Pokémon Red and Blue/Version Differences

This is a sub-page of Pokémon Red and Blue.

The various iterations of Pokémon Red and Blue have had some content modified across their various releases. These Japanese releases include the original Red and Green versions, and the updated Blue version, which changed a few things like encounters, in-game trades, as well as the overworld tileset and Pokémon front sprites. The international version, redubbed Red and Blue, was based off of Blue, keeping the updated graphics, though the encounters and in-game trades were taken from Red and Green.

Revisional Differences

Introduction Cutscene

The two screens which precedes the opening cutscene were changed during the game's localization. In the first the copyright dates were updated, with the company names readjusted appropriately. As for the "Game Freak presents" screen, the "presents" graphic does not appear for some odd reason, despite it still being found in the VRAM.

Japan	US

Title Screen

The title screen had its logo changed to the international equivalent, the "POCKET MONSTERS" subtitle was removed, the copyright dates were updated, and the "Red Version" subtitle was given a red palette. Border-wise, "•RED" and "•BLUE" were re-centered, and the "POCKET MONSTERS!" were removed (alongside the tildes in Red's border). In the case of Blue's border, extra Poké Balls were added where it once stood (the leftmost Ball was also changed from blue to red, possibly to match the order on the bottom border).

Japan	US

Name Entry Screen

Not only were possible player names expanded from 5 characters to 7, but the remainder of this screen also had its layout tweaked very slightly.

Japan	International

Pokédex

The Pokédex screen underwent a rather thorough lift when the games were localized. Namely, the options on the side were squished quite a bit, losing their neat little border and only retaining its upper portion. The newly available space was specifically aimed at fitting the localized Pokémon names, which can have up to 10 characters maximum (twice of what the Japanese versions allow). This also cased the number displays to also be shifted one tile upward, as to allow for the Poké Ball icon.

As per the layout of the dex entries themselves, it wasn't changed in the slightest in the international versions, with only the Pokémon's stats being displayed using the imperial system, as opposed to the Japanese version's metric system. However, worth noting is that the international versions allows entries to be up to six lines long, as opposed to the original versions meager three.

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Region Map

The region's map was tweaked in the international versions, removing the border seen in the Japanese versions, as to leave more horizontal space for the longer localized area names. This change affects the Town Map, the Flight screen, and the Pokédex area screen. This gain of space also allowed for the addition of a decorative arrow pointing to the right. The change also shortened the text area vertically into a new single-line space, thus the up/down arrows were changed to be displayed side by side.

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Battle Interface

The main battle screen was tweaked slightly, with the option window being made one tile wider (as to allow for "FIGHT" to be spelled in full), while the Pokémon names, levels, and health bars being repositioned, taking up more space. The "BAG" and "PKMN" options also switched place. The move menu, meanwhile, was also reorganized quite a bit, with the move names now occupying the bottom window, and the typing/PP window now sitting atop it, with both options also being reversed.

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Menu Options

Miscellaneous options were tweaked slightly. For starters, the overworld menu and saving screens were expanded slightly, with the former by two tiles, and the latter by one tile. The Pokémon option, meanwhile, was tweaked quite a bit more, with everything but the menu icons being repositioned.

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Summary Screen

The stats screen was made more squished to the left, whereas the health bar and name/level were made to take up more space. As for the move submenu, the Pokémon's current level was removed, so was the dash by the EXP. points, and the move names were shifted up by one tile.

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Trainer Card

In the Japanese versions, each Gym Leader portrait features the name of the corresponding character above it, with the only exception being Giovanni, which uses three dashes as to keep his identity a secret. Moreover, atop the badge case is a title, "ポケモン バッジ", which literally translates to "Pokémon Badge". The international version, meanwhile, removed the names above the portraits due to a lack of screen space, and the atop the badge case is a much simpler "BADGES", using the games' standard font. The (now blank) graphics for the leader names are loaded in VRAM and displayed in the localized games.

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Trading Sequence

In the Japanese versions, the Pokémon trading screen is vertically aligned. Meanwhile, in the international releases, due to the lack of space, it is horizontally aligned. During the actual trade animation, the initial window was expanded by one tile to the left, as to allow for the longer Pokémon/Player names. The windows containing the Player and Trainer's names were also repositionned.

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Unknown Dungeon

The Unknown Dungeon (or "Cerulean Cave" in later games) underwent layout changes for every Generation I release, giving each of its three floors a total of three different layouts.

Floor 1F

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Floor 2F

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Floor B1F

Red and Green	International Red and Blue

Overworld Tileset

A few of the sign tiles in the overworld tileset were modified when the games were localized, namely due to the fact that they contain words.

