Nintendo released Pokemon Green way back in 1996, while Pokemon Crystal was released several years later in 2000. A fan of t/he games has decided to make working N64 cartridges for both. The Pokemon fan’s high attention to detail brings the original aesthetic of the games to both the custom N64 cartridge and the box art for the ported Game Boy Color games.
YouTube content creator Below Average Gaming recently shared a video in which he showed off the two classic Game Boy Color Pokemon games working on N64. In the video, Below Average Gaming showed off the colorful N64 cartridge shells used to hold the working copies of both games and how to make them. The YouTube user also made matching box art to house the N64 games in, with Pokemon Crystal featuring an Entei on the spine over Suicune.
Below Average Gaming stated that the green cartridge used for the Japanese release of Pokemon Green came as it was from eBay and he simply had to apply a customized label in order to properly reconstruct the Western release of Pokemon LeafGreen. The blue shell used for Pokemon Crystal was slightly different as Below Average Gaming’s audience implored him to include the sparkle effect from the original. In order to create a similar aesthetic to the Game Boy Color game, Below Average Gaming applied a coat of gloss to the inside of the cartridge before sprinkling some silver glitter and securing it with Mod Podge.
According to the YouTube content creator, the glitter doesn’t entirely emulate the original Pokemon Crystal game due to a Nintendo-specific part of the process but in the right lighting, the N64 cartridge looks very similar to the Game Boy Color one. The original Japanese release of Pokemon Green featured the game in an unusually grey case for the Pokemon series, but Below Average Gaming’s N64 port leans into the colorful Pokemon LeafGreen release despite the older game’s data being used.
In his recent video, Below Average Gaming confirmed that he used a Retro Blaster Programmer and N64 Blaster to port Pokemon Crystal and Pokemon Green to the N64 and that he used his own games and INL Retro program dumper to do so. Although some fans were hoping for an N64 copy of Pokemon Yellow, Below Average Gaming stated that this game is made unplayable after an early encounter when ported. The Pokemon fan also stated that the internal clock for Pokemon Crystal works enough to effectively transition from day to night, but it jumps around a few hours or days at a time.
