This is a game that has eluded me for over 10 years. Another bootleg Pokémon platforming game, but this time starring Chikorita (hence the fan given name of Pokémon Chikorita) with cute little sprites for her and the other Pokémon. The official names are Pocket Monsters Crystal (or it's more amusing English title: Pokémon Fancy Elf). Although some of the graphics resemble Pokémon Gold Silver on SNES, it has a completely different set of 4 levels, and Totodile is nowhere to be seen. The game plays like some of the other Poké bootlegs on Game Boy Color, but with Chikorita's moveset from the SNES game, though shooting projectiles now takes amno that you collect througout the levels.
For many, many years, this game had remained undumped, with no ROM available anywhere, so I never had the chance to play it, let alone TAS it... Until recently.
In August of 2024, it finally happened. The ROM was dumped, fixed up to be played on most emulators, and it's finally able to be TASed... by yours truly because you KNEW I was gonna do it.
Why? Because I like Chikorita, that's why. It took me until today (as I'm writing this) to find out, and I was overjoyed, hence the creation of this thread... even despite the game itself not being all that great (and pretty difficult to beat as well!).
Here's a TAStest of the whole game, just to get used to it and look over what can be improved:
User movie #638672374884385925
From my early findings:
-Going through slopes is pretty slow.
-Flying isn't anywhere near as overpowered as it is in the SNES game, and is situational when landing on moving platforms or other niche instances, not to mention its rather slow.
-Shooting/attacking is much, much faster in this game, and (seemingly) is faster to do in midair.
-That backjumping technique from most Poké/Digi bootlegs is present here too, but it's pretty much useless in this game due to the level layouts.
-When moving on the ground, you first walk a bit slowly, then you start running a bit faster. By the looks of things, running is faster than jumping, and there is no run button like in Pokémon Platinum Edition.
-I avoid taking damage throughout most of the movie, except for a couple instances. Perhaps I could abuse i-frames a bit more.
-You can hide the HUD by pressing the Select button.
-You can jump earlier after landing when holding no direction (not 100% certain about this).
So, uh yeah! That's all I got for now. Hopefully I can get around this one properly and make an optimized TAS pretty soon.