	Gyms	Poké Marts	Pokémon Centers
Japan
English
French
German
Spanish
Italian

PC Boxes

The PC Boxes in the Pokémon Storage System were changed from 8 Boxes that can hold 30 Pokémon each to 12 Boxes that can hold 20 Pokémon each -- 240 Pokémon total, either way, but more divided for some reason.

Pokédex Entries

In the Japanese Red and Green, Nidoqueen was listed in the Pokédex as weighing 6.0 kg (13.2 lb), whereas her counterpart Nidoking weighs 62.0 kg (136.7 lb). This was corrected in Japanese Blue, where Nidoqueen weighs 60.0 kg, which was subsequently adopted in the localizations, where she weighs 132.0 lb. Interestingly, Geodude's weight was also changed, going from 20.0 kg (44.1 lb) in Red and Green, to 2.0 kg (4.4 lb) in Japanese Blue. This was later reverted in the localized Red and Blue, as well as all versions of Yellow.

Between Red and Green and Japanese Blue, Porygon's category was also modified, going from "シージーポケモン" (CG Pokémon) to "バーチャルポケモン" (Virtual Pokémon).

Hidden Items

These four hidden items were moved between Red and Green and Blue, with these changes being retained for the international versions:

• Copycat's bedroom: The Nugget was moved from the bed to the desk. This item was also fixed as it was not properly detected by the Itemfinder, could be prevented from being collected, and could be infinitely collected.
• S.S. Anne B1F: There was an out-of-bounds Hyper Potion that could only be obtained by facing the void in the corner of one of the cabins. Later moved to the bed instead.
• Silph Co. 5F: The Elixir was moved from the left plant to the right plant.
• Route 17: The Rare Candy was moved one tile up to make it harder to accidentally bump into the trainer while trying to collect this hidden item.

Blizzard Freezing Chance Value

In the original Japanese releases, Blizzard has a 30.1% chance of freezing. The localizations, Pokémon Stadium, and the Japanese Yellow, when played in Colosseum 2 mode reduce this to 10.2%. The English Yellow instruction booklet mistakenly claims that Blizzard freezes less frequently in Colosseum 2 mode, which is only true in the Japanese releases since the value was reduced to 10.2% everywhere already in Red and Blue.

Move Animations

In the original Japanese releases, certain moves such as Thunderbolt, Body Slam, or Hyper Beam will result in more rapid screen flashes than in the localized versions. This change was more than likely done to prevent the risk of triggering seizures, a change likely motivated by the Pokémon Shock incident a few months prior to the American release.

Ironically enough, the flashing speed for some of the Psychic-type moves like Confusion or Hypnosis was noticeably increased, before being toned back down in Yellow.

Substitute

In the Japanese Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow, the moves Absorb, Mega Drain, Leech Life and Dream Eater will fail if the enemy Pokémon has a substitute. In the English version and all subsequent localized versions, they can hit Pokémon behind a substitute.

Note that this is not an intentional change - the behavior was supposed to be the same across all versions, but the code that checks this case got broken when the fix for Swift was added to the localized versions. While this was fixed for Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal, the broken behavior was made a legitimate feature starting from Generation III.

MissingNo.

In the Japanese Red and Green, MissingNo.'s Pokédex species value as the ??? Pokémon doesn't appear upon capture, unlike the Japanese Blue. Missingno.'s Pokédex entry will appear provided that Cubone is not marked as seen in the Pokédex. In the Japanese Blue only, MissingNo. has a placeholder Pokédex entry of "コメント さくせいちゅう" ("comment under construction").

Virtual Console Revisions

Connectivity

When brought over to the Virtual Console, Red and Blue received a few changes, which consist of:

• When initiating a link, the Cable Club attendant's dialogue is replaced by the Virtual Console's menu on the touch screen.
• The PokéTransporter was also updated, allowing the player to send their Pokémon to the Pokémon Bank, and from there to transfer them to the Gen VII core series games.

Move Animations

The following move animations were changed also slightly to avoid rapid flashing, as usual, to comply with current seizure protection standards.

• Blizzard
• BubbleBeam
• Confusion
• Dream Eater
• Explosion
• Guillotine
• Hyper Beam
• Mega Kick
• Mega Punch
• Psychic
• Reflect
• Rock Slide
• Selfdestruct
• Spore
• Thunderbolt

(Source: Serebii)

Unused HOME Menu Banners

Every language release of every version (Red, Green and Blue) in every region includes a placeholder HOME Menu banner title plate in banner.cgfx. Two strange things stick out about this placeholder. First, the text indicates it's the title plate for a Virtual Console release of Ninja Gaiden Shadow (Japanese: Ninja Ryūkenden GB ~Matenrō Kessen~)...except that game was never released for Virtual Console. Second, the release year given is 1989; Ninja Gaiden Shadow was released in 1991.

