This OT has been replaced by one provided by user ERAsaur, who contributed to the community effort in analyzing the leaked prototype.
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Important Note: We do not discuss how to obtain or distribute ROMs on Era. Don't make the mods do more work than they have to.
Well, hell reached a brisk 5 degrees this month and cats and dogs finally put aside their differences: the famous Gold and Silver demo actually surfaced online! And it had debug options!
![53AEljM.png]](https://i.imgur.com/53AEljM.png])
For 21 years this thing has eluded everyone, the only remnants of it being a few blog posts, offscreen pictures, VHS footage, and fanart. Well, here it is in all its glory. I personally spent 15 of those years studying every little bit of footage and info trying to piece together what might have been in there, and I was actually right about a few things!
So enough talking, I know what you want to see. Every Pokemon sprite in the game:
This game may have been based on Blue JP, the same game that became our Red and Blue. There's a lot of sprite reusage but you'll notice a few differences. Fun fact, the Pikachu, Chansey, and Mew sprites were used elsewhere first; the first two being in the Game Boy Camera and the latter being used in the Mew distribution ROM in Japan years ago.
The names of these unused Pokemon? Glad you asked!
Soooo… yeah. A lot of changes were made before the final. There's even some cameos from later generations in there!
Next up: the region.
It appears that Game Freak wanted most of Japan to be the region in Gen 2 originally. This map is huge compared to the real-life ground the final Johto covers. You might be thinking "Well if that was so big, why did they have problems putting Kanto in the game?"
Well…
That town in the bottom right? That's Kanto.
...
I'm not kidding. That's Kanto. It's condensed into one town in what I presume was a fit of madness.
Most of the region is unfinished. There's a slight difference between the two, a town in the lower left on the Town Map is missing and the Town Map is missing the dead trees route. There's routes that are very visibly in a rough draft stage, most non-demo related NPC text is missing, no cave entrances work, about half of the collision data is missing, and only the right half has working tall grass (the stuff on the left side blocks normal walking permissions). Several warps are weird as well, most notably the gyms' 2F that have a doormat but can only be left via an invisible staircase. The train was also completely missing, it seems instead they opted for a boat system.
You can re-enable the nonfunctional grass by starting in the Silent Hills, Route 15, or Route 18 tileset, skipping the loadzones in the gates to keep that tileset, and then going to your route of choice. I discovered this while goofing off and moving South's tileset to Kanto. I noticed that the grass in the surrounding routes no longer worked and then did as I described up there. Yup, it worked, I got half the region working again because I was a dumbass.
Because of this, we can now guess the order of progression, Here is my personal theory (that will be disproved later):
The demo appears to have some edits done to the world map. That large mountain above Silent Hills shouldn't be there and the "forest" area in the demo itself was added at the very end of the Warp list, implying it was made special for this (and considering how unreadable the entrance is, not surprising).
It's here, should you play.
Trainers are mostly unfinished, several of them use Gen 1 sprites as placeholders, but there are some very interesting associated names with them:
Click to expand...
In order from left to right:
One final note, there is actually a way to restore the game's original intro and a patch to do so may be releasing soon.
The protagonist's brother (named Ken) makes an appearance, ending the rumors that Gold's brother was Red. You get an email from Professor Oak telling you to go to his lab, then your rival approaches you outside your house and asks you for what you call your mother (this was semi-unused in the final game, it's used to prevent the Old Man glitch by storing names during Dude's catching tutorial). You walk into the grass and Green stops you, bringing you to the lab like his grandfather did years prior. Green and Oak ask if you two want your starters, and then Oak takes you into the back room where the starters are located. You leave, talk to Green, and then Oak gives you and your rival Pokedexes. Your rival challenges you and unfortunately his team is missing so he challenges you with either garbage or things meant for demo trainers. If you somehow manage to beat him, you leave and your mother gives you 6 Pokeballs and the Pokegear. The script ends here and you're left with the normal demo again.
So, yeah. I'm still reeling from this. 15 years I've been researching this thing and here it is. I'm very glad I was on the team during this and I even made a few discoveries myself (the non-demo wild grass, the Blue=Red connection, Sunny's backsprite having the shiny animation hardcoded in, and Hoothoot having the early footage fade-in effect hardcoded in). Enjoy!
