Pokemon rom hacks are everywhere, from the awesome Light Platinum to the strange Moemon there are plenty of new experiences developed by fans of the original games. One of the more prominent hacks back in the day was Pokemon Brown, a hack of Pokemon Red. Now, that same team has created a new hack from Pokemon Crystal, known as Pokemon Prism version. We’ve covered Prism briefly when it was first announced and being played on the Twitch Plays Pokemon channel. Now, the team is ready for a full release, sending out the patch file for free for the holidays.
December 25th is the day, but according to the team’s Discord, they’re not sure what time. Created by hacker, Koolboyman, Pokemon Prism will be absolutely loaded with new content for the Gameboy Color game. Players will be able to customize their trainer, explore new areas, collect 20 total badges, and of course catch tons of Pokemon. The game will also run in full 60fps and the developers have even said it will run that smooth on the original system with flash cart support.
Presumably, the game will be released on the Pokemon Prism website, with more news flowing through the project’s Discord server.
While many fear for the project, due to the take-downs of Pokemon Uranium and Another Metroid 2 Remake, both of which were redacted from the Game Awards for Best Fan Game, Pokemon Prism may be able to avoid legal strife. All of their promotional material is prefaced with a plea to support official Pokemon games and media. Additionally, the file to be released will likely be a patch file, not the entire rom. Whether Nintendo takes similar legal action to Prism as they did for this year’s other fan games, is entirely up to the company. Also interesting to note, Prism has been openly in development for eight years.
Either way it will be interesting to see if Nintendo decides to comment on the existence of Prism, especially considering Pokemon Sun and Moon both released recently with the intent to be a big holiday seller.
All in all, Pokemon Prism looks to break the limitations of the Gameboy Color to bring a one of a kind adventure for Pokemon fans. I look forward to playing the full release by the end of the month. Until then, I’ll be continuing my journey through the Alola region with Inciniroar at my side.