The Virtual Console releases of the core series Pokémon games are also unique in that almost every release contains HOME Menu banner title plates for every possible language-region combination, for a total of seventeen title plates including the aforementioned placeholder (the only exception being the Korean Pokémon Silver, which is missing North American French, Spanish and Portuguese). Of these, only the title plate matching both the region and the language of the user's 3DS console is used. Part of the reason for this may be that the English, Spanish and French releases are identical between North America and PAL. However, equivalent title plates exist for South Korea, where Red, Green and Blue were never released, not even for Virtual Console. This is simply a copy of the North American English title plate in every release.

Glitches

Japanese Only

Empty Party Potion Glitch

In the Japanese releases, withdrawing the Potion at the beginning of the game and using it without any Pokémon brings up the Pokémon menu, even though the player has no Pokémon, due to an oversight in the coding. This was patched in Yellow, which bring up the message "You don't have any Pokémon!" (Japanese: ポケモンが　1ぴきも　いない!).

Hidden Item Glitch

Pokémon Red and Green have six hidden items that do not work correctly because their coordinates in the hidden item database do not match their actual coordinates on the map (or, in one case, are missing altogether). These items are listed below, first with their actual locations, and then with the locations pointed to by the hidden item database:

Item	Actual Location	Pointer Location
Nugget	Rocket Hideout B3F, next to TM10.	On the eastern machine to the south.
Calcium	Route 13, next to a sign.	Southeast corner, behind a cuttable tree.
Rare Candy	Pokémon Mansion B1F, northwest corner of the west room.	No coordinates!
Nugget	Copycat's house 2F, on her bed.	On her PC.
Rare Candy	Cerulean Cave 1F, on a rock in the center of the map.	Just one tile to the right.
Ultra Ball	Cerulean Cave B1F, on a rock in the northeast corner of the map.	Outside of the map boundaries.

Because their coordinates don't match, collecting one of these items will cause all other items in the list to disappear. However, they can be respawned by handing over a fossil to the scientist in the Pokémon lab, because the flag set when collecting one of these items (flag 255, outside of the actual list of flags for collectibles) uses an address that is also set when handing over fossils. Since the Itemfinder goes by the coordinates in the hidden item database, it will mislead you and not point to the actual locations of these hidden items.

These were fixed in Japanese Blue and the international versions.

Closed Menu Select Button Glitch

As the name implies, these glitches involve the Select button and closing a menu. The derivatives of these glitches are commonly known in Japanese as simply "Select bugs" (セレクトバグ). The closed menu Select button glitch was fully fixed in Japanese Yellow and the localizations. In applicable versions, when the player presses Select on an item, the position of the white cursor is saved when the item menu is closed with B, B. If the player then opens the Pokémon menu without using the Start menu (through a battle, a trade NPC, or the Name Rater) it is possible to exchange a "Pokémon", such as one beyond the final slot, for a Pokémon that the player presses A on. Similarly, it is possible to exchange a "move" in battle beyond the last move for a move that the player presses Select on.

In the original version of Red and Green, a closed menu Select button glitch could be achieved through opening the item menu within battle. "Rev 1" of Red and Green, as well as Japanese Blue, patched this by resetting the memory address CC35 to 00 when the items menu is closed within battle, but the glitch can still be achieved in Red and Green Rev 1 and Japanese Blue by opening the items menu from outside of battle.

This glitch allows for many memory corruption glitch techniques used by Japanese glitch-hunters. A popular Select glitch is the "dokokashira door glitch", which allows the player to decrease the warp destination value by 1 for certain warps every four steps. A description of the mechanics for this particular Select glitch can be found here.

(Source: ChickasaurusGL)

Sabrina Glitch

The Japanese Red and Green contains one of the "How did the developers not catch that?!" bugs. Losing to Sabrina in Saffron Gym makes the game think you won against her, so re-entering the Gym triggers the post-battle text, granting you TM46 (Psywave) and the Marsh Badge. This was fixed for Japanese Blue and all localizations.

(Source: ChickasaurusGL)

Cliff Glitch

In the Japanese Red and Green, it's possible to surf from the "north edge" tile of a cliff. This allows the player to avoid the "current is too fast" message in Seafoam Islands and catch Articuno without solving the boulder puzzle. This glitch was fixed in Japanese Blue and later versions.

(Source: ChickasaurusGL)

Seafoam Islands Blank Text Box Glitch

In the Japanese Red, Green, and Blue, a blank text box can displayed when pressing the A button on the right spot. Depending on the version, the glitch will behave differently:

• After closing it in Red and Green, all the menu interfaces will become slower until the option is accessed.
• After opening it in Blue, the music will stop and the game will freeze.

