#Pokemon Crystal Clear

[endurae]

GUNMAN VASH wants to battle!

ID: A pixel-art sprite of Vash the Stampede from Trigun, emulating the style of trainer battle sprites in Pokemon Crystal, using a limited palette of black, white, red, and pale orange.

[soulspark]

[wishcloak]

[gooberto]

So one of my favorite pokemon romhacks adds Fly to Jumpluff's movepool and the mental image of riding the wind to the next town on a silly little dandelion creature was so whimsical I had to try and illustrate it

[infinitebrians]

Favorite Games of 2023 Part Final: Pokemon Crystal Clear Clown Edition

Pokemon Crystal Clear is a romhack for the Gameboy Color game that mainly advertises itself as Pokemon Crystal modified so now it is entirely playable as a free roaming open world. Clown Edition is just what I called the rom of the game after creating and injecting a pokemon trainer sprite sheet into the game so I can play as my own character, Clown. I played the whole game on my New 3ds XL, it took a quite a bit of effort to get this exact version of the game working on my 3ds. It was incredibly worth it, this is not just my favorite game, but favorite 'game experience', and even easily my new pick for all time favorite pokemon game in the series.

The game itself was fun and a refreshing new way to experience a pokemon game but the overall experience of getting the game working on a hacked 3ds and playing with my own created sprites was in itself a very fun bit of hobby work. It has revived my love for playing older games on real hardware, something that I have found myself continuing to do this year. Also, seeing my own art in the game and said art feel cohesive with the world ruled and I want to experience that more in some other way. This game made me more into pokemon than I have felt with official releases in a pretty long while, and I even liked my time playing Scarlet. I loved playing on a handheld, I loved seeing the really well made art from gen 2, and I loved being able to put a bit of myself into the game as well.

Apologies for how rambley this gets, I really liked the game but still somehow found it hard to really organize my thoughts on why exactly.

I wanted to revisit this hack after briefly trying it in 2018 because of this excellent Hazel video (https://youtu.be/96YimpRHQHs). The video details various life stories while talking about favorite locations in the games getting me to think about my own favorite spots in the games and where I was personally at the time. The video also got me to start realizing that Porygon might be one of my favorite pokemon in the series and caused me to make drawings of them that I'm still quite fond of. This then made me recall Crystal Clear which contains a feature of surprisingly deep character customization including a wide selection of possible starter picks one of which being Porygon. So, compelled by the allure of having a fun adventure with a cyber duck, I picked up my hacked 3ds and started the game again.

Crystal Clear is a game that allowed for me to be even more creative about how to approach building my team and creating my own adventure out of playing pokemon. It's not for everyone, it wasn't even for me the first time I tried this game back in 2018. Crystal Clear definitely lends itself much more to the idea of creating your own fun than typical linear pokemon games where if you're not interested in that more free form exploration, the game would feel aimless. I even felt this when starting this playthrough, but the goal of pokedex completion was what encouraged to explore and discover Crystal Clear's world. The game was always surprising me in both the number of quality of life features it provided as well as fun new areas to explore or to better make the world more connected. Over time, the game felt more at home to me from getting more familiar with locations and developing a new sense of fondness for several towns in Johto I frequented. The change from a linear progression to that open ended one gave me a better sense of the world and towns had a bit more life to them as places felt more inviting to hang around in.

I love this game's implementation of the pokedex. It has been designed so it will display just about every piece of information about a pokemon, where to find them, when they evolve, what moves they learn, and so on. While the presentation is definitely clunky due to having to have all of that information on a GBC screen, I found this such an invaluable tool to have in game that for the first time in the entire pokemon series I was heavily making use of the in game pokedex for its intended purpose. Being able to look up relevant information for pokemon all entirely in game without having to have a phone/computer nearby with bulbapedia open all the time is just greatly appreciated. While the desire to keep some mystery around pokemon and how they evolve or what moves they'll learn can be part of the fun with the series, I think I just prefer being able to tell quickly if this is a stone evolution pokemon or not.

This was the first time I ever completed a pokedex in any pokemon game, something I've always wanted to do but never fully committed to the whole process. This is because of my own laziness toward how challenging that always was in proper releases due to so many pokemon being obscured behind multiple games and others being locked behind real world timed events. That or the fact that later games in the series just outright make the the act of getting a truly complete pokedex feel almost impossible. Instead, I finally accomplished a completed pokedex in a romhack that was made to make that sort of challenge feel reasonable with modified drop pools and changed events so everything within that one game is catchable. While now possible, I still found myself challenged with a game world spanning adventure of looking behind every rock, tree, and patch of grass to find every funny little guy I could. One particular memory was me spending maybe a week insisting on finding a dragonite in an encounter to catch which has a 1% chance of happening rather than spending the time leveling and evolving one instead. A very, very long process of hitting a tree over and over but made hilarious when later repeating the process for a tyranitar, another 1% chance encounter rate, was done in minutes. It was really fun having a plan ahead with how I was going to get every pokemon, constantly using expshare and other things to level guys to get them to evolve while try catching other guys. The ultimate reward of that certificate is still a pretty hilariously small, though I still kind of want to figure out a way to print mine out.

