Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal GBC ROM
Hack Name: Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal
Hack Original: Pokemon Crystal
Language: English
Hack Original: Pokemon Crystal
Language: English
Info
Pocket Monsters: Crystal Version is a bootlegged cartridge of the Japanese version of Pokémon Crystal Version for the GBA. The publishers of this counterfeit title as well as its exact release date are both unknown, but it most likely went into circulation around 2001 as the Japanese release of the official game was December 14, 2000. Since its rise to popularity on the internet, it has become better known as Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal due to the circulation of the cartridges in Vietnam.
What makes this game so popular compared to other Pokémon bootlegs is its translation. As mentioned before, this game is a pirate of the Japanese Pocket Monsters: Crystal Version, but it was not marketed towards Japanese audiences; it was translated to English—and rather poorly, one might add.
What likely happened with this game was that it was translated from its original Japanese script to Chinese by one of the bootleggers, who were most likely natives of China, Taiwan, or another Chinese-speaking region, and then translated from Chinese to English by another member of the bootlegging team, as there were likely very few people available where they lived who knew Japanese, Chinese and English.
Because of being translated twice, and by translators with far less technical ability than The Pokémon Company's official translation staff, the script in many cases is far less coherent than the official translations. Romanizations of Chinese transliterations of Japanese names can be found among the translated text, certain words are misspelled (such as Lmaonade) and all alphabetic characters are upper-case.
Additionally, the translation created numerous bugs in the game, such as being near impossible to enter the Bug-Catching Contest without the game crashing or soft resetting. The use of certain moves will also crash the game.
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