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Pokémon Gold Version[a] and Pokémon Silver Version[b] are 1999 role-playing video games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Color. They are the first installments in the second generation of the Pokémon video game series. They were released in Japan in 1999, Australia and North America in 2000, and Europe in 2001.
The games introduce 100 new species of Pokémon and follow the progress of the player character in their quest to master Pokémon battling. Both games are independent of each other but feature largely the same plot and, while both can be played separately, it is necessary to trade between these games and their predecessors in order to fully complete each games' Pokédex. The Johto Saga of the Pokémon anime is based on the new region introduced in the games.
Pokémon Gold and Silver were critically acclaimed upon release. They are considered by some to be the best games in the entire series,[2][3][4] as well as some of the most significant games of the fifth generation of video game consoles. They continued the enormous success of Pokémon Red and Blue as Pokémon began to form into a multi-billion dollar franchise. The games almost matched the sales of Red and Blue, and by 2010 had gone on to sell over 23 million units making them the best-selling games for the Game Boy Color and the third-best-selling for the Game Boy family of systems.[5]
In 2009, on the 10th anniversary of Gold and Silver, remakestitled Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver were released for the Nintendo DS.
gameplay
Like previous installments, Pokémon Gold and Silver are played from a third-person, top-down perspective, with players directly navigating the protagonist around the fictional universe, interacting with objects and people. As the player explores this world, they will encounter different terrains, such as grassy fields, forests, caves, and seas in which different Pokémon species reside. As the player randomly encounters one of these creatures, the field switches to a turn-based "battle scene", where the Pokémon will fight.[6]
There are two main goals within the games: following through the main storyline and defeating the Elite Four and Pokémon Master Lance to become the new Champion,[7] and completing the Pokédex by capturing, evolving, and trading to obtain all 251 creatures. A major aspect of this is developing and raising the player's Pokémon by battling other Pokémon, which can be found in the wild or owned by other Trainers. This system of accumulating experience points (EXP) and leveling up, characteristic and integral to all Pokémon video games, controls the physical properties of the Pokémon, such as the battle statistics acquired, and the moves learned.[8]
new features
While Pokémon Gold and Silver retain the basic mechanics of capturing, battling, and evolving introduced in Pokémon Red and Blue, new features were added. A time system was introduced using a real-time internal clock that keeps track of the current time and day of the week. Certain events, including Pokémon appearances, are influenced by this feature.[6] New items were added, with some designed to exploit a new mechanic: Pokémon being able to hold items.[9] A new type of item able to be held was the berry, which comes in varieties and can restore health or cure status effects. Other held items can give boosts to the Pokémon during battle. More specialized Poké Balls were introduced, which make Pokémon catching easier in certain situations.[10] A new item called the Pokégear[c] was introduced, functioning as a watch, map, radio, and phone, allowing the player to call other characters who offer their phone number. Trainers will call for a rematch and others will call about rare Pokémon that can be caught in a certain area.[11]
The games introduce Raikou, Entei, and Suicune, some new types of legendary Pokémon that wander around Johto, changing locations frequently.[12] They can be tracked by the Pokédex once encountered, and will always attempt to flee, but will retain HP loss. In addition, there is the possibility of encountering a shiny Pokémon, which have a different coloration than normal Pokémon of their species, and appear very rarely.[13]Two new Pokémon types were added, the Steel-type and the Dark-type.[14] Steel-type Pokémon are immune to Poison-type moves, and they have very high defense and resistance to other types, while Dark-type Pokémon are immune to Psychic-type moves and are strong against Psychic-type Pokémon (which provides an offensive strategy, formerly absent against Psychic-types), as well as having few weaknesses.[8] In Gold and Silver, new moves were added, but Pokémon knowing these moves are not allowed to be traded to the first generation games. To solve this, a move deleter was introduced, capable of erasing moves known by the Pokémon. Another major change was the splitting of the "Special" stat into "Special Attack" and "Special Defense", which increased aspects of strategy.[8]
With the introduction of Pokémon breeding, Pokémon are assigned to one or two breeding groups. When a male and female Pokémon that share at least one breeding group are left at a Pokémon Daycare, they may produce an egg, which will hatch into a young Pokémon.[15] The young Pokémon will inherit the species of its mother, and moves from its father. However, legendary and mythical Pokémon, among certain other species, cannot breed.[16]
Plot
Setting
Pokémon Gold and Silver are set in the region of Johto, situated to the west of the Kanto region from the previous Red and Blue games, and three years after the conclusion of the previous games. The design of Johto was inspired by Japan's Kansai and Tōkai regions, with many of the region's temples and more traditional Japanese aesthetics finding their way into Johto.[17]
Story
As with the previous games, the player character receives his first Pokémon, a choice between Chikorita, Cyndaquil, and Totodile, from the region's local Pokémon scientist, Professor Elm, and then begins his journey to win the eight Gym Badges of the Johto region and then challenge the Elite Four and Champion to become the region's new Pokémon Master.[14] Opposing him is his mysterious rival, a boy who stole one of the other Pokémon from Professor Elm and regularly challenges the player to test his strengths.[11] The player also encounters the villainous Team Rocket, having reunited to seek out their previous leader Giovanni to return the group to their former glory.[10] Eventually, the player thwarts Team Rocket once and for all and defeats the Elite Four and Champion of the Pokémon League on Indigo Plateau. The player can then travel to the Kanto region from the previous games and challenge the Gym Leaders there, discovering how much has changed in the three years following the events of Red and Blue. For example, Cinnabar Island has been almost completely taken over by a volcano eruption; only a Pokémon Center remains. [18] After defeating the Kanto region's Gym Leaders, the player is allowed to enter the treacherous Mt. Silver area, home to very powerful Pokémon. Deep within Mt. Silver's caves is Red, the protagonist of Red and Blue, whom the player can challenge for the most difficult battle in the game.
