen in areas such as tall grass, yet they occur if the player "walks" into a breakable rock such as the ones in the Burned Tower. There are numerous glitches in this port, such as the game freezing at several points and the computers not working properly, which can potentially cause the game to crash. Oddly, when walking around, the screen scrolls faster vertically than it does horizontally.
The graphics are taken from the original game, but simplified and with many inaccuracies. For example, early on in the game two Professor Oaks can be found in the same scene. The title screen is also different, with Pichu and a shiny Wooper looking towards the sky where the title is. The colors are simplified considerably and incorrect at some points, with Professor Oak being rendered in orange in the intro. The gyms also look different in this version. Some emulators run the battle's music at a slower rate, as well as leave bits of graphical errors on screen. Original/Famiclone hardware as well as certain emulators (i.e., FCE Ultra) display the graphics properly. The music is often criticized as being some of the worst in any unlicensed game, with none of the music being from Pokémon Gold and most of it being off-key. One of the songs was reused in the bootleg Dark Seed Famicom port, also developed by Mars Production.
Like the case with many unlicensed and bootleg games, Pokémon Gold has various different versions. The other revisions such as Pokémon Crystal featuring new and re-arranged graphics taken from games such as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, a fixed random encounter rate when walking in tall grass, and attack animations which were lifted from Mars Production's Pokémon Red bootleg. Oddly enough, Waixing published the re-releases under their own name and the name Coolboy.
Music[]
The soundtrack of Pokémon Gold is mainly composed of very poor renditions of select pieces in Carl Czerny's Op. 821 "160 Eight-Measure Exercises", a common practice as classical music is within the public domain.
| Title | Source |
|---|---|
| Title Screen | Carl Czerny Op. 821 No. 16 |
| Indoors | Carl Czerny Op. 821 No. 4 |
| Overworld | Carl Czerny Op. 821 No. 50 |
| Battle | Carl Czerny Op. 821 No. 65 |
| Caves | Carl Czerny Op. 821 No. 56 |
| Unused song #1 ("Dark Seed") | Carl Czerny Op. 821 No. 61 |
| Unused song #2 | Carl Czerny Op. 821 No. 121 |
| Unused song #3 | Carl Czerny Op. 821 No. 88 |