Pikachu5

Pikachu5
Also known as: Gardman, Diveman, Wonder Rabbit, Five Kids, Monster Brother Developer: Nice Code Publishers: Shenzhen Nanjing Technology (Gardman), Trump Grand Manufacturing (Wonder Rabbit, Diveman), Waixing (Monster Brother, Five Kids) Platform: Unlicensed NES This game has unused graphics. This game has revisional differences.

Pikachu (or Pikachu5) is a platformer where you must switch between five different Pokémon, each with their own unique ability, in order to pass obstacles.

The game is more commonly seen as generic hacked variants, such as Gardman and Wonder Rabbit. Its original Pikachu form had not been properly found for literal decades since its creation, until surfacing on a random plug-and-play console ("NX-85 TV Game Console") in 2022.

Unused Graphics

A few unused sprites of Pikachu, Nuzleaf and Combusken. The Pikachu appears to be climbing, Nuzleaf attacking, and Combusken jumping (as opposed to flying); actions which those respective characters cannot perform in-game. These graphics are intact in most hacked versions.

The Pokémon icons from Pikachu5 are still present in the data of Five Kids, Monster Brother and Wonder Rabbit, though unused. Ironically, this was the main indication of the games' Pikachu origin prior to it actually emerging...

Revisional Differences

Pikachu5	Gardman	Diveman
Wonder Rabbit	Five Kids	Monster Brother

There are five known hacked variants of the game:

• Gardman (换装人) replaces all characters with men wearing helmets. Two variants are known: one on a 72-in-1 multicart with the cartridge code XB805 without any cutscenes, and one on a stand-alone 60-pin cartridge from Shenzhen Nanjing Technology (cartridge code NJ053). Only Nanjing's version adds new cutscene graphics with Chinese text, doubling the ROM size from 256 KiB to 512 KiB in the process. The multicart variant has empty CHR data whose tiles are arranged in the nametable such that it would display "NATURE COLOR GAME" along with that brand's logo.
• Wonder Rabbit and Diveman, released by Trump Grand Manufacturing on their "Power Joy"-branded plug-and-play consoles, with Wonder Rabbit additionally seeing wide distribution on dreamGEAR plug-and-play consoles. Splitting up the game's four levels across two titles, Wonder Rabbit, changing the characters into five rabbits, contains levels 1 and 2, while Diveman re-uses the character graphics from Gardman (and has a rather badly-replaced skull on the title screen) and contains levels 3 and 4. Both variants drop the original cutscenes from Pikachu5 completely.
• Monster Brother and Five Kids, released by Fuzhou Waixing Science and Technology on various plug-and-play consoles and multicarts, similarly split up the game's four levels across two titles: Monster Brother, keeping all characters from Pikachu5 except for Pikachu itself, contains levels 1 and 2, while Five Kids uses modified character graphics from Gardman/Diveman for levels 3 and 4. Both variants also completely drop Pikachu5's original cutscenes. Monster Brother has an earlier version with no copyright notice on its title screen, and a later version with a Chinese copyright office registration number, stealing tiles that had been previously used to spell "Monster", so it just says "Brother 2007SR02108".