(Source: ChickasaurusGL)

Swift Glitch

Swift is a move that is supposed to never miss against the opponent, even if the opposing Pokémon is in the invulnerable turn of moves such as Dig or Fly. However, due to a bug, this applies to the Japanese version only if the enemy Pokémon has a substitute. In all other cases, Swift acts as a normal move which also means that it's affected by accuracy modifiers such as Double Team and Sand-Attack and also the 1/256 chance of missing like any other move in RBY.

Partial Trapping Move Glitch

This is a very odd bug that seemingly only happens in the "Rev 1" version of Red and Green; it doesn't occur either in the original version or in the international versions. If the player's Pokémon is trapped by a partial trapping move (such as Wrap), but the opponent's Pokémon is defeated via damage from a burn or poison, both Pokémon will faint. This doesn't happen the other way around (i.e. if the player's Pokémon uses a partial trapping move and then faints from burn or poison) and as such, if this glitch occurs in a link battle, it causes a desync which can cause glitch Pokémon to appear on either player's side.

Special Menu Select Button Glitch

This is a simpler Select button glitch than the closed menu Select button glitch. It was never fixed until Japanese Yellow and the localizations. In a list of elevator destinations, or the list of badges for the Cerulean City "badge guy", it is possible to "swap" the entries as if they were items, even though the cursor is not highlighted white. After swapping some entries, the list type may change to something like a list of boxed Pokémon. Corruption of the player's name, party and items is also possible in at least Japanese Blue.

(Source: ChickasaurusGL)

Oak's Parcel Glitch

In the Japanese releases, if the player already has two Pokémon species registered as caught (by evolving their starter Pokémon) before returning to Professor Oak to deliver Oak's Parcel, the game acts as if the player has already obtained the Pokédex even though they haven't, thus it becomes impossible to progress through the game because the old man in Viridian City will only move after the player has actually obtained the Pokédex.

International Only

Instant Text Glitch

If you talk to the Bike Shop owner in Cerulean City without having the Bike Voucher in your inventory and use B to back out of the menu that tries to sell you a bicycle for P$1,000,000, all subsequent text that appears in the game will appear instantly instead of scrolling in as usual.

This bug was introduced with the localizations; it did not occur in the Japanese versions of the game and was fixed for Yellow.

Brock-Skipping Glitch

In the English localization, it is possible to skip the battle against Brock by saving in the right spot and resetting to bypass the person blocking the path to Route 3. However, this was fixed in the European releases.

Viridian Old Man Glitches

The Viridian Old Man Glitch is one of the most famous glitches in Red and Blue. In Viridian City, watching the old man's tutorial on catching Pokémon copies the player's name to an area normally used to determine wild Pokémon found in the Grass. If a player then to flies to Cinnabar Island and surfs along the east coast, invalid Pokémon appear corresponding to the player's name. The same also occurs if a player surfs along the east coast of the island with the entrance to Seafoam Islands. This glitch resulted from a localization oversight that changed the tile that determines the battle type from the lower right to the lower left, while leaving the tile that determines if there can be a battle to the lower right. This glitch does not occur in Japanese Red, Green, or Blue, where the Cinnabar Island coast triggers zero wild Pokémon.

This specific method of performing the glitch was partially fixed in the Spanish and Italian versions. As a result, attempting to perform this glitch in these versions will result in the normal wild Pokémon encounters that you'd get in the water surrounding Cinnabar Island. However, using a glitch or cheat that allows you to walk on the east coast (rather than surf) enables the glitch again. As another side effect, this fix enables a glitch exclusive to the Spanish or Italian versions where surfing on any ground tile that allows wild encounters (tall grass or caves), which can be accomplished with the Surf glitch, will also give invalid Pokémon corresponding to the last trainer battled.

The Japanese versions, on the other hand, had a different bug: if your Pokémon roster and the currently active PC Box are both full, the Old Man won't be able to catch the Weedle and go into an infinite loop, effectively locking up the game. This was fixed in the localized versions.

This bug made a return in all versions of Gold, Silver and Crystal: If your Pokémon roster and the currently active PC Box are both full when attempting to watch the Dude's Pokémon catching tutorial, memory corruption will ensue.

Normally this is not possible during regular gameplay, as the Dude's catching tutorial is only viewable once, prior to being able to catch any Pokémon, and cannot be viewed after if declined. However, there is a specific workaround which involves having all party Pokémon faint due to poison from a Weedle (appears in Silver/Crystal during the day) or a Spinarak (appears in Gold/Crystal at night) at New Bark Town just after receiving Poké Balls from Elm's assistant, but before watching the catching tutorial. The whiteout respawn location must also not be New Bark Town. This workaround allows the player to return to Route 29 later, and view the catching tutorial after filling the party and current PC Box.