Pokémon Red (not to be confused with the official Pokémon Red) is a pirated port of Pokémon Yellow for the Game Boy, made for the Famicom by Waixing.
Overview[]
Battle scene, notice how the trainer is the Pokémon.
It is one the more well-known bootlegs out there. It is actually Pokémon Yellow, but it was called Pokemon Red. It starts off with Pikachu instead of the 3 starters. Much of the storyline is retained, although many of the Pokémon themselves were omitted. As usual for Waixing pirates, 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're playing as instead of the Pokémon they're using, either due to space constraints or the developers simply not bothering to include back sprites.
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 criticized 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 he or she visited regardless of how many extra Pokémon are in the player's party.