Pokémon Gold Version Prototype Finally Uncovered

Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions are beloved by many a Pocket Monsters fan. The duo of games introduced better visuals and mechanics to the series, along with a plethora of new Pokémon, many of which are still fan-favorites to this day. Like virtually every video game that’s ever been made, however, the end product of Gold and Silver aren’t exactly what they started out as early in development.

One build of Gold that’s notorious in its scarcity is the Space World demo/prototype from 1997. There have been a multitude of images pulled from a variety of different sources over the years, but no one has ever been able to get their hands on the actual prototype and pull assets and data directly from its code. Until now! Over on resetera.com, user The Shadow Knight has unveiled tons of information about Pokémon Gold in its nascent state.

It’s common knowledge that Pokémon Red and Blue Versions both had a number of the nominal creatures that were created but never used in those first two games, and it seems that Gold and Silver were no different. The original map for Gold was apparently going to be much larger and more ambitious than it ended up being. Check out the image above, which reveals that the development team originally wanted to use virtually the entirety of Japan as the basis for the overworld of the two games! Crazy.

There is a metric ton of other details to find out about the Gold prototype, which you can see on resetera as well as on The Cutting Room Floor, so please give these links a click and check them out. For retro enthusiasts and Pokémon historians, this is an uncanny find. It’s always fun to get a glimpse at the development of a game, to see what features did or didn’t make the final cut, and in the case of Pokémon, see which of the creatures ended up being altered or saved for later installments in the series. What do you think of this discovery? Share with us in the comments and on social media.