Pokémon Crystal Gets VC Release

[Cecillia]

Today an official announcement was made for a 3DS Virtual Console release of Pokémon Crystal. This means that Pokémon from all main-series games can be legitimately transferred to the latest games. Back when Pokemon transitioned onto the Gameboy Advance system, Pokémon from Gen 1 and Gen 2 cartridges weren't legitimately obtainable (via transfer) due to limitations in the link cable design. The release on the 3DS Virtual Console will take place on January the 26th, 2018. In Europe there will be a physical release with the download code in the box, while in Japan there will be a physical release with a magnet based on Crystal's Cartridge, a poster with all the Pokémon released in gen 2 and with a gen 2 type compatibility chart, stickers, and also a download code. There is also a separate download code available in Japan.

The Japanese version holds the possibility to get the GS ball in Goldenrod City's Pokémon Communication Center, but only after beating the Elite Four. For Europe and America releases, while the English trailer announced that players will be able to encounter Celebi, there is no hard confirmation detailing whether it will be done via the GS ball at this point.

We first found out that Pokémon Crystal would likely get a Virtual Console release, as patches supporting Pokémon Crystal was found bundled together with Virtual Console's Pokémon Gold and Silver, as discovered by our well known member @SciresM (tweets as seen below). Later, when Poké Transporter got updated for Gold and Silver support, he discovered that Poké Transporter also preemptively supports Crystal, despite it being unreleased at that point.


SciresM's tweets: 

Video:

Sources:
https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/pokemon-crystal-shines-on-virtual-console/
http://www.pokemon.co.jp/ex/VCCR/?top_main002=msign
http://www.pokemon.co.jp/ex/VCCR/171214_03/

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[Holla!]

Shiny Celebi...Finally? :DD

[wrathsoffire76]

Hey, did anybody notice this?

The Unown in the top corners spell out "Sun" and "Moon"

[mrmikeryan]

5 minutes ago, wrathsoffire76 said:

Hey, did anybody notice this?

The Unown in the top corners spell out "Sun" and "Moon"

That's pretty clever, I missed that!

[mrmikeryan]

1 hour ago, Holla! said:

Shiny Celebi...Finally? :DD

Is this the first chance at shiny Celebi?  Well, first chance...in a really long time?

[Holla!]

7 minutes ago, mrmikeryan said:

Is this the first chance at shiny Celebi?  Well, first chance...in a really long time?

Likely so!

[theSLAYER]

Yeah it appears they'll patch the game to give away the GS ball upon becoming Champion.

After all, IIRC for the international games, the GS event was translated and the routine where nurse will walk down to give you the ball was actually in the game (just unused). So this patch wouldn't be too hard to do and hopefully wouldn't glitch up the game (well, VC patches works like a ram hack/gameshark code after all)

I certainly do hope that they keep the DVs generation for Celebi intact, and don't force a all 15 DV Celebi on us.

(then again, the Mew event was supposed to be all 15DVs, but they still allowed a shiny one to be transferred up, so who knows...)

[theSLAYER]

10 minutes ago, ajxpk said:

Yeah. In the Japanese Version it's the RAM Offset 0xA000 which has to be set to 0x0B. It is basically where the Pokémon News Data is stored. (Bank 6 IIRC)

In the English version it has been removed, or maybe it's unused, I can't really remember... (been a while since I studied the asm...)

But at least the GS Ball Script is still there and its Activation flag has been shifted to the Offset 0xBE3C. It's also activated with 0x0B and works identical. 

" For the localized versions, which don't have the Pokemon Mobile System GB, the GS Ball event got reprogrammed and adapted to the regular Pokémon Center, however no such event was ever held overseas. This event can be activated by setting the byte at 0xBE3C in an English save file to 0x0B. Interesting enough, the event was fully translated, despite being not accessible through normal gameplay. "

https://tcrf.net/Pokémon_Crystal#GS_Ball_Event

edit:
video showing the event and the full translated text

 

[Hozu]

So if Crystal is already supported by Bank, does that mean a Celebi from the GS ball event can be transferred? I'm guessing people already tried to transfer a Celebi and failed... but I wonder if someone tried properly setting the two caught data bytes in the mon data used only by mons from Crystal?

