Official GSC Programming & Beta Glitch Thread

[deoxysdude94]

I think beta town 3 was supposed to be Ecruteak city. Look at the shape of the tower, and it looks similar to the beta Ecruteak.

 

[Skarm-Flier]

de en onkwo gii en GSC peda pada pda am

Translation : There are lots of glitch in GSC , not list en.........

 

[AbbieA]

you can actually get to the PCC...http://www.serebii.net/crystal/pcc.shtml

 

[Operate170]

I think that the 2nd strange picture is viridian forest, because that was not added to Kanto in G/S/C.

 

[mack56key]

hey can found about the third tower in beta town 3.... If you found the ans so post here..

 

[Chippy2000]

Strange Map 1 is the Demo Forest from Spaceworld '97. No doubt about it. From descriptions of the demo, you do apparently go through a forest before facing Silver at an entrance to a cave by a Pokemon Center. This fits the bill.

As for the 5 caves, all but one seem to have a bad tileset, or the tileset was rearranged at one point. Cave 5, in particular, seems to be from when the minecart was a thing. The path with the ladders appears to signify this. Maybe fool around with them a bit?

 

[deoxysdude94]

I remember hearing they wanted a skateboard in GS, but it didn't make it to programming. Maybe Teru Sama was the skateboard?

On another note, here's a question I don't think anyone's asked... Assuming Kanto was limited due to space left on the cartridge, how much space does all this beta information take up? If they got rid of the beta files on the cartridge, could they have had space to expand kanto? Like, to add a safari zone, the cinnabar island, pewter museum, viridian forest...

 

[Chippy2000]

The Safari Zone is there, and it functions.

TERU-SAMA is a number of items, with only 2 having any functionality at all. 06h is the Town Map from Pokemon Red and Blue, with only small functionality existing. 38h works as the Poke Flute. The TERU-SAMA were eventually reused to make new items in Pokemon Crystal, such as the GS Ball.

"If they got rid of the beta files on the cartridge, could they have had space to expand kanto? Like, to add a safari zone, the cinnabar island, pewter museum, viridian forest..."
The Safari Zone, does in fact, exist in Pokemon Gold. It's got unused, but fully functional warps, in Fuchsia City. Same place as before and all. It has a hallway as well, with no attendant or person in sight. You can enter the Safari Zone from here, but can't get out. I have personally managed to make this functional before (see signature).

Linking in with the Safari Zone, there are 2 other tables of Pokemon that can run away. They are as follows:

Table 1 (25% chance to flee a turn):
Eevee
Porygon
Togetic
Umbreon

Table 2 (50% chance to flee a turn):
Articuno
Zapdos
Moltres

Table 3 contains the Legendary Beasts, who have a 100% chance to flee. I believe that Table 1 could have been the start of the Safari Zone, but I am not entirely sure. One oddity here is that Espeon doesn't flee, as well as Baby Pokemon Evolutions.

Unused text relating to Pokemon eating and getting angry in the Safari Zone also exist. Eating starts at 10168A, and ends at 101695. Angry starts at 1016A1, and ends at 1016AB. In PokeText, this can be viewed in "Others 1" at Blocks 144 and 146.

As for Cinnabar Island, it is possible to restore it. It's just the Map Size that takes up space, not whatever space there is. With the space the maps have, you can restore Cinnabar. In fact, an unused palette for the Gym exists.

Pewter Museum isn't hard to restore either as long as you can make the Warps. To do this, you need to know the Bank and Map Number for it. Sadly, I don't know this myself.

Viridian Forest is a difficult one, but I don't think it would be that hard to do.

TCRF has more information here;
https://tcrf.net/Pokémon_Gold_and_Silver

 

[Catstorm]

Gen II Beta - Is this a real image of Honooguma?

Recently while gathering resources for an article I am writing about the prerelease versions of Pokemon Gold and Silver, I came across a tweet from 2013 by user Katsu_Nagao about Honooguma, the scrapped fire starter for Gen II.

The text in the tweet reads: "Commemorating XY's release: Honooguma."

While this may seem trivial, I believe that this is a real picture from Spaceworld 1997, the only time that Honooguma was available to play as a starter. Footage from this demo was extremely limited, and for years we only had eyewitness accounts of this early version.

