Pokémon Red (not to be confused with the official Pokémon Red) is a bootleg Pokémon game for the Famicom developed by Mars Production and published by Waixing.
Overview[]
Battle scene, notice how the trainer is the Pokémon.
Pokémon Red is one of the more well-known bootlegs out there, and despite the game's name, it is actually a port of Pokémon Yellow. It starts off with Pikachu instead of the three starters. Much of the storyline is retained, although many of the Pokémon themselves were omitted. As usual for Waixing's Famicom games, the text was translated into Chinese. The graphics are mostly ported from the original game and given added color. The soundtrack is completely different to the original game's, with the battle music being an 8-bit rendition of Hall of the Mountain King. During the fights, the player's sprite is actually the trainer that they are playing as instead of the Pokémon they are using.
There are three versions of the game:
- 口袋精靈: 紅 (Kǒudài Jīnglíng: Hóng), likely the original version, uses the introduction cutscene from the original Pokémon Blue game.
- 口袋精靈: 金 (Kǒudài Jīnglíng: Jīn), uses the introduction cutscene from the original Pokémon Gold game.
- 宠物: 红 (Chǒngwù: Hóng), no introduction cutscene, and has a broken ending.
The game is infamous for having numerous glitches not present in the original game. One example of this is the music, where when switching screens one note usually hangs. Also, every attack move shares the same amount of PP (unlike the original) and once the PP runs out, the player automatically loses and is sent back to the last Pokémon Center they visited regardless of how many extra Pokémon are in their party.