8 Comments
  1. I’ve told this story a few times, but I’ve held a legit version of this cart – and the friend who got it claimed he brought it from a bootlegger in Australia. Of course, we were kids back then and he was simply amused at the swearing, but still.

  2. the reasoning behind the pokemon names is very interesting

    basically a large number of them is corruption from misreading (han)dakuten marks and inconsistently using japanese and chinese names, as well as format restrictions
    so for example we have HULA for Umbreon, why? Blacky -> Burakki -> Bura -> Hula

    other times curiously though it seems there was a localization attempt somewhere in the middle of the translation chain, with certain evolution lines that seem to come out of nowhere, but are intentionally named in a matching way

    1. Also Elf for Pokémon, because Pokémon was localized as “宠物小精灵” Pet Little Spirit in China, and the word for Spirit (精灵) is also one of the words used to translate Elf. Thus, Pet Little Elf.

      (“Magic Baby” comes from the old Taiwanese localization, “神奇寶貝”. Pokémon is now localized as 精灵宝可梦/精靈寶可夢, keeping the word 精灵. Pokémon Sun & Moon each have two separate Chinese translations, but Pokémon names are identical across both, a rarity in Chinese localizations!)

      Similarly, refrigerator: 冰箱 -> ice box, New Bark Town: Wakaba (Japanese 若葉) Town -> ZH Ruoye (Japanese 若葉) Town… All this mistranslation via Chinese in just the first 15 minutes!

  3. To clarify, I don’t know if this person bought this in Vietnam or what, but it is very obviously based on a Chinese translation of the game. They are called “Little Elfs” in China and some names (Dr. “Wusiji”) and untranslated words (ruoye, caocun) are from Chinese pinyin. No idea why they call it Vietnamese Pokemon as it has none of the trappings of Vietnamese language

  4. bought a copy on ebay for $5, kept it 2 years and sold it for $100.
    it’s korean, not vietnamese and not chinese. Pocket Monsters Green (bootleg green) is a chinese translation.

  5. Hello!I don’t know how to run this.Could anyone give me instructions?

  6. This remind me that bootleg Emerald English version, same as this, Japanese to Chinese then English, so you will see someshow “Tianyuan City” (Mistranslate of Littletoot Town), and made me laugh

  7. This remind me that bootleg Emerald English version, same as this, Japanese to Chinese then English, so you will see somehow “Tianyuan City” (Mistranslate of Littleroot Town to “天元市”), and made me laugh a little.
    I will see this bootleg Crystal has what bad translations.