Game preservation is one of the most important things I write about here at Retro Dodo. If we don't keep the games of the past alive for future generations, then there's a chance that they could fade into obscurity, never to be seen again. That's especially so with companies like Sony trying to ditch physical media forever!
There's now a project in place to translate the Pokémon Gold and Silver demos from Spaceworld 1997 into English led by MD Travis, allowing people outside of Japan to experience these games. I don't know whether you've seen the demos before, but they're quite different to what the games ended up being like, making them a little slice of Pokémon history that we need to make sure is experienced by as many people as possible. There's also the unused Fire-starter Pokémon Honooguma, which remains a piece of Pokémon mystery lore to this day.
One thing I love about this project is that right at the top of the official page there's a message that says 'No AI was used in the making of this project! All human-made.' That's the kind of project we can get behind - real people using their skills in the rero space
So far, MD Travis and their team have got a fully translated demo mode for the games with fully translated battles. There's also a work-in-progress translation of the Story Mode for the game in a separate patch with a debug mode.
To get these translated versions of the Spaceworld demos, you'll need to patch the mods onto the unmodded debug versions of the original demos from 1997, not ROMs of Pokémon Gold and Silver that you might already be playing. These are:
- Gold Version (SHA-1 b1d7539a87dea81b2cff6146afaad64470d08d84)
- Silver Version (SHA-1 4c576dd4671bb1fe36c5e6d76c8909f98d739667)
Head to PokeCommunity for more information!
