Pokemon Gold Pocket Monsters (ROM hack)

[Vikograd]

Hey, first time posting here!

So I recently started digging around my multicarts and found a strange version of Pokemon Gold on one of them and was wondering if anyone has heard of it. It seems to be a ROM hack of the English version of Pokemon Gold but with the intro being changed along with the dialogues and the Pokemon not having their official names. The game displays "Pokemon World" on startup instead of the Gamefreak logo and Nintendo's credit has been replaced by "PiKACHU". The game uses the original title screen but the text says "Pokemon GOLD Pocket Monsters" and Nintendo's copyright is once again overwritten by "PiKACHU".

Is this a known hack in the community? I'm going to try and document this with a page on the wiki so if anyone has any further information on the game I'd appreciate it.

Also here's some pictures I took of the startup sequence and the screen where you choose your name (notice how the font is smaller but bold, compared to Pokemon's usual font).

[crazyboy92mk2]

Hey, first time posting here!

So I recently started digging around my multicarts and found a strange version of Pokemon Gold on one of them and was wondering if anyone has heard of it. It seems to be a ROM hack of the English version of Pokemon Gold but with the intro being changed along with the dialogues and the Pokemon not having their official names. The game displays "Pokemon World" on startup instead of the Gamefreak logo and Nintendo's credit has been replaced by "PiKACHU". The game uses the original title screen but the text says "Pokemon GOLD Pocket Monsters" and Nintendo's copyright is once again overwritten by "PiKACHU".

Is this a known hack in the community? I'm going to try and document this with a page on the wiki so if anyone has any further information on the game I'd appreciate it.

Also here's some pictures I took of the startup sequence and the screen where you choose your name (notice how the font is smaller but bold, compared to Pokemon's usual font).

This is quite interesting. This is Japanese version of Pokemon Gold, not the US/European version BTW.

[Ankos]

I dumped the ROM for it off of one of my multicarts and posted it to my ROMs thread. In my experience it appears on Ka Sheng and JY multicarts. I've never seen an equivalent version for Silver though, though there are other translations for the generation 2 pokemon games

[Vikograd]

This is quite interesting. This is Japanese version of Pokemon Gold, not the US/European version BTW.
[/quote]

Oh, so this might be a pre-release translation by whoever pirated this. Was this even a thing back then? - to translate a game for a different region where it hasn't officially been released yet to better sell ones pirated work? Thanks for the info though!

[Vikograd]

I dumped the ROM for it off of one of my multicarts and posted it to my ROMs thread. In my experience it appears on Ka Sheng and JY multicarts. I've never seen an equivalent version for Silver though, though there are other translations for the generation 2 pokemon games

I found this one on a Game USA Color Advance cartidge that I got bundled with my GBA a few years ago.
I made a wiki page for it as well because I couldn't find anything about these multicarts on the internet...
https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/100_in_1_Game_USA_Color_Advance

[Ankos]

This is quite interesting. This is Japanese version of Pokemon Gold, not the US/European version BTW.

Oh, so this might be a pre-release translation by whoever pirated this. Was this even a thing back then? - to translate a game for a different region where it hasn't officially been released yet to better sell ones pirated work? Thanks for the info though!
[/quote]
Yes, that was a practice. It happened with quite a few Pokemon titles. I've seen it with Pokemon Green, Pokemon Gold, Pokemon Crystal, Pokemon Fire Red, Pokemon Sapphire, and Pokemon Emerald. There were also fan translations people tried to squeeze out before the official one, and some of those wound up on pirate carts as well

[Vikograd]

Yes, that was a practice. It happened with quite a few Pokemon titles. I've seen it with Pokemon Green, Pokemon Gold, Pokemon Crystal, Pokemon Fire Red, Pokemon Sapphire, and Pokemon Emerald. There were also fan translations people tried to squeeze out before the official one, and some of those wound up on pirate carts as well

Wow, that's basically the entire Pokemon franchise up until the DS games came out. I assume there's no way of knowing whether it was released before the official games were released or after, but this is still very interesting

[Ankos]

I dumped the ROM for it off of one of my multicarts and posted it to my ROMs thread. In my experience it appears on Ka Sheng and JY multicarts. I've never seen an equivalent version for Silver though, though there are other translations for the generation 2 pokemon games

I found this one on a Game USA Color Advance cartidge that I got bundled with my GBA a few years ago.
I made a wiki page for it as well because I couldn't find anything about these multicarts on the internet...
https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/100_in_1_Game_USA_Color_Advance

That is a sort of well known manufacturer, but they are not Ka Sheng or JY. If I remember right you could sort of tell how much stuff was on these by the ID  code since a lot of these lie about their game count, though I don't remember exactly how the trick worked

[Ankos]

Oh. Taizou (the person who runs hhug.me) posted how the ID system works for UC multis in the discord. So your multi's ID is "UC-100M01".

