Finished my Pokemon Gold Pokedex after almost 17 years

[InsaneNutter]

So a long time ago, 25th March 2009 according to the Digiex guide i made, I managed to backup my original Pokemon Gold save game before the battery died in the game cartridge.

I don't truly know how old that save game is, however I believe it dates somewhere between October 2000 and January / February 2001. I know Pokemon Gold came out in America in October 2000 and that a local shop in my town imported it for me several months before it was released in Europe in April 2001. Either way that makes the save well over 16 and a half years old at this point!

After backing my save game up i did nothing with it for another 8 and a half years, it's just safely sat on my harddrive with me knowing one day I could do something with it if i wanted.

Earlier this year Nintendo announced Pokemon Gold and Silver were to be released on the 3DS virtual console, that gave me the motivation to find my old save out and finish it knowing I can use Pokebank to finally bring some of my favorite and oldest Pokemon to the current games.

I only had around 20 Pokemon to get so it wasn't that difficult as I was able to trade with my Red / Yellow saves and didn't need any of the version exclusive Pokemon from Silver. What has taken me a lot of time though is the ever so annoying legendary dogs, Entei, Raikou and Suicune. I managed to catch Suicune last weekend, however Entei and Raikou eluded me. After another 3-4 hours of playing this evening i finally managed to capture Raikou and Entei. The end result is my Pokedex is 100% complete around 16 and a half years after I started.

I guess the saying slow and steady wins the race applies here it's pretty crazy to think I was 14 years old when i started the save game! It has loads of Pokemon on it I got from trading with friends who were all Pokemon crazy at the time. I think only one or two of them who I have traded Pokemon from are still in to the games today.

I have traded myself a Pokemon GEN1 Legit YOSHIBA Mew and a Pokemon GEN2 Legit PCYNb Celebi from the event save games we managed to preserve on Digiex.

Now I intend to play though Pokemon Silver when it's released on the 3DS Virtual Console later this week.

 

[UnknownRespected]

What happened way back then? Did Crystal come out and take your attention away from Gold?
Figured most people just get the legendary dogs relatively quickly within a few months of playing the game but I guess maybe back then the internet wasn't as readily-available and people might just not have known how to find them at all.

I kinda want to get both Red and Gold VC now that they're actually putting Gen 2 on VC, but I don't think I'd be able to find the official Japanese Green/Blue/Silver VC online unless I region-changed my 3DS to Japanese and bought them myself off the eShop... which I might do at some point but until then I'll probably stick to GameYob tbh.

Eh what the heck maybe I can just get Red/Gold and ignore the Japanese ones entirely.
You know, I wish they'd also release the VC games on cartridges. They wouldn't because at $10 for the VC it wouldn't be profitable at all, but I would totally pay a premium (like $30) for retail cartridges versions of Red/Gold VC just so they'd function the same as every other cartridge game that I can just plop down into any DS and they just work (instead of being tied to the one 3DS it's installed on.)

 

[InsaneNutter]

I never had Crystal at the time, I had a GameBoy Pocket so couldn't play any GameBoy colour only games. I'm honestly not really sure why I never finished the Pokedex, as I was absolutely addicted to the game back then. I had most Pokemon that would take quite a bit of effort to evolve such as Tyranitar and looking at my hall of fame i've beat the Pokemon League 70 times. I look to have been taking various Pokemon though to level them up / evolve them.

One of the Pokemon I required was Primeape which you can catch easily in the wild. I can only think School work must have distracted me at the time, then maybe a new game caught my attention.

The internet was a lot less accessible to me back then, we had one PC shared between the family, myself and my brother we're only allowed online for a total of 1 hour per week as we had dialup internet charged by the minute. Still i made good use of that and managed to download an emulator and very limited translation of Pokemon Gold many months before it was released in America, let alone Europe. I remember myself and a friend playing split screen on the no$gmb emulator, which went black and white after a few minutes as we had the shareware version of it. Good times though!

I must admit i'd like them to be released on physical cartridges too, as it stands now it's kind of hard to trade with yourself as you need to trade them to another 3DS which owns the game, then back to your other game you originally wanted to trade them to. (Or dump the save and use an emulator I guess.) Still i won't complain as more than anything its always bugged me for years GEN 1 and 2 couldn't be traded up to the current GEN, Nintendo have made that possible so i'm pretty cuffed about that as it's something i never thought Nintendo would do.