What made this game so special to me was simply just adding Clown to it. A simple change that was a surprisingly complicated process of getting a crash course on how GBC color palettes and size limitations worked and getting my hacked 3ds up to date on its software. Creating the various Clown sprite drawings was fun, I always liked working in those sorts of strict limitations. Then finally getting the injection to work and seeing my own art in game on real hardware felt surreal, something in this handheld game console I've had forever, on a game I loved for years has something I made in it. Even the process of getting all of this working, as tedious as it was moving game saves and getting color values just right, made this whole experience more special to me.

Something I figured while playing this as well as also from now having also played Dragon Warrior 1+2 and also currently Final Fantasy 5, I really love playing things on a handheld. Playing games on a handheld device has been so much more compelling of a thing to me than ever than playing on a proper TV/computer. The aspect of being able to just let the console sit on my desk and simply open and close it when interested made the feeling of investing myself into a game so much easier to approach. I want to just keep playing more old games on a handheld now, I'm already planning on other games to play and how I should definitely hack my Vita. My friends keep tempting me with one of those emulator handhelds and I don't even need one but they look really cool though.

I have so much respect for people who make fan works, hacks, and other unofficial projects it has been just amazing to see passion projects happen all the time in the gaming community. Playing this romhack that's been a years long, ongoing project in two different eras (2018 and then again in 2023) of it's existence has only further cemented my admiration. People wanting to be creative and open about their love for this form of art is such a wonderful thing to behold. These moments of creative passion being shared to everyone feels so important, reminding that the projects with the biggest budgets and names are not the end all be all of the medium, despite their desperation to be so. Thank you so much for wanting to share such lovely things with the world.

[clatterbane]

Pokemon Crystal Clear: An Open World Pokemon Game

What I'm currently messing around with, in an emulator on my phone. Good push to find new game diversions, with my laptop still out of commission. And, though I never actually owned any of the Game Boy devices? It is still somehow gratifying, having these now-ubiquitous handheld computers standing in for multiple decades-old devices that I couldn't afford at the time. The form factor is also pretty damned close to a Game Boy.

I never actually played the original Crystal before this either, for that matter.

(Decided to try Lemuroid right now, which will handle multiple systems from Sega Genesis to PSP. It's been great so far for GBC, at least. And I pretty much feel obligated to shill for what seem to be good FOSS projects, due to the person I am.)

At any rate, Crystal Clear has had years' worth of more updates since this video.

One source for the most recent pre-patched ROM:

The "color filter" version tries to simulate how it would look on original hardware, while the other shows the actual colors the devs were working with. I haven't compared them side by side to say much more.

[thetreyceratops]

Every single Pokémon I have used throughout a playthrough of Red, Blue, Yellow, two playthroughs of Crystal and two playthroughs of the ROM hack Crystal Clear, compiled together for no reason other than for fun. This is quite literally an army

[arsonwizard]

started playing pkmn crystal clear today and was absolutely delighted by the character customization screen and the fact that it even had one… then i saw it had a ‘none’ option for gender and was floored

[constructbreakdown]

Geisha sprite edit for Pokémon ROM hack Crystal Clear.

[myaphelion]

god i love crystal clear

[mothsbakery]

I don't think I ever posted the woodrow sprite I made for Pokemon crystal clear so here they are

I chose Eevee as their starter <3

[crabsinvideogames]

Pokémon Crystal Clear (Fan hack), Pokémon Gold / Pokémon Silver / Pokémon Crystal

Although Kingler initially appears in Kanto, in Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal, it primarily appears in Johto instead. They generally appear in the same locations as Krabby, although are more rare and require the Super Rod to be encountered.

These screenshots were taken in the fan hack Pokémon Crystal Clear. The information provided is true for the original releases, but may be different here. The Pokédex entry comes from Pokémon Crystal, and it's sprites appear in Pokémon Gold and Crystal. The only thing new to Crystal Clear is it's field sprite.

[soulspark]

[wishcloak]

[realmofshade]

It is summer 2001. You are playing Pokemon Crystal on the shiny red Gameboy Color you got for Christmas — your very own, not your brother's. Life is good.

...

It is 2023. You're playing the fanmade Pokemon Crystal Clear rom on a Gameboy Color you got for Christmas when you were young. There's an omnipresent hum — the sound chip is failing — but it doesn't matter. Life is good.

[rabbithub]

562 rats in about a day, and this fellow comes along! I used about 5 pokeballs on him, but finally, a reincarnation of the very first shiny I encountered is here with me! I'll stop for now to get ready for work, but I will try to hunt Cubone once I am home.

This fellow's nickname is a reference to Case Closed, BTW!