Edit: wow, I haven't been on here in so long, I never noticed the avatars are now all forced into squares. Ruined my avatar.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Hozu

[theSLAYER]

14 minutes ago, Hozu said:

So if Crystal is already supported by Bank, does that mean a Celebi from the GS ball event can be transferred? I'm guessing people already tried to transfer a Celebi and failed... but I wonder if someone tried properly setting the two caught data bytes in the mon data used only by mons from Crystal?

I've tried sending up a Celebi (captured on Crystal on emulator) and it didn't work at this point.
They'll probably add support for the Celebi later on..

[JISN[064]]

In my very honest opinion... I wish Celebi keeps its shiny lock ...

 

IDK why u.u pls don't hate me

[Deoxyz]

I'm quite excited that we are(likely) finally able to get a legal shiny Celebi, one of the few pokemon that can never be obtained as shiny(not counting those long stuck in Japanese Gen II saves). Though it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to force it to be non-shiny, but idk how much they'd actually care to put in the effort of patching in set IVs for the encounter. Which also makes me wonder if the GS Ball event trigger will be done by a patch, or an actual hard edit to the rom.

Another part of this that's exciting is that for the second time, like Deoxys in ORAS, another mythical pokemon will now be permanently obtainable at any time just by owning the game, without needing to wait for a distribution. I always hoped we'd get more scenarios like that. Sure some people may not like "rarity" being devalued, but I always go back thinking about myself as a kid frustrated that I couldn't get certain pokemon. Even if it's easier these days, lots of people still miss out simply by not being aware at the right time.

[Invader TAK]

4 hours ago, Deoxyz said:

I'm quite excited that we are(likely) finally able to get a legal shiny Celebi, one of the few pokemon that can never be obtained as shiny(not counting those long stuck in Japanese Gen II saves). Though it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to force it to be non-shiny, but idk how much they'd actually care to put in the effort of patching in set IVs for the encounter. Which also makes me wonder if the GS Ball event trigger will be done by a patch, or an actual hard edit to the rom.

Another part of this that's exciting is that for the second time, like Deoxys in ORAS, another mythical pokemon will now be permanently obtainable at any time just by owning the game, without needing to wait for a distribution. I always hoped we'd get more scenarios like that. Sure some people may not like "rarity" being devalued, but I always go back thinking about myself as a kid frustrated that I couldn't get certain pokemon. Even if it's easier these days, lots of people still miss out simply by not being aware at the right time.

Yeah, I doubt they'd bother shiny locking this Celebi. I mean, there's a chance they could, but I get the feeling they're just gonna patch in the GS Ball event and call it a day.

[theSLAYER]

It feels like it'll be a soft edit, as per any of the other patches.
A hard edit would require modifying the rom, and that could easily introduce other glitches (and even for all the attack animations and Jynx's colors, those were soft edits)

Plus, it's pretty easy to patch the GS ball event to run. Traiver did that, by modifying the presently unreleased Crystal Patches found bundled in GS.

Also, it appears that it is normal for them to change the bundled patches found in the games.

It appears that the Korean Trade patch found in ENG GS, is different from the actual Korean Trade patch in KOR GS.

[Lum]

Unless Celebi is a spectacular botch job, I'll be happy. Recall VC Gen 1 Mew was never released in the US.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Lum

[theSLAYER]

13 minutes ago, Lum said:

Recall VC Gen 1 Mew was never released in the US.

Not that it was much better in Europe; had to win some absurd low chance lucky draw to go to the SM launch event.

In Japan, the one on VC was only given away if you:
1. Purchase the limited edition clear 2DS
2. Bring the ticket to a Pokemon Center, and get it via trade.

[Sabresite]

Most likely they will modify one of the stats like speed to always 15, or all of them.

[theSLAYER]

1 hour ago, Sabresite said:

Most likely they will modify one of the stats like speed to always 15, or all of them.

they could easily make transporter convert 5 IVs to be guaranteed 31 IVs (eg VC Mew),
assuming they aren't interested in Shiny locking it..