 

[UnknownRespected]

Heh, we all did weird stuff in video games when we were younger which we don't understand anymore now that we're older.

It's cool you stuck to the one save file the whole time, though. I have literally never done that; starting way back then, I had more fun restarting my games all the time than sticking with the same save file. I did legitimately complete the Pokédex in LeafGreen back when I had it (I think I only completed the Kanto dex, though) and then I just kinda traded the game in at EBGames to get FireRed instead. I completed the Pokédex on my first Diamond save file too, by doing lots of trading online until I had all 493 registered, with over 480 hours play time, and I restarted that save file later anyway.

Kind of sucks I don't have any of those memories in a physical (well, digital) format anymore, but I do still have most of the memories still stored in my brain ;D

Even nowadays I'm not immune to it. I kept my very first save file of Y for a long time but I did end up restarting over it, and while my current OR/Sun save files are my first completed files for those games, they weren't the first save files I made. I restarted OR many times and only finished it like two years after I got the game.
I'm thinking of giving Ultra Sun a try, perhaps I can make an effort to stick to the same save file to the end of time this time. Problem is though, I really didn't like Sun/Moon all that much, and Gen. 7 isn't looking so good on my end (I finished playing through Sun and just put the game away, didn't bother with post-game nor playing it amy further.) Hard to really make a save file and make memories with a game you don't even play hopefully US/UM really change that, though, and gets me hooked to playing Gen. 7 regularly.

With Gold/Silver VC I wish they had tried implementing trading/battling over Wi-Fi. I'm not gonna get both Gold and Silver and it'd be really cool if I could just find a friend online who gets Silver and trade with each other to complete the Pokédex.
No friends IRL, rip
In the end I'll probably just be hacking in the version-exclusives with PKHeX. Or finding somebody else with Silver who has access to save editors (non-VC Silver on a regular PC emulator would do tbh) and just share .pk2 files with each other lol.

 

[InsaneNutter]

I agree, looking at my Pokemon Gold squad I question why i chose the squad I did, I'd make it more varied if I was playing today.

I still have my Tomb Raider 2 save game which probably pre-dates my Pokemon Gold save. I found that on a floppy disk earlier this year, along with the save for the badly translated Japanese Pokemon Gold i played on the emulator. I remember backing them up at the time as our Windows 98 PC seemed to end up getting wiped a few times a year as someone would managed to break the Windows install.

I do know why i never finished Tomb Raider 2, i got stuck on one of the levels near the end of the game. With no internet, guidebook or friend who had passed that it was impossible to progress. I guess I could watch a YouTube videos today and finish the game in a couple of hours! just shows how gaming has changed.

I never liked re-starting Pokemon games, it just seemed like a waste of time erasing all that progress and any Pokemon you didn't trade to a friend to keep. My brother used to re start Pokemon Blue a lot, so I borrowed his game for a day before he did to played to the point where you got Eevee as we both needed a Vaporion for the Pokedex. I got a few starters that way too.

I must admit so far GEN 7 is my least favorite GEN, i wont say its out right bad, its different which in some ways has been nice, but in other ways I just never enjoyed it like I did with previous generations. I did however play though Sun after a finished Moon just so I could get the missing Pokemon with myself as the OT for the living Pokedex. If my motivation wasn't I was so close to finishing the livingdex with myself as the OT for all Pokemon where possible i'd have never played though Sun in addition to Moon.

I'm hoping in Ultra Sun / Moon you might get the chance to go back to Kanto, which has been rumoured. That would certainly interest me a lot if so.

I will be playing though Silver on the VC so at some point in the future if you wan't to dump your save i'd be happy to load it on another 3DS I have access to and trade version exclusive Pokemon / Pokemon to Evolve. Not sure how quick I will finish the game as i seem to just play randomly for an hour or so after work and a bit on weekends, slowly progressing though the games these days.

 

[UnknownRespected]

Up until Platinum I used to just use my starter. Just do every battle with my starter alone, rest of the team was random HM slaves. It worked. Can't say I question why I did that because it still makes sense today from a casual point of view but I don't think I'd go back to doing that, I like having a full team.