The 100 refers to the claimed game count. The M refers to the ROM size (so any multi of theirs with an M after the game count is going to be quite big) and the 01 after the M refers to this multi's number in relation to the others that were released. So it is the first 100 in 1 multi with this ROM size the company made

[Vikograd]

Oh. Taizou (the person who runs hhug.me) posted how the ID system works for UC multis in the discord. So your multi's ID is "UC-100M01".

The 100 refers to the claimed game count. The M refers to the ROM size (so any multi of theirs with an M after the game count is going to be quite big) and the 01 after the M refers to this multi's number in relation to the others that were released. So it is the first 100 in 1 multi with this ROM size the company made

That's neat. Indeed this cart is quite big, as it doesn't contain a single repeat except different versions of the Pokemon games and one game that's present in both Japanese and English. Can you tell what UC stands for, or is it just a random acronym the pirate company chose? (UC for USA Color coming to mind...)

[Ankos]

I'm not sure. I have a cart with a similar look with a UK ID, so I think it has to do with where these were sold, but I don't think these normally pop up in the wild in the USA

[Alniarez]

Hello,

I just made an account to reply to this thread. Hope this random new account necro-ing a post is ok.

I believe I own the cartridge for the gold version, and my cousin has (or had) the version for silver. They are just a bootleg translation of the original japanese version.

Just want to share how we got them in case it gives extra context and information about the roms.

We were on a sky trip in Andorra.
My father bought them on a small electronic store as a Epiphany gift (In Spain kids get presents for xmats on the .6th of january).
This was on the year 2000. I do remember that we had them Magically (by my kid's brain) before they were in stores.

They came in what looked like complete genuine nintendo boxes, complete with manual and paperwork.
The cartridge is just black plastic with a non genuine sticker, no marking and not even a security screw.

probably this one? https://www.avid.wiki/Pikachu_Inc.

[tabor62gb]

Hello,

I just made an account to reply to this thread. Hope this random new account necro-ing a post is ok.

I believe I own the cartridge for the gold version, and my cousin has (or had) the version for silver. They are just a bootleg translation of the original japanese version.

Just want to share how we got them in case it gives extra context and information about the roms.

We were on a sky trip in Andorra.
My father bought them on a small electronic store as a Epiphany gift (In Spain kids get presents for xmats on the .6th of january).
This was on the year 2000. I do remember that we had them Magically (by my kid's brain) before they were in stores.

They came in what looked like complete genuine nintendo boxes, complete with manual and paperwork.
The cartridge is just black plastic with a non genuine sticker, no marking and not even a security screw.

probably this one? https://www.avid.wiki/Pikachu_Inc.

Thank you for sharing about it, that's pretty interesting. Cool to see pictures too.

[Vikograd]

Hello,

I just made an account to reply to this thread. Hope this random new account necro-ing a post is ok.

I believe I own the cartridge for the gold version, and my cousin has (or had) the version for silver. They are just a bootleg translation of the original japanese version.

Just want to share how we got them in case it gives extra context and information about the roms.

We were on a sky trip in Andorra.
My father bought them on a small electronic store as a Epiphany gift (In Spain kids get presents for xmats on the .6th of january).
This was on the year 2000. I do remember that we had them Magically (by my kid's brain) before they were in stores.

They came in what looked like complete genuine nintendo boxes, complete with manual and paperwork.
The cartridge is just black plastic with a non genuine sticker, no marking and not even a security screw.

probably this one? https://www.avid.wiki/Pikachu_Inc.

Whoa! Thanks for sharing this!
It's nice to know that a cartridge version of this game does afterall exist, I have it on one of my multicarts.
It would be really itneresting to know if your sister still has the silver version, since I'm not sure that's been documented yet. Although with this much time passed since their release I feel like someone else would've eventually brought up the silver version already so it's likely an incorrect childhood memory.

[Vikograd]

It would be really itneresting to know if your sister still has the silver version, since I'm not sure that's been documented yet. Although with this much time passed since their release I feel like someone else would've eventually brought up the silver version already so it's likely an incorrect childhood memory.

On second thought, it's probably the Vida Translations Silver that was also distributed by pirates. Would still be nice to see the Pokemon silver game just to comfirm what version it is...