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Pokémon Gold is a port of the Game Boy Color game of the same name to the Famicom. It was developed by Mars Production.

Overview[]

Pokemon gold-battle

Screenshot of a typical battle.

The game mainly follows the plot of Pokémon Gold, but the gameplay mechanics are somewhat different and the game itself is in Chinese. For example, the player can find wild Pokémon who couldn't 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 smashable 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 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. The actual hardware as well as FCE Ultra display the graphics properly. The music is often criticized as being some of the worst in any pirated game, with none of the music being from Pokémon Gold and most of it being off-key. One of the songs was reused in Dark Seed, also by Mars.

Like the case with many pirates, 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 Waixing'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
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