[It’s time for another guest post! For this one I welcome back Ryo Miyauchi, who you can find at This Side of Japan and @sneeek, and who also wrote about Pokémon Yellow and Yoshi’s Story.]
If Pokémon Yellow was the rare Pokémon game to take inspiration from the franchise’s media offshoots, Pokémon Gold is the one-of-a-kind entry that deeply references the original games themselves. Subsequent generations tweaked and improved the core formula, but their universes remained separate from what came before. Gold is the only Pokémon sequel that really presents itself as a direct sequel to the original, using the legacy and the story of its predecessor as a springboard to create its own.
A Pokémon game like Gold perhaps can’t be made ever again. Gold had the utmost advantage of coming when a brand-new Pokémon version was yet to be thought up. And as a child, there was not an experience quite like learning about the existence of a new Pokémon species beyond the original 151. The debuts of Marill and Snubbull in Pikachu’s Vacation, a mini tie-up movie before the main feature of Pokemon: The Movie, really kept 8-year-old me so stoked for more to come. I vividly remember reading the CoroCoro Comics magazine as a kid and finding out about Hoothoot and Spinarak, the wild Pokemon you encounter early on in Gold. More birds, more bugs, more legendaries — the world of Pokémon suddenly felt even bigger than ever imagined.
Gold brought so much more than just new Pokémon. It could be argued that some games offered more to the franchise, but again, this was when the new wasn’t entirely expected from Pokémon. Two new types, steel and dark, were introduced. Pokémon could now hold items to aid them in battle or evolve them via trade. There were new weather systems triggered by moves like Sunny Day and Sandstorm that affect battle. You can breed Pokémon eggs, which also brought in egg moves to further breed the best Pokémon for your party. Pokémon now have friendship levels that can come into play for evolving them. Thanks to the update into the Game Boy Color, you can also find Pokémon with an alternate color scheme.
Bringing Pokémon to the Game Boy Color also introduced the concept of day and night, and it brought so much more life to the gameplay beyond changes in color. It affected what Pokémon you can encounter in the wild with certain ones out in the tall grass late at night. There were now different days of the week in the Pokémon universe as well, which influenced some events and character encounters in the game. The game allowed you to adjust these details in the beginning, so you can possibly sync it to your life outside of the game. I would set it with the actual time and day IRL all the time, which made Pokémon catching more connected to the real world since I had to wait until it got dark to play and capture the nocturnal monsters.
An improved color palette, though, was enough to elevate the gameplay into a more immersive experience, and the new Johto region is rich and full of life. The technological leaps in the graphics ironically enhanced the realism of an old world. While in the traditional structures like the Bellsprout Tower and the Burnt Tower lay a great mood of centuries-old history for their respective towns, the countryside feel of places like Azalea Town and Mahogany Town stick out through smaller yet equally memorable details.
Johto can get overshadowed by the original Kanto region, which you can travel to once you defeat the Pokémon League in the Indigo Plateau. The second chapter of the game set in the latter region can make the first half almost secondary. Because why would you not want to revisit the world of the original Red version, now not only in color but three years in the future? The leap in time gives an explanation beyond data space for why areas look a bit different. Cinnabar Island is almost completely non-existent due to a volcanic eruption according to the game, and Safari Zone is closed because the owner is out of town. But reliving past glories, such as battles with the classic gym leaders, excuses most of the setbacks.
For people who got into the franchise through this generation, Pokémon Gold set an expectation that Pokémon games would turn out not to intend to fulfill in the later versions. Each generation remains relatively separate in their worlds and narratives — no more second chapters to relive a past generation. It’s a lesson in how tantalizing but also dangerous it is to play with nostalgia. Take it from me: I admire the evolution the games have gone through these two decades, but I ultimately just want my love and memories of my gameplay of Gold tended to. It’s for the better that what’s gone remains behind us, but Gold makes a great argument for how fun it can sometimes be to indulge in fond memories of the past.
Pokémon Gold was UK #1 for ten weeks in total: eight weeks on its April 2001 release and two more starting in August. Click through to the next page for details of what was top of other charts at the same time…