Collection essentials #442-#444: Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal (GBC)

Time for a big one.

Pokémon, as I’ve said before, lit the whole world on fire in the late ‘90s. There was all kinds of Pokémon media and merchandise to consume, but at the heart of it all were the original video games on the Game Boy: Red, Blue and Yellow (and Green if you lived in Japan). A true sequel to these games was obviously going to happen, and it was going to be very highly anticipated. And boy, Game Freak delivered everything any fan could have realistically expected and wanted at the time.

I explained this in a previous post, but the core series of Pokémon is divided into “generations” to avoid confusion. It started (in the Western world) with the Red and Blue versions, which technically are different games but are nearly identical other than a certain few Pokémon being available to catch in one but not the other. Then there was the Yellow version which made some actual changes but was still mostly the same adventure with the same gameplay mechanics, fully compatible with the other versions of the game for battling and trading. The Gold and Silver versions represent the first games of the second “generation”, with a completely new adventure, new and different mechanics and features, dozens of brand new Pokémon, and only limited trading compatibility with the previous games.

The first generation of Pokémon games were very good and worthy of their popularity, but they clearly had room for improvement and polish. The second generation really feels like the developers wanted to go the extra mile to refine what was great about the original games, and to give them the best presentation possible on the Game Boy Color. The graphics, especially the in-battle Pokémon sprites, are leaps and bounds better than in the first generation. The battle mechanics were given an overhaul, and I’m not going to get into all those details right now because that’s just too much, but all you have to know is that the changes make a lot of sense and are very welcome.

There are so many additions made in this second generation and I do want to mention some of them, and I’m afraid that I’m going to forget something big because there’s so much to try and think of. 

One cool thing you’ll notice right off the bat is that the game keeps track of time. When starting a new game, you give the time of day as well as the current day of the week, and the cartridge has an internal clock which will keep the day and time current. This has gameplay implications, as for example there are certain Pokémon that can only be caught at certain times of the day and certain items that can only be obtained on certain days of the week. Pokémon are now able to hold items, and certain ones have a direct effect during battle such as berries which a Pokémon will automatically eat to restore health or get rid of an unwanted condition. 

This was the first game to feature gendered Pokémon (aside from the male and female Nidorans in the first game), and now most Pokémon with a few exceptions are designated as male or female. And so, this was the first game in the series to feature breeding mechanics. You can put compatible male and female Pokémon together to make an egg. There are all kinds of rules that determine how breeding works, and there are various benefits to doing it, including certain moves that certain species of Pokémon can only learn by having them passed down by a certain parent.

There are so many other things I could talk about, such as specialized Poké Balls that are more effective at capturing in certain circumstances (though due to glitches they don’t all work right) and “roaming legendary” Pokémon that are the most difficult to capture in the whole game since they will wander all over the world map and run away in battle at the first opportunity. And let’s not forget “shiny Pokémon”, which are unique specimens that have a special alternate color and will glisten when released for battle. Shiny Pokémon are extremely rare, as any given Pokémon has less than 1-in-8000 chance of being one. There is one scripted shiny that every player meets in the main story, but other than that you have to be very lucky to get one. Shinies went on to become a staple of the series, highly coveted by fans.

Pokémon Gold and Silver were the first releases, but not too long after, a third version was released called Pokémon Crystal. This was comparable to the Yellow version in the first generation, but unlike that one, Crystal does not try to bring in elements of the Pokémon anime, and rather seems to focus on further improving the experience of the first two games. Interestingly, Gold and Silver are compatible with the original Game Boy, but the Crystal version can only be played on a Game Boy Color, since I suppose the additions they made were a little too much for the aging hardware. 

Crystal is perhaps most notable for being the first game in the series to let you play as a female protagonist, and you can choose the gender of your player at the start of each game. It’s also the first game to give Pokémon sprites little animations that play when they first appear in battle, adding a little extra personality. There are some other tweaks to notice, such as the fact that the name of a location will now be displayed upon entering it. The story is tweaked a little bit in Crystal, adding in a plot involving the roaming legendary Suicune. And perhaps the coolest addition to Crystal is the Battle Tower, which houses a series of special challenge battles with specific rules, perfect for players who want an additional challenge after conquering the main game.

Pokémon Gold and Silver received their American release a little before the holiday season of 2000. I honestly have no clue why I didn’t ask for or receive either of the games for Christmas that year; it’s possible that I didn’t know precisely when they were coming out, since we didn’t have the internet at home. But I was in luck shortly after Christmas anyway. My family had a tradition of buying potato chips for the ride home from church every Sunday. The chip company Lay’s advertised a giveaway on the back of their chip bags. If you mailed them two cut-out barcodes from their products, you had a chance to win a free copy of Pokémon Gold or Silver. My parents let me do that. And guess what? I won a free copy of Pokémon Silver!! As you can imagine, that was an extremely exciting day. I wound up getting my hands on Pokémon Crystal not too long after that one came out, too. The Silver and Crystal cartridges shown in the photo are the same ones from back then. My sister got a copy of Pokémon Gold, but that cartridge got lost somewhere along the way.

Because of the built-in clock, these games have what is now a well-known issue. These old cartridge-based video games use a circular “watch battery” to hold save data. The 24/7 clock drains the power from these batteries a lot faster than normal. Normally these batteries can last decades, as there are many save batteries in old cartridges that are still functional here in the year 2025. However, after about a decade, virtually all the original batteries in the world’s Gold, Silver and Crystal cartridges had died. I played these games to death, putting in nearly 300 hours of play time into my Silver save file alone. There are ways to back up this data, but sadly my attention was never brought to this issue before it was too late, and in 2010, I found out that my beloved old file was gone, never to return. Although some of my Pokémon from that file had been transferred to storage banks in my Pokémon Stadium 2 cartridge for Nintendo 64 which is much more safe.

There is so much more that can be said about Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal, and so many memories I have of playing them. If you played these games when you were younger, there’s a very good chance there are things I didn’t mention that you wish I did! These games properly established many norms for the Pokémon series moving forward and set a high bar in the process. They are without any question the biggest and most significant titles ever released for the Game Boy Color, certainly among the top favorite games from my youth, and they are still highly enjoyable to this day. These are real quintessential essentials, and are worth playing for anyone who has an interest in Pokémon.