I restarted games all the time because there wasn't much for me to do once I finished the game and I wanted to play through it again. Now I wish I had never done that so I could have kept all the memories from every game I've played. I couldn't really just get the opposite versions every time, though. For Gen. I and II I could have picked up the opposite version at flea market easily but my parents would only really agree to getting me like one game or two per year, for Christmas & my birthday (we're speaking of the times when I was like 10-16 and couldn't really buy stuff on my own terms.)

So my only remaining option was to restart the one I had still I had options for trading over Pokémon I didn't want to lose and trading them back, so there's that. Nowadays I've collected most of every games in the main series so if I want to play through again I have a spare I can play while the main game of the pair remains untouched. Not that I'd probably do that anymore at all nowadays though tbh, barely got the motivation to just play through as-is. I'm having to go back through all my games because they all ended up without a save file lol, once I'm done with them their save files aren't going anywhere.

I could just get a rom of Gold and start playing immediately, but I'm hoping the forced wait until Friday gets me hyped and motivated enough to actually play the game rather than stopping 15 minutes in lol. I feel very indifferent about Gen. I and Gen. I VC; the games really haven't aged well IMO compared to Gold/Silver, and even though you can transfer Pokémon over to Sun/Moon, I have a hard time being interested in that... any Pokémon I might get in the original Red, I was already able to easily obtain in my other games ages ago.
With Gold/Silver though, any shiny Pokémon I might find are worth transferring over. I overlooked the part of your original post where you mentioned you'd be getting Silver. It'd be really cool to trade for version exclusives (alsoplsbreedsomeKantostartersandfossilpokemonsoIcangetthosewithoutcheatingkthx) (you had Gen. I VC did you?)

Still really on the fence about Gen. VII; turns out I can't stand most of the new designs, and especially Ultra Beasts (why are those Pokémon...?) Don't get me wrong I actually really like the lore behind them, but they shouldn't be classified as Pokémon. I would have preferred if they were a bigger part of the story, if they weren't actually obtainable and the goal was to destroy them, but instead we get "Pokémon" that look like this and this. Lore-wise they aren't Pokémon so it bothers me they'd just make them Pokémon even though by design (as far as both meanings of the word go) they aren't.
Necrozma I'm okay with; it isn't an Ultra Beast so the classification as a Pokémon is alright, and even though I'm not sure I like its design, the fusions with the cover legendaries look awesome tbh which redeems it entirely.
I really don't like Z-moves in general, either. They're so unnecessarily over-the-top. I can go without using them myself (and that's what I did) but eh the NPCs will still be using them which bugs me a little. The Z-crystals are cool, they are nice collectibles and plus they look pretty. I hope US/UM adds more Z-crystals just for that (and dammit make the event-only ones tradeable while equipped so that people don't miss out on filling their collection just because they couldn't go to the event.)

At the end of the day though, I can probably just disregard Ultra Beasts entirely. Go through that part of the game, capture them, release them right away, done. Still, I'm not a fan of the direction they seem to be taking, and I guess it's probably a good thing the next Gen. will likely be on [insert 3DS successor here] so I won't even have to worry about it. Hopefully Ultra Sun fixes most of the issues I had with Sun (I hope most UBs are left out to be Sun/Moon exclusives but that won't happen.)
I'd love to have Vs. Seeker this time around, and the PokéRadar was a really fun mechanic in Sinnoh to obtain hidden Pokémon in every route. I'd really like for there to be some kind of Safari Zone as well, preferably one that functions the same as in OR/AS where they won't flee and you can use your own Pokéballs. Maybe they could expand on the Friend Safari? I liked the idea from X/Y, all they have to do is give it a real Safari Zone area, like we had in Gen. I and III, except it would be populated with different Pokémon based on which Friend Codes you have added.

There are so many ideas they could borrow from previous games in the series; instead they just stick whatever re-branded Battle Tower they like in a post-League area and call it a day. I wish they'd cater a little bit more to those of us who happen to prefer content other than competitive battling. Throw us a bone, Game Freak! At least actually include the National Pokédex in US/UM. :/
(For real though, if anything I'd buy Ultra Sun just for Dusk form Lycanroc.)