Development
Gold and Silver were first publicly showcased at November 1997, Nintendo Space World Expo in Japan, becoming the most popular exhibit at the program. Unlike the previous game in the series, Pokémon Yellow, the new titles were announced to be more than a small upgrade to Pokémon Red and Blue. Instead, they would feature a new storyline, a new world, and new species of Pokémon. Gold and Silver were designed for the Game Boy Color, allowing them full color support and more detailed sprites. Other additions that were shown included Pokémon breeding, held items, an in-game gadget known as the PokéGear, a real-time internal clock, and backward compatibility with the previous games in the series.[20]
During an ABC News interview, president of Creatures Inc. Tsunekazu Ishihara gave insight into the brainstorming process for developing new Pokémon species. He explained, "The ideas for each of these monsters came from the imagination of the software developers at Game Freak who get these ideas from their childhood experiences, including from reading manga, a style of Japanese comic books. Ideas come from scary experiences they had as kids, catching insects, and so forth. So from these experiences in childhood, these ideas for Pokémon came out".[21] In the same vein as the Pokémon Mew of Red and Blue, the exclusive Pokémon Celebi was included in the Gold and Silver games but is only accessible after attending a Nintendo promotional event. The first official event offering Celebi was Nintendo Space World 2000 in Japan, in which 100,000 attendees would be awarded the rare Pokémon. In order to be selected, players had to send in a postcard to enter a lottery for one of 100,000 certificates of Celebi, allowing them to enter the event and obtain it.[22]
Ishihara stated that Gold and Silver started development right after Pokémon Red and Green were released in Japan. The original intention was to release the game in 1998, even synchronizing with the supposed end of the anime's first season. Development issues, worsened by Game Freak being sidetracked with Pokémon Stadium and the localization of the first generation, led the game to be postponed, and the original release slate was taken over by Pokémon Yellow. Programmer Shigeki Morimoto stated that part of why development took three and a half years was due to being a small team of only four programmers. Satoru Iwata, then the president of HAL Laboratory who would later become Nintendo's CEO, helped the team by developing new tools for compressing the Pokémon graphic code.[23]
audio
Junichi Masuda composed his music on an Amiga computer, presumably in a music tracker format, converted to MIDI data and converted again to the Game Boy Color.[24]
Unused Pokémon leak
In 2018, ROM images of the early-in-development Japanese-language demo shown during the 1997 Nintendo Space World presentation resurfaced: two debug versions of the games, and two versions that were modified to work on normal Game Boy hardware and most emulators.[25] These ROM images were only rumored to exist until they were anonymously posted on the "Pokémon Reverse Engineering Tools" (PRET) Discord server in May 2018.[26] The demo was quickly shared with members of the website The Cutting Room Floor. The ROMs were analyzed and translated, and The Cutting Room Floor went on to release a spreadsheet containing all the information they had discovered, which includes a list of Pokémon species, Pokémon "moves", items, non-playable characters, maps, and music. The ROMs were first released anonymously onto 4chan's /vp/ board in May,[27] with a formal The Cutting Room Floor release coming later that day. The demo has a larger world map than the final game (which itself is based on the entire Japanese archipelago, unlike the final region, which is based on the Kansai region of Japan), and includes around 100 unused and changed Pokémon designs.[25]
Earlier in May 2018, Pokémon artist Atsuko Nishida revealed that the popular creature Pikachu was originally supposed to have a third evolution, named "Gorochu".[28] Additionally, Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri has revealed four unused designs that would have been included in the original Pokémon games.[29]
While cut content is not uncommon in video games, the volume of cut content in the Gold and Silver demo has been described as "overwhelming". Matthew Byrd, writing for Den of Geek, stated that a lot of design work had gone into the Pokémon that were eventually cut, suggesting that Game Freak might have taken them out during the testing phase due to balance issues.[30]
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