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Trivia / Pokémon Gold and Silver

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Trivia for Gold, Silver, and Crystal:

  • Ascended Fanon: According to an interview with Game Freak developers, the Illex Forest shrine originally had no connection with Celebi during Gold and Silver's development and was purely put in for aesthetic value. However, after fan rumours spread that Celebi could be summoned at the shrine, it inspired them to create an event in Crystal where Celebi can be caught after using the GS Ball at the shrine.
  • Bad Export for You: The non-Japanese versions of Crystal remove all of its mobile network functionality, which was the game's biggest new feature. As a consequence of this, the Celebi event is also inaccessible in the international release; it would eventually be restored for the 3DS Virtual Console port. With its main selling point removed, Crystal contains, for the most part, only minor upgrades over Gold and Silver.
  • Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Youngster Joey is sometimes mistaken for being the trainer that says the infamous line "Hi! I like shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear!". This was actually the line of another Youngster trainer in Route 3 of Red and Blue, given the name Ben in their remakes. The confusion likely stems from them both having Rattata on their teams.
  • Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: For months prior to the official release of the game promotional materials referred to the Pokémon Marill as "Pikablu" likely due to its mouse-like appearance, the zig-zag tail that resembled Pikachu's lightning bolt tail and... well, the fact that it was blue. Marill was never officially referred to by this name at any point, not even during the planning stages. Despite this, the misnaming was so prevalent that even Topps used it in the Pokémon: The First Movie Trading Cards.
  • Development Gag: Certain generic Trainers in Japanese versions are named after the staff members. As well as Blackbelt Nob in the English release, named after dialogue translator Nob Ogasawara.
  • Dummied Out:
    • The Fuchsia City Safari Zone from Pokémon Red and Blue is present in the games, but it can only be entered by hacking or using a cheat device to reach an otherwise inaccessible warp tile in the walls of the old entrance building. While the entire area is mapped out, it's also been redesigned to only use up one room and there are no random encounter tables set up for the grass tiles, just the water tiles (and only for surfing).
    • The cave tileset contains mine carts and tracks that are never seen anywhere in the final game, but were used in the Spaceworld 1997 demo.
    • Cal, the default trainer in Viridian City's Trainer House, normally uses all fully evolved Johto starters at level 50, but has two unused teams: the unevolved starters at level 10 and the second stage starters at level 30. This may mean the Trainer House was once accessible earlier in the game and his team would get stronger as the player progressed.
    • Smoochum is programmed to be able to learn Lovely Kiss as an egg move in Gold and Silver, however for an egg move to be passed down the Pokémon's father must know the move, and Jynx cannot be male, while no other Pokémon it can be bred with can legitimately learn Lovely Kiss, meaning it's impossible to legitimately obtain a Smoochum with it. Crystal would address this by removing Lovely Kiss from Smoochum's egg movelist.
    • The Pokémon Communication Center, which replaced the Goldenrod City Pokémon Center in Japanese Crystal, still exists in English versions with all its text translated.
    • Crystal has unused and incomplete trade data that leads to obtaining Venusaur and Charizard. Because it's incomplete and in Japanese regardless of version, it'll cause glitched text if you hack it back in.
  • Feelies: The Pokéwalker is an item bundled with the games that resembles a Pokéball that you can put a Pokémon and walk along with in real life.
  • God Never Said That: Marill is very frequently treated as a Pikaclone by the fandom. While the parallels are there, Game Freak has never officially promoted Marill's line in that capacity, and the association is a leftover from the old "Pikablu" rumors.
  • Life Imitates Art: The games, first released in 1999, feature a maglev train running between Goldenrod City, the Pokémon world equivalent of Osaka, and Saffron City, the equivalent of Tokyo. Construction of the Chūō Shinkansen began in 2014, a maglev connecting Tokyo to Nagoya, with an extension to Osaka to follow.
  • No Export for You: The Japanese version of Pokémon Crystal had online features (the first in the series) that allowed players to trade, battle, and interact over long distance by connecting the game to real life mobile phones. These were removed from non-Asian versions versions due to mobile phones not being as prominent outside of Japan back then. The game also had a special event (also a first) that allowed players to catch Celebi. Since it was tied to the mobile phone feature, it was excluded from Western releases, rendering Celebi unobtainable in-game (although it was still distributed in official tournaments and events). Curiously, the Celebi event was completely excluded from the remakes, though was integrated into all versions of the game when released for the Virtual Console.
  • Recursive Adaptation: Cinnabar Island has been, from the start, said to be a volcano, but no such volcano is visible in the original games or any of the remakes. The anime made the volcano very visible, and even had the city's Gym situated inside it. Come these games, that volcano has erupted and destroyed the city during the Time Skip, and the eruption is very clearly shown to have originated from the point where the Gym once stood. A case of video game → anime → video game.
  • Serendipity Writes the Plot: The limited space of Game Boy Color cartridges is the reason for some of the changes in Kanto, specifically the various dungeons, routes, and buildings that were scaled down or made inaccessible in order to make everything fit. The game's plot was written in part to justify said changes when possible; Cinnabar Island's volcano erupted and destroyed the town, the Underground Path is closed due to vandalism and gang activity, Silph Co. isn't open to the public due to the events of Gen I, and the Safari Zone is closed because the warden is on vacation. HeartGold and SoulSilver restores most of the areas and their music, though Cinnabar Island is still destroyed and the Fuchsia City Safari Zone has been with replaced with the Pal Park.
  • Tribute to Fido: Hoothoot was inspired by a pet bird Ken Sugimori had as a child who would always stand on one leg.
  • Troubled Production: Working on Generation I was a cakewalk compared to Generation II.
    • For starters, Gold and Silver were originally developed as Game Boy games, with Super Game Boy compatibility and a set release date of "late 1997." Enough of the game was completed for a demo at Spaceworld 1997, and from hacking the leaked ROM of the demo, one can observe how much of a mess things were in this state. Hardly any of the gym leaders were programmed into the game, the Kanto region had been heavily distilled into a single map, and many other features were not anywhere close to completion. This, combined with the impending release of the Game Boy Color in 1998, forced Game Freak to delay the games to June 1999, something they didn't announce until March 1998, three months after the original release year lapsed.
    • Despite this, Game Freak still faced massive difficulties with getting the game properly programmed, due to them having a lot of ideas that they didn't really know what to do with, and due to them having to reprogram much of the graphics to be compatible with the Game Boy Color in addition to the Super Game Boy, with both of these factors pushing the release date further back to November 1999. Even then, the game was in such a sloppy state that it seemed unlikely that it could be released at all, but they managed to pull through, and Game Freak was finally able to release Gold and Silver on November 21, 1999 in Japan.
    • The sheer chaos of the games' development is highly unusual and a much-talked-about subject among analysts, as not only did it mark the only time Game Freak delayed a mainline Pokémon game, but it also marked one of the most dramatic revamps of a Pokémon game from the initial drafts to the final release. The delays in development are also notable in that they forced the staff behind the Pokémon anime to improvise around the games' constantly-shifting release date, creating the Orange Islands arc as filler to ensure that the show could still keep running during the roughly two-year gap between the intended and actual release dates.
  • What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
  • Word of God: According to Takeshi Shudō, who helped create Lugia, he considered it to be female. Though, like most legendries, it remained genderless.
  • Working Title: Pocket Monsters 2: Gold and Silver for Gold and Silver Versions; Pokémon X for Crystal Version.

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