Whoa, I went on for a while here. Still, as much as there is stuff I dislike about Gen. VII, all this talking has been making me actually want to start transferring over all my shinies and event/legendary Pokémon over to Gen. VII. Everything is still in Omega Ruby right now, because I just disliked Sun/Moon that much.

 

[InsaneNutter]

I've always had to have all 3 starting Pokemon in my team, that's something true to this day. However if i play another game in that generation I usually mix it up and try and make a balanced team out of new Pokemon introduced in that gen.

Likewise when I was younger I might get a new game at Christmas and a new game for my birthday and that was it really. I never really had another console apart from my GameBoy Pocket / GBA until the GameCube was released here so that wasn't too much of an issue. I mainly played PC games which I swapped with friends, some older ones could be obtained for next to nothing at local markets. I do remember spending money i'd saved from Christmas on Pokemon Gold though, the younger me wanted that so bad.

I've gradually purchased the missing games in my collection over the years:

Blue, Silver, Sapphire, Emerald, Fire Red, Leaf Green and the JPN games were purchased used, the rest i managed to purchase as new. I got one game in the set at release, then the other games later when shops were selling them off cheap. Looking back that was a good idea as some of the older games are so expensive now.

The only game in kind of bad condition is Pokemon Emerald, the game cart is fine though, just the box is a bit worse for ware.

I managed to wait until yesterday to start a Silver save game, If i started it on an emulator it would ruin my motivation for playing it on the VC. I have managed to get my old Gold save game on the 3DS and trade some eggs i'd prepared across to my Silver VC game for Pokemon I wanted in my team. Ive just hatched these so my Silver squad is now ready to train up.

I have GEN 1 VC so can breed some Kanto fossil / starters too. I have the fossil Pokemon on my Gold save as those were some i needed to finish the Pokedex.

I must admit i never used the Z-Moves too, i kept forgetting I had them in all honesty! I wasn't that bothered about them either.

I like your idea for the friend safari. I did use that a lot in GEN 6 by adding people from reddit to get some rare Pokemon for my living Pokedex, it was very useful. I think multiplayer features are kind of butchered in GEN 7. It was much better in GEN 6 with the PSS system. It felt like even when you were playing by yourself you were playing with loads of other people when connected to WiFi as you always got randomly trade requests and noticed people from all around the world passing by. GEN 7 lost a lot of more traditional Pokemon features i'm hoping Ultra Sun / Moon rectify.

The lack of a national Pokedex really bugged me, I know we have Pokebank but i dunno it just doesn't seem right not having it in the game. As it happens my living Pokedex is also on Omega Ruby, eventually i plan to Pokebank it to my other GEN 6 games to get the shiny charm, before taking it up to GEN 7 and beyond someday.

For now though i'm really enjoying Silver VC, compared to playing Gold on a PC emulator which i've been doing recently it actually looks a lot better on my 3DS XL due to the much smaller screen.

 

[UnknownRespected]

Haha you're way more dedicated than I am. Is that the US copies of Gold/Silver at the top, in addition to the EU ones at the bottom?

This is all I have:

When I was younger, I had the horrible horrible habit of throwing away the boxes when I got games. I never got to get the GB/GBC ones brand-new and just got loose carts at flea market, so I never had the boxes to begin with, but both Ruby and Emerald lost their boxes to that (and a bunch of other GBA games I got way back then which I don't even have anymore.)

I stopped doing that when DS games came out, because I couldn't just throw away those high-quality plastic boxes. When I bought Pearl I made sure to pick a listing which had the box + manual included.
Still, I somehow managed to keep the box for FireRed, and I have the box for LeafGreen too because I bought it brand-new off Play-Asia in 2010 (it was on sale at the time; it only cost me like $30 )
When I bought Green I didn't bother trying to get it complete-in-box because my Red cart was a loose cart as well, but for Blue I couldn't just not. It may not be 100% complete-in-box (it might be missing minor promo papers that sometimes used to come in new game boxes) but I have the manual and the Kanto map with it. I used to have a copy of Japanese Yellow that was complete-in-box too, and a loose cart of English Yellow, but I don't like Yellow so I sold them to somebody (I don't really regret it.)

