Lister in Red

This blog is to document my project to transfer my very first Pokémon from it’s dusty old Pokémon Red cartridge to my shiny new Pokémon HeartGold cartridge. But first, my motivation.

I’ve playing Pokémon longer than most in the UK. I picked up Red from America way back in 1998, almost a year before it reached our shores. I chose Charmander as my start pokémon and named him after my favourite TV character, Lister. 12 years and 3 game generations later, I’m still playing. It’s a hell of an additive game. In 2004, I was rather annoyed to discover that I couldn’t transfer my existing pokémon to the Gameboy Advance generation of games. Recently, I realised I had the tools to make the transfer happen. So I’m going to bring Lister home – for old time’s sake.

Be warned: This guide contains techniques that could be used for cheating. (For example, by creating a ridiculously tough pokémon.) I’d like to think what I’m doing is within the spirit of the game. Also, the final pokémon resulting won’t be tougher or rarer than anything I could easily obtain. If you do use this information to cheat, then you’ve ruined the game.

Next up, step one: Fixing an old Pokémon Gold cartridge.

Transfering from Red to HeartGold. Can it be done?

Gold wasn't retaining my save

Pokémon Gold/Silver shook up the Pokémon formula more than any game since. Among other things, they introduced shiny pokémon; added gender and split the Special stat in to the Special Attack and Special Defence stats. In order to determine Lister’s new attributes, I have to transfer him from Red to a copy of Gold. But there’s a problem:  my copy of Gold keeps deleting my save.

It turns out this is a well known issue. Old style cartridges used battery based saving. Once the battery has run out, poof! Your save is gone. Gold is apparently very prone to this issue.  Thankfully there is a tutorial online with instructions on how to replace the battery. All you need is a CR2025 battery, some pliers and a soldering iron. Unfortunately, I have none of those things. So instead I will try to do the same thing with:

• A Glasses repair kit
• Two CR2106 batteries
• An old floppy disc power cable
• Some nail clippers
• Some sticky-back plastic. (Okay, sellotape.)
• A banana

It's not pretty, but it works.

First I ate the banana for some quick energy.

Step two is to remove the cartridge case. One of the screwdrivers in my glasses repair kit is the perfect size. What a stroke of luck! I removed the case easily.

According to wikipedia, two CR2106 batteries is about equivalent to a CR2015. I had these for a year before finding a use for them. Another stroke of luck! (This is why I can’t throw things away.) I used the clippers to remove and strip two wires from the floppy power cable. I then sellotaped the two batteries together with a wire on each terminal.

I then taped the two other ends of the cable to the appropriate terminals on the dead battery inside my cartridge. I can’t close the case, and it doesn’t look pretty, but hopefully it’ll retain the save now.

After 48-hours, the save is still there. Looks like it worked! Good job too, ask I have to get as far as Ecruteak City before I can transfer Lister over.

Next up, step two: Getting to the Time Capsule

Johto Map with Route

In order to trade Lister up, I first have to unlock the Time Capsule in Gold. The Time Capsule allows trading with older games, but you have to travel to Ecruteak City where Bill will active the device. The plan is to get there as quick as possible. To speed things up, I switched off battle animations, and set the text speed to fast.

I managed to get all the way to the city with just my starter pokémon. (I chose Cyndaquil.) I also caught 4 other pokémon, but these are just to assist with trading later and to learn TM 01 – Cut. I spent any money I earned on Potions / Super Potions and made sure Cyndaquil was always holding a berry. They don’t really throw anything too hard against you. Even in the cases where Fire type wasn’t effective I was able to win by having a level advantage and using potions. I skipped talking to people and just completed the essential tasks:

• Visit Mr. Pokémon for Prof. Elm
• Defeat the Gym in Violet City so the guy on the path will let me past
• Do the slowpoke well task
• Do the Azalea Gym so I can use CUT
• Do the Farfetch’d Puzzle to obtain HM 01 – CUT
• Do the Saffron Gym so I can obtain the water bottle from the shop
• Use the water bottle to get past the Sudowoodo
• Welcome to Ecruteak City! Bill says the Time Capsule will e available tomorrow.

Total Time: 2 hours 20 minutes. My Cyndaquil (Now a Quilava) ended on level 27.

The next problem I have is the GBA link cable I have won’t work with these older games. I tracked down a Gameboy Universal Link Lead for £3. (Which is about my budget for the project.) I just have to wait for that to arrive.

Next up, step three: Trading Lister to Gold

Lister in Gold

Gameboy Universal Link Cable

The Gameboy Universal Link Cable arrived and I’ve unlocked the Time Capsule so I can now transfer Lister to Gold. The transfer was as straight-forward as I remembered.

I can now determine the previously unknown Special Attack and Special Defence stats. I  also established that Lister is male. (Otherwise, I guess she’d be named after the female Lister from Parallel Universe.) Lister’s not shiny, but the chances were 8192 to 1, so it wasn’t very likely.  Unexpectedly, he arrived holding a Bitter Berry, which is apparently a bonus you get for trading with a first generation game.

This is a far as you can transfer pokémon by normal means.  So I’m going to need to get creative from here.

Next up, Step four: The magic – Recreating Lister.

Lister in Pokésav

Warning: This is where I start to hack the game. Again, this information could be used to cheat. Kids — Cheating ruins multi player games.

I used Pokésav to recreate Lister from scratch. Pokésav is actually a utility for editing your Pokémon save from any Generation IV game. But in this case, I will just be using it to create a single new Pokémon. (Side note – this utility is used by enthusiasts around the world to document the exact data of pokémon given out in various distribution events. The historian in me approves.)

The idea here was to be authentic to the original data as possible. I am retaining the original’s moveset; Original Trainer name and ID. Some information, such as the encountered location, is not saved in the original’s data set. But I can fill this information in from memory. (As a starter pokémon, I must have first encountered him in Pallet Town.) It’s not possible to set the Date Met earlier than the millennium. So I guess 1st January 2000 will have to do.

Generation I and II pokémon lacked natures. I thought the fairest way to go was to randomly give the reconstructed Lister one of the natures that has no effect on the pokémon’s stats. I rolled a five-sided dice, and got 3 – Bashful.

Generation I and II pokémon also lacked abilities. But since Charizards can only have one ability – Blaze – this wasn’t an issue.

Ribbons also did not exist. I think it’s only fair to award Lister the Champ Ribbon, since I used him to defeat the Kanto Elite Four.

Stats are a little more complicated. Other than natures, mentioned above, three factors effect a pokémon’s stats: The base rate for that species of pokémon, it’s Individual Values (IVs) and it’s Effort Values (EVs). A easy way of thinking about it is IVs represent a pokémon’s nature and EVs represent a pokémon’s nurture. What I’d really like to do at this point is examine Lister’s IVs and EVs to determine the effect of each as a percentage, then replicate that percentage in the reconstructed Lister. However, as far as I am aware, it is not possible to find out that information without obtaining some hardware to read it from the save file on the cartridge or the from Gameboy’s RAM. (A friend of mine once had a Gameboy cartridge reader that would have been perfect; but you just can’t find them any more. Besides, I have already exceeded my project budget.) So instead I am going to assume the difference between the base and displayed stats is 50% nature and 50% nurture. This is a bit of a leap, but I don’t think it’ll make too much difference. For the moment, I just want the shown stats to match.

That’s pretty much it. I tried to get it as close as I could. Lister is now saved as a file on my desktop. It just needs to be transferred to a game.

Next up, Last Part: Lister in HeartGold.