Pokemon Crystal

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Pokemon Crystal
(Game Boy Color)

Released:
Japan: December 14th, 2000
USA: July 30th, 2001 (MSRP $34.95)

This game will be one of the first to take advantage of the Mobile System GB, which allows people to use e-mail, download data, and play your game with other players. So think of it as the first on-line Pocket Monsters game. Just hook the adaptor to your Game Boy and the other end to a mobile phone or PHS (Personal Handheld System-think about Final Fantasy 7) and off you go!

But what about the game itself? It takes place a year after Gold/Silver. The game is said to be to Gold and Silver what Yellow is to Red, Blue, and Green. It's an enhanced version of Pokemon Gold and Silver. OK, but how is it advanced? Well, you have the network play thing, which lets you battle with people all over the world. In addition, during the battles, the pokemon each have their own animations! No longer will the pokemon be still images on the screen-they'll be animated in one way or another. Look at the picture below for a better idea.

You may have heard that when Gold and Silver were in developement, there would be an option to play as either a male trainer or a female trainer. Well, in the end product, you only got to play as the male trainer. It seems that Nintendo didn't forget about their female character, and judging from this picture below, you can choose to play as either the male hero from Gold/Silver or as the new female trainer. Perhaps this will affect other aspects of gameplay?

The game will be released in America soon, but NOA is scrapping the whole mobile phone option. This means that events like the recent Mobile Tournament that took place on May 15th, 2001 won't be available to Americans (or any other non-Asian country). For now, look at these two screenshots.

Approximate translations!
Left: "Using Mobile Adapter to communicate with your friend."
Right: "Which will you use to exchange with-Mobile or Cable?"

Special thanks to Japanime for the images of the Japanese boxes.

Pocket Monsters was not created by me. It was created by Satoshi Tajiri and the crew at TV-Tokyo. Pokemon is (c) Game Freak, Nintendo, 4Kids Productions, Hasbro, Bandai, and a ton of other companies. When you have a popular anime like Pokemon, lots of people own it so it's impossible to list every company who owns a piece of Pokemon. No infringement of copyrights is meant by the creation of the web site. All images were gotten from official websites (Nintendo, TV-Tokyo, etc.) unless otherwise noted (I don't steal images from other sites!).