A PRIMER: WHAT IS POKEMON CRYSTAL?

well gee, smart guy, i don't know, what IS the most popular media franchise on the planet? i jest, of course. released in 2001, this was an extremely late Gameboy Color game, coming out a whole month after the Gameboy Advance launched in North America, and yet it still managed to sell nearly 2 million copies. when Nintendo tried to pull that stunt with Bowser's Inside Story on the 3DS, they got laughed off the stage and got so salty that an entire company shut itself down. what can i say? Pokemon sells.

compared to Gold and Silver, Crystal is generally considered to be the definitive edition. tons of new features and additions, such as being able to play as a girl (a feature every game where you get to name your character should have, might i mention) unique animations for every Pokemon, new events and areas, and even online support in the Japanese version. in this let's play, i'll be doing my best to show off every inch of Johto and Kanto, putting everything this game has to offer on stage for at least a bit.

now, why did i choose to play Crystal specifically? well, a number of reasons.

1.) after doing Jumping Flash!, i realized that action games are kind of hard to do in this format. since i have to be snapping so many screenshots, and the action is always moving in games like that, it made it surprisingly hard to capture all of the moments i wanted to get. so, for my next let's play, i knew i wanted to do a slower paced game, something like an RPG, and i felt Pokemon would be an excellent choice in that regard.

2.) it's fighting Pokemon X for my favorite game in the series. i personally find Crystal's visual style to be very striking, i love the music and locales you visit, i find the daily events to be really interesting and fun to seek out, and i really enjoy the abundance of extra content this game provides.

3.) Crystal is generally a little less popular compared to its adjacent games. people never shut the hell up about Red and Blue for whatever reason, and i think there's enough challenge runs and ROM hacks of the Generation 3 games to last through the apocalypse. not to say that either of these games are bad, i find the quaint simplicity of Red and Blue to be really fascinating in its own right, and Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald were all extremely formative games for me as a kid, and i've even dipped my toes into making a ROM hack myself. i just figured, if any game deserves a spotlight, it'd be Gen 2, and Crystal is the best of the litter from those three.

4.) why Crystal instead of the remakes, HeartGold/SoulSilver? uh, didn't you read what i just said? i like the specific atmosphere and looks of the original GBC versions of Gen 2 a lot more than the Gen 4 depiction. again, don't get me wrong, i think Gen 4 has an excellent visual style and really did a lot with the DS hardware. i just prefer the GBC version more.

i will be doing this let's play on the bgb Gameboy emulator, since that'll be the easiest way to capture the game. if you're at all concerned about piracy (for some reason...) i do own Pokemon Crystal, both in physical cartridge form and through the 3DS Virtual Console release. despite the theming of the page, i will be playing in English, if that was of concern. i personally just find the Japanese logo and boxart of Pokemon Crystal to look a lot better than the English ones, is all. also, Crystal is structured a lot differently than the last let's play, Jumping Flash!, so i've decided to revamp the system in which parts are organized. instead of being split up by worlds like Jumping Flash!, we'll be splitting the game up by Gym Badges, and each Gym Badge arc will have a table of contents, from which you can navigate to each individual part in that arc. i know that sounds a little complicated, but it'll make a lot more sense once you take a look. so without any further delay, let's get started! (you can begin reading by clicking the "Zephyr Badge" button up top, or alternatively by clicking the "Next" button at the bottom of this page. do whichever works best for you!)