I purposefully got Sapphire and Silver as loose carts because Ruby and Gold were loose carts too. Maybe one day I'll hunt down the boxes w/ manual for all the ones I don't have the boxes for, but for now I'm happy with what I have.
Also for some reason the label on my FireRed got completely screwed. I don't know what happened but apparently bubbles started forming in-between the plastic layer and the paper and it just got worse over time. Heck I just noticed today that it got all discolored too (the Nintendo Seal of Approval is all green instead of Gold lol.) It's definitely a legit cart though. Maybe it was part of some bad batch that had misprinted labels.

I stopped bothering after Gen. IV 'cause they started region-locking the games. Still, maybe in the future I'll hunt down Japanese copies of the second versions of Gen. V/VI/VII, since Luma is supposed to bypass region-locking (otherwise I can just make a second emunand region-changed to Japanese.)
I mean, sure, the 3DS games are all the same and I can just get English versions and set the language to Japanese, but it'd still be an English copy on the outside and on the shelves ;D it's just not the same.

Nowadays all the batteries died, lol. Sapphire is the only one standing because the one I bought was advertised as having had its battery freshly replaced.

I got to start Gold a day early, because the exact same VC app was re-used for North America, Europe and Australia so it's the same seed for every region, and since the game was available in Australia 24 hours earlier than North America, you could download the seed off Nintendo's website by navigating to the URL with any web browser and import the seed to your system using FBI. Hehe, technology!

I got the YOSHIRB Mew and PCNYb Celebi from the save files we have on here. Did anyone ever bother trying to legitimately obtain all the Gym Leader Castle Pokémon from Stadium into a Gen. I save file?
These would be super useful for people playing Gold/Silver who didn't bother with Gen. I too bad the legendary birds + Mewtwo didn't get an official event, I'll have to either get Red and play through it myself, or get them from someone else's save file from the internet... probably the latter, tbh. I don't really want to bother with Gen. I

I'm at 3 badges right now and I saved to take a break there last night. I'll probably be steadily progressing through the game at a pace my younger self wouldn't be proud of, but... still better than playing for 15 minutes and never touching it again.

Also here's something I don't get. Why is it that nowadays they just throw away good features when they make the next game?
Sun/Moon would have been so much better if it included most of the features of PokéNav, but instead they just give you a Rotom that does nothing but gossip, display a map and Pokédex, and take photos.
The least they could have done is keep the DexNav... sure Sun/Moon have mini-swarms you can cause using the QR code scanner, but its nothing near as good as PokéRadar/DevNav was (and besides, D/P/Pt had swarms alongside PokéRadar.) Even the AreaNav is better than what RotomDex's map feature is, imo.
I could go on for a while about stuff like that... I had a lot more than that typed down but I removed most of it because no one wants to read a wall of text about that, lol. Maybe I can do a better-structured post about that at some point.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Pokemon games I actually had at the time were Red, Yellow, Trading Card Game, Gold, Ruby, Diamond,Heart Gold

I got in to playing Diamond at Uni with a couple of other members who randomly post on here. After finishing Diamond I went back and finished Ruby as i'd got a couple of gym badges and given up on the game at the time. After finishing Ruby i got Fire Red and Leaf Green pretty cheap on Ebay. I remember so many fakes we're out at the time I had to be careful to get a real version. I seem to remember we all started playing the GBA games, as i dont think any of us had really played them.

I remember playing Heart Gold for one weekend and getting 6 gym badges, then never playing it again until years later. The game came out at such a bad time, it was my final year at Uni and had so much work to do, yet i was so excited for the game too! In some ways I should have waited as i did spoil the game, I never really played Pokemon again until I got a 3DS and Pokemon Y.

I did buy Pokemon White, got 1 gym bade and never played that again either. Then I purchased Black and White 2, along with Black as a local store was selling them sealed in the box for such a good price. I thought some day i'd thank myself for buying them, or might actually play them, which i did.

I got hooked on Omega Ruby on the 3DS, finished that, finished Y, finished White, started and finished Black 2, then went back and finished Heart Gold. During this time if i found a good deal for one of the Pokemon games I was missing i purchased it, so ended up with what I have at pretty good prices. Since Pokemon Go was released the price of Pokemon related games seems to have sky rocketed, so I got lucky to have what I do really!