[Guest]

On 12/15/2017 at 1:37 PM, theSLAYER said:

It feels like it'll be a soft edit, as per any of the other patches.
A hard edit would require modifying the rom, and that could easily introduce other glitches (and even for all the attack animations and Jynx's colors, those were soft edits)

It's really just a 1 byte edit to the rom from 0B to 00 (and another byte if they'd bother fixing the checksum.) A byte which is never used for anything else.

https://hax.iimarckus.org/post/45865/#p45865

Would be the same process for the Japanese version, just with a different offset.

Unless they want to make defeating Red/having all badges a requirement, in which case this wouldn't be ideal and they'd need bigger edits, I guess...

Edited December 16, 2017 by Guest

[St. GIGA]

Here is a patch for v1.0 crystal which I made that improves it. It works on vc.

PokemonBrainCrystalClockFixStoneMart.ips

The patch is an mbc5-based romhack that makes the clock changeable and static until reset, adds in 400 songs from newer and older titles, adds items into the department stores, adds a port of voltorb flip, restores a partial pcc, adds in a lighter safari zone to symbolize closure, with SOME version exclusives present, restores a gameplay hint found in the unused olivine city house, and more. I have made it out of multiple patches, and it is functional enough to play. It uses Armada's Pokemon Crystal Restored Hack, Froggestspirit's Crystal Complete hack, a comprehensive capture mechanics fix, two different patches to allow time change, and a patch which allows purchase of evolutionary stones in department stores. I also restored the beta sgb border from Japanese gold for use in KiGB and VBA-rr-SVN-480. It is fully save-compatible with English crystal saves and stadium 2, (minus gb tower) and it is mapper-compatible with pokemon pinball and TCG gbc games, as well as all European language releases of Yellow (including English) and All European, Non-English releases of Red and Blue. (AKA MBC5, but 32KiB of SRAM/compatible FRAM, along with 4MiB of EPRom is needed to make the game physical without vc to be able to use pokemon mini support.) The only thing you cannot do is set GB Printer darkness which is set at maximum due to aging paper.

Edited December 17, 2017 by St. GIGA
Details of hack.

[FerozElMejor]

Then, the Pokémon Crystal version that was on the VC of Gold and Silver didn't had the Celebi patch? Did anyone researched it?

[St. GIGA]

I dumped my NTSC-U VC Gold, and I checked the patch in Notepad++, and it does NOT appear to patch that Compare value from 0b to 00, so it does NOT appear to patch the event. It was Travingel who used @Ammako's value over on skeentendo in his fork of Nintendo's Leaked crystal patches. I think Nintendo may be borrowing the code using their legal rights. They may also be patching in the news/servers for JPN versions.

[St. GIGA]

Don't even get me started on Zeraora. It is meant JUST to appease Digimon and Furry fanbases. (Not that there is anything wrong with that, but again Nintendo, it is an E rated game. Yes, gen one players are adults now, and want fan service, but as SM proved, you ARE a KID's company. Yes, the pokedex had issues, but you yourselves fixed that... Then again, most furries ARE kids... Who like pokemon a bit TOO much...) Still, Nintendo, if you are reading this, please continue your distribution plans,  but do it at a Crystal launch party??? 

Literally one hour after hearing of the USUM leak, googling just the word zeraora with nothing else in the bar in bing under MY settings scarred me for life... In conclusion, fan service is never needed because fans can make their own fan service versions of fan works before official works surface.

Eeek! Fans are crazy.

PokemonBrainCrystalClockFixStoneMart.ips

[theSLAYER]

@St. GIGA speaking of Zeraora being digimon/sonic fan service, isn't that kinda like how Marshadow is to appeal to Yokai watch fans? (And Subjectively, Hoopa too)

In any case, the entire Zeraora talk is off-topic.(heck, anything movie related and isn't crystal related is effectively off-topic)

while I like that you're trying to help with the Crystal patch, everything other content is effectively off-topic ><

(movie stuff should go to the movie thread)

[JISN[064]]

so ... is the Celeby shiny locked?? ;o