Pokemon Crystal Clear - (Game Download)

[GloomGloom]

EDIT: I originally wrote this with improper links. This has been fixed... I won't be able to directly link you any ROM. You'll have to jump through a few hoops to get this done... But it's worth it!

This section of the forum seems quiet but I noticed no one has mentioned this game, which surprised me because it's so damn good!


POKEMON CRYSTAL CLEAR
created by ShockSlayer

This game is a HEAVILY modified version of Pokemon Crystal.
"So what?" you say, having seen hundreds of half-baked mediocre Rom hacks in your time.
"Shut the hell up," I say, "Keep reading!"

Features:
- Open-World, can travel anywhere, including between Kanto and Johto
- HMs not needed for any direct paths, but optional side areas still need them. HMs are found in both the normal Gen 1 and Gen 2 locations
- When you learn Fly, you can fly to places you haven't been to yet
- Choose your character sprite (like Rocket Grunt, or the 2nd Gen villain!) and colour tones
- A ton of starter Pokemon to choose from (all 6 starters, several babies, and several hard challenges)
- You choose your starting region, Kanto (Pallet Town) or Johto (New Bark Town)
- Kanto restored to Gen 1 glory (like Viridian Forest and Cerulean Cave), plus improvements
- Can tackle the gym leaders in ANY order
- Tons of secrets and flavour text
- Difficulty of the gym trainers/leaders is determined by your badge count; from level 10s to level 90s
- Can rechallenge gyms on varied stengths by interacting with statues at the front of the gym
- All 251 Pokemon are obtainable, special trainers let you trade for Pokemon that need to be traded to evolve
- Can rechallenge leaders and trainers at will
- Story basically stripped out; no rival, no Team Rocket blocking things up.
- Soundtracks from both the early and later games
- Extensive Options for quality of life, like making it so Nurse Joy turns you around after healing
- Can actually trade with the legit games; is recognized as plain Crystal!
- New, more challenging Elite Four; the old Elite Four can also be played if wished



[Only registered and activated users can see links]
(the game was updated after this video came out, including more starters and such)


"How have I never heard about this?" you ask...
Well, the above YouTuber who does Lets Plays on many Pokemon ROM hacks got his hands on it when it was publicly available and did some videos. They exploded in popularity. This excited the ShockSlayer team, but as the downloads started to accelerate they got freaked out (Nintendo are court jockeys) and removed all public links on their own without being asked to. :(

This is what you must do to get this game. Unfortunately I can't share the ROM itself, so there is a lot of extra work you're going to need to do so you can play this... (or get lucky finding it online somewhere, like perhaps an old easily-findable reddit thread where someone asked for it and a helpful user posted an archive.org link to an older version that used to be on the shockslayer.com website.....)

I recommend doing the following steps however to get the full updated experience of the game:


These directions are the same as would be found by joining the Crystal Clear Discord ([Only registered and activated users can see links]),
where it is freely available as soon as you join the channel.
Nothing stolen/illicit here.

First, you need to find yourself a legit vanilla Pokemon Crystal ROM. Good luck. I can't help. Nintendo is no fun.

Try to get Version 1.1 of the Universal release.

Download one of these patch files, depending on the version of your Crystal ROM.
i_made_this.bps ([Only registered and activated users can see links]) (ROM version 1.0)
i_made_this2.bps ([Only registered and activated users can see links]) (ROM version 1.1)
(this is how the files are named from Crystal Clear's Discord ([Only registered and activated users can see links]), not me :P)

Go to this site to patch the ROM. ([Only registered and activated users can see links])
First select the ROM (Base file), then select the Patch (Patch file), then apply it,
and it'll offer a .gbc file named after the patch version you chose.

And that's it. You have your new Crystal Clear ROM running the BETA 2.0!
Enjoy.

You'll need an Game Boy Color emulator. My Oldboy! works well on Android, and there are many options for Windows (DreamGBC, PlayGuy, BGB...)

Hope you enjoy! It can be so repetitive to play the old games over again, and I can honestly say this game breathes a lot of life into that nostalgia :)

Also, if you cheat as much at Pokemon as you do on Neopets, you will find that pretty much all Crystal GameShark codes work properly. ;)

[Star Dream]

Does a hacked ROM qualify as an actual ROM? I could easily link a patched version if that was allowed, but I kinda doubt it. :p Anyways, the version you mentioned, e.g. the easily-found-reddit thread, will likely turn up a v1.2 or v1.3 version of the hack. It's probably for the best to hunt down a clean vanilla Crystal .gbc and then apply the v2.0b patch.

Otherwise, folks can just go here ([Only registered and activated users can see links]) if they have a 2DS/3DS with custom firmware. The .cia download there acts like any other .cia file, easily installable as a stand-alone application on the 2/3DS with any .cia installer (FBI, BigBlueBox etc).