I'm sure someone started trying to obtain all the Gym Leader Castle Pokémon on here, I can't find the post about it now though. So it might have been on PP. When looking though my GEN 1 Pokemon i realised i do have a STADIUM Venasaur. I remember having a friend who had Stadium on the N64 so i will have likely got that from him. I've never actually owned an N64 though. That might be something to try in an emulator as I would like to have those on my Gen 2 save.

I've just got to the lighthouse on Gold now, i'm just playing though it as and when taking my time. I have been taking my 3DS to work though and mystery gifting with someone each day, so have managed to get a couple of good items for my room. After eventually finishing the game my long term play is to make a living dex in Gen 2. This will have as many Pokemon as possible i've got from trades with friends over the years, as it will be kind of neat to do something with these. My Gen 6 living dex with myself as the OT where possible is near enough done. All i currently need is Xerneas from Pokemon Y, however i've not had the desire to play most of the game for one Pokemon yet.

I do hope with Ultra Sun / Moon they restore a lot of the good stuff from Gen 6. It was interesting with the games been so different, however they did feel like a downgrade in many areas for me.

 

[UnknownRespected]

Neat. It looks like you've been more or less picking the same versions I've been. All first versions of the pair, until picking Y instead of X and White instead of Black.
Y always felt like it belonged more as a first of the pair but it makes a lot of sense why they had it as X/Y and not Y/X.

Not sure why I went with White instead of Black, though. It might be because the release of B/W was the first time I actually had a flashcart at the time of new games' releases, so I got a JP rom of Black on release and then felt like I had to get White at the English release (then kept up the trend once B2/W2 came out.)
It worked out in the end though, because I feel like White has the better exclusives, and White ended up being the "Red" version, with White Kyurem being based off Reshiram and having plenty of fire on the box art + red accents on the cartridge.

Still, honestly, I feel like Blue and Silver had the better exclusives... if I were to go back in time with the knowledge I have today, I'd probably have ended up picking Blue + LeafGreen and Silver + SoulSilver rather than Red/Gold... I think I'm happy with my choices as far as every other Gen. goes, though. Well I did pick LeafGreen first, but only because I was all about Grass starters at the time and not for the exclusives... heh. But as you know I traded it in for FireRed.

I used to get really hooked onto the games whenever they'd come out back then. Up until (and including) Y I'd get the games around release and chew through them nonstop within a week. I think I finished Y the fastest by beating the Elite Four after just 3 days. White is a close contender though, having taken me 4 days.

Nowadays it takes me much longer to get through the games... mostly due to lack of motivation, so I can only really play a few hours at a time at most before I need to take a break. As much as I tried motivating myself to finish OR in one sitting, it took me a few months. Binged through the first half of the game up until I had 6 badges, but it took a few months before I got back to it. I'm glad I got through the game now.

My Gold has been sitting at 8 badges for a few days now, next thing to do is to go to the League. I'll probably go through and clear the routes connecting Blackthorn City and Route 29, and clear Dark Cave + Mt. Mortar and the lower levels of Union Cave before I head there. Just so I've finished everything I can in Johto before heading to Kanto. That'll be for another day though.
I'm glad they actually went the extra mile to emulate GBC IR port using the 3DS's IR port.

I've been thinking once I complete my Gen. IV Living dex, I'll send all of it over to White 2 and complete it with Gen. V Pokémon.
Same with Gen. VI Living dex, once I'm done with it, it will get sent over to Ultra Sun where I will complete it with Gen. VII Pokémon.
I'll probably just drop Gen. III Living dex project. I've decided I don't really want to play Gen. I-III anymore (aside from Gold on VC, of course.)
I hadn't even started playing through any of the Gen. III games anyway. I-III will just sit there as collection items.

I've actually met a friend like two weeks ago who managed to genuinely change my mind about Sun/Moon. Aside from the obvious shortcomings of missing features I actually really like Sun as a whole now. I'll be re-playing it sometime later so I can play through with a new found appreciation of the game. I'll also be finally sending my collection over to Gen. VII
This is what birthed the idea of completing my Gen. IV Living dex with Gen. V games, actually, and completing my Gen. VI one with Gen. VII games.