olivine lighthouse

crystal memories

pokémon crystal was my first pokemon game. at this point, i think it'll always be my favourite.

i started my first playthrough when i was five, maybe six. for reasons i have not understood since at least 2007, i named my player character BTBTBTB. (my rival was naturally given his chosen name, ???).

my first starter was cyndaquil, half because it was the cutest, and half because i read in the prima players' guide it was the "easy" pick. i still usually pick cyndaquil as my starter—as much as i like the other starters, my rival not using totodile just feels wrong.

crystal was one of the few games i ever beat as a kid, and was definitely the first i got to a "the end" screen in. big ups to my man lance for being easy enough to beat that i managed it as a child running around with a level 80-something typhlosion and a bunch of level 5 egg babies. my original save went to the big battery dump in the sky years ago, so i can't be sure, but i think my first hall of fame team looked something like this:

my most recent playthrough was on the 3DS VC release. aside from replaying the comfiest pokémon game, i wanted to finally complete the pokédex, something i never even got close to doing as a kid. that involved playing silver and yellow first for version exclusives, and i ended up bringing a couple of late-game locked mons forward to be part of my crystal team.

i did end up finishing a living dex, so every 'mon is in my save somewhere. it's mostly legit, too—i didn't have the "legit" VC mew, and i didn't want to replay yellow twice for the second fossil, so i caught mew and one of the fossil pokémon in yellow with the mew glitch. as far as i'm concerned, that all happened in gen i, so it doesn't count. you can download the .sav here or here.

quick favourites

pokémon dunsparce

starter cyndaquil

shiny corsola

menu sprite amorphous

gym leader jasmine

npc juggler irwin

item up-grade

pokéball moon ball

move surf

route route 44

town olivine city

overworld music national park

event music battle! gym leader (kanto)

current playthroughs & goals

vanilla crystal

• decorations

  • pikachu doll
  • poliwag doll
  • staryu doll
  • magikarp doll
  • oddish doll
  • gengar doll
  • shellder doll
  • grimer doll
  • surf pikachu doll
  • big lapras doll
  • big snorlax doll
  • jigglypuff poster
  • pikachu poster
  • tropic plant
  • super nes
  • nintendo 64
  • virtual boy
  • pink bed
  • green carpet
• shinies

  • dunsparce
  • vulpix
  • eevee
  • dratini
  • larvitar
  • meowth
  • corsola
• battle tower & stadium 2 prep

polished crystal (9-bit beta)

• clear wonder trade stunlock (get p-wooper)

did you know...

• ...the love ball helps you catch pokémon that are the same species and gender as your current active pokémon? kurt says gay rights!
• ...every trainer class in crystal has a gender assigned so they pull from the correct pool of random battle tower dialogue. that is, every trainer class except mysticalman. eusine has transcended gender.
• (incidentally, bugsy and will are also coded as female, but are refered to as male in-game and in other media. what that means is choice left to the reader.)
• ...you can swap your player character's palette to the other PC's? i don't know if this qualifies as transing your gender but i'm counting it anyway.
• ...shininess is determined by IVs, meaning shininess is a heritable trait? in particular, children of a shiny ditto have 1/64 odds of being shiny themselves.
• ...you can send the shiny gyarados back in time to perform shenanigans to get a shiny ditto?

romhacks

polished crystal

project source / download here!

still in beta, but my favourite pokémon crystal romhack by a huge margin. it follows the original game faithfully, but packs it with new evolutions, a few new areas, and a ton of modern QOL features. if you've ever tried to play crystal and gave up because it was just too clunky and old (very fair!) i hope you'll give this romhack a shot.

the info.txt gives a little information on all the different builds, but doesn't really explain what they are, so here's a quick explanation:

• you can ignore all the .sym files, and any files with "debug" in the name—the sym files are memory addresses for people looking to make cheat codes, and the debug versions are for people actively trying to break the game for QA.
• files marked "nortc" run on a 4-hour day timer: the time cycles between morning->day->evening->night every hour, then repeats.
• this romhack makes some changes to pokémon types (ex. dunsparce goes from pure normal to normal/ground), base stats, move properties, and localization quirks (ex. ragecandybar becomes cake of rage). if you don't want those changes, pick a "faithful" version.

around the web

johto redrawn: a collaborative pixel art recreation of the entire map of johto. my favourite areas are the ruins of alph, ecruteak city, olivine city, and mount silver (entrance).

gen ii capture mechanics: cool information on how catch rates worked back in the old days and on the absolute mess of apricorn ball mechanics. the cave of dragonflies is a great site in general but i'm especially fond of these catch mechanic analyses.

pokecrystal documentation: issues with the source code: the documentation on issues with the original game's source code is a neat look into all the rough edges and imperfections.

blue moon falls: if you're interested in playing vanilla crystal in modern times, blue moon falls is a great resource to make things easier. there's even a page that lets you trade pokémon between saves!

hyper drill: dunsparce.

bonus: gold & silver spaceworld '97 and '99

well, i had to put booper somewhere...