Crystal Clear is a great hack though, 10/10 would definitely recommend as a Gen 2 experience. The open world is fantastic, the restored Kanto areas make it seem like an actual region again, and the soundtrack legit surprised me at times with its custom stuff. It allows for a lot of neat Pokemon to be obtained easily so you can craft whatever kind of team you please: my starter was a Porygon, and two of the first additions to my team were a Larvitar and an Omanyte, for example. I never trained a Pokemon that learned Fly, but it was still incredibly easy to get around with Surf, the ingame ferry system and the trains.

I haven't properly finished my playthrough yet, but I have completed my Pokedex in full on it! You mentioned that other legit games can communicate with it-- one thing I've found is that if you slot it into an N64 emulator with the Transfer Pak options properly filled out, Crystal Clear can also communicate with Pokemon Stadium 2! The interactions are clean and safe, you can easily store or use Pokemon on Stadium 2 as well as get its daily Mystery Gift function.
Even better, though, is that Poketransfer and Pokebank identify Crystal Clear as legitimate. So if you install the .cia on your hacked 3DS/2DS, you can actually migrate your Pokemon from this game to your gen6/7 game. The only "illegitimate" thing about any of the Pokemon in Crystal Clear is that they're often found in different areas than in vanilla Crystal, and Poketransfer doesn't actually pay attention to that bit of data.
You can even migrate the Celebi and Mew -- the Celebi fits legitimate parameters, while the Mew can be fixed to be legit by an ingame NPC. It's pretty great.

(That being said, if anyone without a hacked 3DS/2DS wants me to pop open their Crystal Clear save file and help transfer their Pokemon to their real-world gen6/7 games, just send me a PM. I can help with that kind of stuff. ;) )


edit #234234: Found a changelog for v2.0 Beta ([Only registered and activated users can see links]), for anyone who's played the game so far and is interested in what new content there is!

[Synth Salazzle]

Does a hacked ROM qualify as an actual ROM? I could easily link a patched version if that was allowed, but I kinda doubt it. :p Anyways, the version you mentioned, e.g. the easily-found-reddit thread, will likely turn up a v1.2 or v1.3 version of the hack. It's probably for the best to hunt down a clean vanilla Crystal .gbc and then apply the v2.0b patch.

Otherwise, folks can just go here ([Only registered and activated users can see links]) if they have a 2DS/3DS with custom firmware. The .cia download there acts like any other .cia file, easily installable as a stand-alone application on the 2/3DS with any .cia installer (FBI, BigBlueBox etc).


Crystal Clear is a great hack though, 10/10 would definitely recommend as a Gen 2 experience. The open world is fantastic, the restored Kanto areas make it seem like an actual region again, and the soundtrack legit surprised me at times with its custom stuff. It allows for a lot of neat Pokemon to be obtained easily so you can craft whatever kind of team you please: my starter was a Porygon, and two of the first additions to my team were a Larvitar and an Omanyte, for example. I never trained a Pokemon that learned Fly, but it was still incredibly easy to get around with Surf, the ingame ferry system and the trains.

I haven't properly finished my playthrough yet, but I have completed my Pokedex in full on it! You mentioned that other legit games can communicate with it-- one thing I've found is that if you slot it into an N64 emulator with the Transfer Pak options properly filled out, Crystal Clear can also communicate with Pokemon Stadium 2! The interactions are clean and safe, you can easily store or use Pokemon on Stadium 2 as well as get its daily Mystery Gift function.
Even better, though, is that Poketransfer and Pokebank identify Crystal Clear as legitimate. So if you install the .cia on your hacked 3DS/2DS, you can actually migrate your Pokemon from this game to your gen6/7 game. The only "illegitimate" thing about any of the Pokemon in Crystal Clear is that they're often found in different areas than in vanilla Crystal, and Poketransfer doesn't actually pay attention to that bit of data.
You can even migrate the Celebi and Mew -- the Celebi fits legitimate parameters, while the Mew can be fixed to be legit by an ingame NPC. It's pretty great.

(That being said, if anyone without a hacked 3DS/2DS wants me to pop open their Crystal Clear save file and help transfer their Pokemon to their real-world gen6/7 games, just send me a PM. I can help with that kind of stuff. ;) )


edit #234234: Found a changelog for v2.0 Beta ([Only registered and activated users can see links]), for anyone who's played the game so far and is interested in what new content there is!

I feel like if you linked JUST the patch and not the rom itself or the patched rom you'll be fine.

[j03]

Ahsoka is correct gloomgloom

[GloomGloom]

In the spoilers, only the patch files are available, no link to the ROMs

Also, edited it as I've started playing the new BETA which I hadn't yet; I was mistaken about getting to start in any city; you can start in either region (Pallet Town, New Bark Town). Thank you for that change log Star Dream! Even more going on than I had realized!

Also, ~~~Safari Zone~~~!