• A reverse Google Images search showed that no other versions of this photo exist on the Internet.
• I have taken time to contact the tweet's author as they are still active, but they have not responded yet. For now I believe that this user covertly snapped this image of Honooguma while in line at the demo (or watching it as a bystander.)
• Eyewitness accounts from various Japanese webpages also mention Honooguma's tail, which is not seen in the art we know, but is seen in this sprite.
• The only thing that seems to set this image off as strange is the fact that Metapod's palette is orange. It is likely that the kiosks were running on a Super Game Boy, so the palette should be green, but I am unsure as to whether this makes the picture suspicious. Metapod's sprite also doesn't seem to match any of its other sprites from Gen 1 or 2.
• The price above the kiosk reads 3500 yen, which is what eyewitness accounts reported as the estimated price for the game.
  

I also have a comparison image of the kiosks for playing the demos. The kiosks appear to match the one seen in the picture.

This information has not really gotten out at all. I wanted to post it on a Pokemon website as my Twitter posts have not gotten much traction, nor has the original tweet of the Honooguma image.

Help with verifying or disproving this image would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.

 

[PannenkoekenNL]

Catstorm, I don't have more information but this is very interesting!

 

[CartmanKusanagi]

Nice find! I may be stretching here, but assuming the picture is legit (I'm being cautiously optimistic), and if this was running on Super Game Boy hardware, perhaps shinies were implemented as far back as the Spaceworld 1997 demo? That would explain why Metapod is orange. Both of the lifebars are also orange, so it's probably just an SGB palette.

With that said, I wonder why the original tweet never got much traction. I only found out about it when I looked at Gold and Silver's pre-release page on The Cutting Room Floor.

EDIT: I Google translated the replies to the original tweet. According to Katsu_Nagao himself, the photo was taken at the 7th Next Generation World Hobby Fair, held in January 1998. I'm guessing the demo there was identical to the Spaceworld one, since both events were held around the same timeframe.

EDIT 2: Just saw this on TCRF. It's from a circa 1998 video featuring the Spaceworld demo:

Contrary to the eyewitness sketch floating around, it looks like Chikorita's design was finalized at this point. The only real difference is its sprite: the legs are visible in the demo, while they are cropped out in the final game. What's more interesting is Girafarig's original two-headed design. The demo is also using an enhanced SGB palette, which makes me question the validity of the Honooguma photo. The border is unique to the demo AFAIK.

 

[Catstorm]

Hello everyone. I'm back with a lot , a lot, a LOT of new information. I have been putting together the TCRF page for the prerelease and after 7-8 months with many other people's inputs I am starting to get a better picture of what happened at Spaceworld.
-I found a second picture of Honooguma hidden within the March 1998 issue of Corocoro. Without the first image of Honooguma's back sprite from Katsu_Nagao, we wouldn't have been able to spot it.
-Coloradohugge found a snippet of footage from the Spaceworld demo and the video that was played there. There is a LOT of new information coming from this video. I was able to reconstruct the title screen (go see it animated on TCRF), confirm that Happa was in fact the final Chikorita, etc.
-We now know what Ho-Oh looked like on the title screen with the unused palette/sprite details because of an Electronic Gaming Monthly article.

I am trying to make as much progress as someone with only Internet capabilities and basic Japanese knowledge can. However my efforts alone definitely aren't enough to uncover the real mysteries. Most of the big discoveries have come from outside sources, like international TV shows, candid photos, or individual persons' collections and memories.

Nice find! I may be stretching here, but assuming the picture is legit (I'm being cautiously optimistic), and if this was running on Super Game Boy hardware, perhaps shinies were implemented as far back as the Spaceworld 1997 demo? That would explain why Metapod is orange. Both of the lifebars are also orange, so it's probably just an SGB palette.

That was my first assumption, but then I saw the Girafarig and Chikorita footage where the palettes were all completely correct. Photography issue? Video glitch? Fire-type move? I really do not know at this point, but I'm like 99% sure the image is legitimate, having been confirmed in several ways.

EDIT: I Google translated the replies to the original tweet. According to Katsu_Nagao himself, the photo was taken at the 7th Next Generation World Hobby Fair, held in January 1998. I'm guessing the demo there was identical to the Spaceworld one, since both events were held around the same timeframe.

Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. It's backed up in the Corocoro issue for Dec 97/Jan 98 where it says that Pokemon 2 will be available for play at the then-upcoming WHF. Photos weren't allowed at Spaceworld and I do not think they were at the WHF either as there are almost no photos of any old WHF event online.

 

[Spock]

Very interesting, please keep at this. I've been advocating for a beta section on Serebii.net for years but it hasn't come to fruition yet. Maybe I'll type up a proof-of-concept page.

This page might interest you. It appears to be the source for many of these images and screenshots. Someone even did a recreation of the original sprites.

 

[deoxysdude94]

Are we gonna talk about how cave 3 looks suspiciously similar to giovanni's room in tohjo falls from HGSS?