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End of ERAsaur's OP
---
The The Cutting Room Floor page for this prototype can be found here
The spreadsheet containing all information about the prototype uncovered so far can be found here
SGB color sprites:
An album containing map rips of interior locations in the demo:
https://imgur.com/a/dDwqHlk
---
Important Note: We do not discuss how to obtain or distribute ROMs on Era. Don't make the mods do more work than they have to.
Well, hell reached a brisk 5 degrees this month and cats and dogs finally put aside their differences: the famous Gold and Silver demo actually surfaced online! And it had debug options!
For 21 years this thing has eluded everyone, the only remnants of it being a few blog posts, offscreen pictures, VHS footage, and fanart. Well, here it is in all its glory. I personally spent 15 of those years studying every little bit of footage and info trying to piece together what might have been in there, and I was actually right about a few things!
So enough talking, I know what you want to see. Every Pokemon sprite in the game:
This game may have been based on Blue JP, the same game that became our Red and Blue. There's a lot of sprite reusage but you'll notice a few differences. Fun fact, the Pikachu, Chansey, and Mew sprites were used elsewhere first; the first two being in the Game Boy Camera and the latter being used in the Mew distribution ROM in Japan years ago.
The names of these unused Pokemon? Glad you asked!
Soooo… yeah. A lot of changes were made before the final. There's even some cameos from later generations in there!
Next up: the region.
It appears that Game Freak wanted most of Japan to be the region in Gen 2 originally. This map is huge compared to the real-life ground the final Johto covers. You might be thinking "Well if that was so big, why did they have problems putting Kanto in the game?"
Well…
That town in the bottom right? That's Kanto.
...
I'm not kidding. That's Kanto. It's condensed into one town in what I presume was a fit of madness.
Most of the region is unfinished. There's a slight difference between the two, a town in the lower left on the Town Map is missing and the Town Map is missing the dead trees route. There's routes that are very visibly in a rough draft stage, most non-demo related NPC text is missing, no cave entrances work, about half of the collision data is missing, and only the right half has working tall grass (the stuff on the left side blocks normal walking permissions). Several warps are weird as well, most notably the gyms' 2F that have a doormat but can only be left via an invisible staircase. The train was also completely missing, it seems instead they opted for a boat system.
You can re-enable the nonfunctional grass by starting in the Silent Hills, Route 15, or Route 18 tileset, skipping the loadzones in the gates to keep that tileset, and then going to your route of choice. I discovered this while goofing off and moving South's tileset to Kanto. I noticed that the grass in the surrounding routes no longer worked and then did as I described up there. Yup, it worked, I got half the region working again because I was a dumbass.
Because of this, we can now guess the order of progression, Here is my personal theory (that will be disproved later):
The demo appears to have some edits done to the world map. That large mountain above Silent Hills shouldn't be there and the "forest" area in the demo itself was added at the very end of the Warp list, implying it was made special for this (and considering how unreadable the entrance is, not surprising).
It's here, should you play.
Trainers are mostly unfinished, several of them use Gen 1 sprites as placeholders, but there are some very interesting associated names with them:
Click to expand...
In order from left to right:
One final note, there is actually a way to restore the game's original intro and a patch to do so may be releasing soon.
The protagonist's brother (named Ken) makes an appearance, ending the rumors that Gold's brother was Red. You get an email from Professor Oak telling you to go to his lab, then your rival approaches you outside your house and asks you for what you call your mother (this was semi-unused in the final game, it's used to prevent the Old Man glitch by storing names during Dude's catching tutorial). You walk into the grass and Green stops you, bringing you to the lab like his grandfather did years prior. Green and Oak ask if you two want your starters, and then Oak takes you into the back room where the starters are located. You leave, talk to Green, and then Oak gives you and your rival Pokedexes. Your rival challenges you and unfortunately his team is missing so he challenges you with either garbage or things meant for demo trainers. If you somehow manage to beat him, you leave and your mother gives you 6 Pokeballs and the Pokegear. The script ends here and you're left with the normal demo again.
So, yeah. I'm still reeling from this. 15 years I've been researching this thing and here it is. I'm very glad I was on the team during this and I even made a few discoveries myself (the non-demo wild grass, the Blue=Red connection, Sunny's backsprite having the shiny animation hardcoded in, and Hoothoot having the early footage fade-in effect hardcoded in). Enjoy!
---
End of ERAsaur's OP
---
The The Cutting Room Floor page for this prototype can be found here
The spreadsheet containing all information about the prototype uncovered so far can be found here
SGB color sprites:
An album containing map rips of interior locations in the demo:
https://imgur.com/a/dDwqHlk
Last edited:
