In the past few hours, an anonymous user on 4chan posted screenshots of a presumed beta version of Pokemon Gold. Said leak displayed screenshots of unused Pokemon, and a beta titlescreen.

At approximately 3am EST, said leaker releases the ROM into the wild, and a team reveals that they were working on translating and bug fixing the aforementioned ROM. Coinciding with the leak, user Sanqui on Twitter releases a WIP spreadsheet containing all the data researched and documented by the team thus far:

[Tweet removed by @shaunj66 - contained copyrighted material]

SOURCE

 

[gumbyx84]

I have an EMS GB USB Smart card 64m. I did nothing with the roms but the gold one came pre-fixed.

Damn. Thanks for the reply. Can I assume there really isn't any difference between the ROMs besides the name on the title screen?

 

[Rioluwott]

How can you be so sure it isn't a romhack?

Well, i think its real because its well made and has some information we knew about the beta before it was released,its in japanese has debug mode and the fact that the rom isn't in full color coincides with the year this was made since the gameboy color wasnt released, its just my opinion since i dont know everything about this.
If this game is a romhack it would be a real good romhacker, also some beta designs seem interesting i hope we see a complete romhack that uses them.

 

[PolloDiablo]

Holy shit

Spoiler: Canavale City (Diamond / Pearl)

Spoiler: Snowpoint City (Diamond / Pearl)

 

[PrincessLillie]

It's always nice to see a new piece of game development history surface. I'm going to wait for the translation patch so I can actually understand the game, then I'll check this out and see what interesting features are in this that were scrapped in the final release.

 

[Sakitoshi]

Damn. Thanks for the reply. Can I assume there really isn't any difference between the ROMs besides the name on the title screen?

not sure, I haven't investigated for long enough to find differences. I don't think is a romhack of the gold one because on the title screen the last japanese letter say silver (銀) instead of gold (金).
both games work fine on vba and goomba color (although with some slowdowns) without having to edit anything.

 

[gumbyx84]

not sure, I haven't investigated for long enough to find differences. I don't think is a romhack of the gold one because on the title screen the last japanese letter say silver (銀) instead of gold (金).
both games work fine on vba and goomba color (although with some slowdowns) without having to edit anything.

Odd. I had to do the hex edit to get the Gold rom to work even on the two GB/GBC emulators I have on my phone (My OldBoy! and John's GBC Lite). Maybe the roms you downloaded were already modified? Either way I at least have the Gold rom working. I'd like to get the Silver prototype working as Silver is what I had back in the day.

 

[Rioluwott]

Odd. I had to do the hex edit to get the Gold rom to work. Maybe the roms you downloaded were already modified? Either way I at least have the Gold rom working. I'd like to get the Silver prototype working as Silver is what I had back in the day.

i heard the silver prototype isn't as complete as the gold prototype since they were going to show the gold one, so it may not work the same, just saying.
if the games had used everything in this beta pokemon would be so different,for better or worse.

 

[Deleted User]

Do we have a base stats list yet?
I'm particularly curious about how Animon stacks up against Ditto

 

[Rioluwott]

Do we have a base stats list yet?
I'm particularly curious about how Animon stacks up against Ditto

some pokemon have placeholder stats and i think animon is one of them
it would be good for animon to have a lot of hp so it would be better than ditto

 

[Stack3r]

Where’s a link to silver version?

 

[Deleted User]

some pokemon have placeholder stats and i think animon is one of them
it would be good for animon to have a lot of hp so it would be better than ditto

My guess is more HP and/or more speed. I'm also curious to whether it's meant to be an evolution or separate.

 

[Working_Goose]

There is already fan art going on, and man look at this cyute!

Seriously, why did they cut Rinrin? it's so cute!

Artist? Source?

 

[VinsCool]

Artist? Source?

It was originally posted there: https://twitter.com/AWDtwit/status/1002296588948029441?s=19

 

[Deleted User]

So, Giovanni and Misty are in the Elite 4? Might explain why the E4 didn't stop the TR invasion of Saffron city.
In game's pokemon league is just as corrupt as the IRL pokemon league AND Misty is in on it.

Guys, we need to beat Misty.

 

[Ryccardo]

Odd. I had to do the hex edit to get the Gold rom to work even on the two GB/GBC emulators I have on my phone (My OldBoy! and John's GBC Lite). Maybe the roms you downloaded were already modified? Either way I at least have the Gold rom working. I'd like to get the Silver prototype working as Silver is what I had back in the day.

Some emulators care about checksums, some like No$gmb warn but allow you to continue, some don't care at all

The weird thing is that the unfixed rom has a wrong header checksum (or so I read), meaning it would never have worked on real hardware?!

 

[RattletraPM]

Some emulators care about checksums, some like No$gmb warn but allow you to continue, some don't care at all

The weird thing is that the unfixed rom has a wrong header checksum (or so I read), meaning it would never have worked on real hardware?!

I could be wrong, but maybe that's because development hardware didn't check if checksums were correct. If so, it would be a bit like how modern consoles have different encryption keys for devkit and retail units, so if something accidentally leaks it won't be able to be run on retail hardware.

 

[lolboy]

Lol! Don't get me wrong I love Pokemon but the way some people react is pretty pathetic. People discussing this like it is some lost cure for big disease.
It's just a demo of Pokemon game...I have seen better romhacks.

 

[migles]

Some emulators care about checksums, some like No$gmb warn but allow you to continue, some don't care at all

The weird thing is that the unfixed rom has a wrong header checksum (or so I read), meaning it would never have worked on real hardware?!

funny, in my everdrive x7 the game doesn't work (when putting the game directly from the download)
but when i tried in the recomended emulator it showed the checksum error message and said "real hardware wouldn't care"

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Lol! Don't get me wrong I love Pokemon but the way some people react is pretty pathetic. People discussing this like it is some lost cure for big disease.
It's just a demo of Pokemon game...I have seen better romhacks.

it's not because it's pokemon. it would have the same reaction as if was a zelda or mario unlreleased demo
we are just happy and find interesting to see the process and changes that did go to build our favorite games from when we where kiddos, and its always interesting and cool to find theese stuff that everyone tought it was lost.
don't need to be so mean and offending people

 

[RattletraPM]

it's not because it's pokemon. it would have the same reaction as if was a zelda or mario unlreleased demo
we are just happy and find interesting to see the process and changes that did go to build our favorite games from when we where kiddos, and its always interesting and cool to find theese stuff that everyone tought it was lost.
don't need to be so mean and offending people

Not to mention that this is literally a piece of gaming history for so many reasons. For example, it showed us how Pokémon Gold/Silver would've looked like before Iwata's intervention.

 

[lolboy]

it's not because it's pokemon. it would have the same reaction as if was a zelda or mario unlreleased demo
we are just happy and find interesting to see the process and changes that did go to build our favorite games from when we where kiddos, and its always interesting and cool to find theese stuff that everyone tought it was lost.
don't need to be so mean and offending people

I still don't see the point? We are still talking about a "game". So what if the developers had change of mind? It will not effect us in anyway right now beside "aaah that pokemon should have stayed".
Even if it turned out to be an complete different game with mix of Digimon and Dragonball Z characters, it still would not effect our experience of Pokemon because we played the final version.