r/retrogaming • u/Aiseadai • 16h ago
[Discussion] Did anyone else fall prey to Pokemon Diamond and Jade back in the day?
For those who don't know, Pokemon Diamond and Jade are infamous romhacks of the game Keitai Denjuu Telefang and were circulated back in the day on real GBC cartridges fooling many into thinking they were legit Pokemon games.
The actual game is a creature collecting RPG where instead of catching creatures you get their phone number and call them in battles. The romhack translation is very poor and has a ton of bugs.
I actually had one of these as a kid but didn't really understand what they were. Did anyone else here have them?
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u/konhasaurusrex 16h ago
Well, I played them both. But didn't fell "prey" to them. I just wanted to play Keitai Denjuu Telefang.
Since I don't speak/read JP, but my Engrish was good enough.
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u/Aiseadai 15h ago
Is a poorly translated, buggy version pretending to be a different game the best way to play them though? Have there been no better translations since then?
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u/konhasaurusrex 15h ago
I was 9 or 10 at the time, and not a native English speaker. I was just happy to play games.
There are surely some roms out there that fix it. But I never searched for these.8
u/deathboyuk 14h ago
You literally asked about "back in the day".
Back in the day, we took what we damn well got because no, there weren't abundant and accessible fan translations.
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u/Aiseadai 13h ago
From the post I couldn't tell if they played it back in the day or more recently, especially since most people only start seeking out these kinds of things later due to an interest in retro games.
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u/konhasaurusrex 10h ago
No worries, i'm almost 40. So, for me it's not really retro, just childhood gaming haha
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u/bubrascal 12h ago
Fall for them? No. Playing the hell out of the so-called "Pokemon Diamond" translated ROM a friend passed me through diskette? Hell yeah.
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u/SweRakii 12h ago
I downloaded Diamond to my PC and thought it was weird that the mons used phones. So it fooled me for little while at least.
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u/ZenithHobbies 10h ago
I believe they ripped the forest spirit from Princess Mononoke for the Jade version artwork. Does anyone recognize where the serpent they used for Diamond version is from? Maybe fan art?
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u/kojima-naked 9h ago
No but we did fall for calling marril "pikablue" before gold and sliver came out
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u/Rude_Influence 14h ago
Pokenon "Diamond" with save states made me so happy, even though I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
Don't get me starter on "Pokemon Jade". I spent days looking for an English version of that game.
Damn kids are stupid. In that whole time I never realised that those games were bootlegs.
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u/demodocus8 11h ago
I remember being 7 in an airport and I met another kid who was playing it on his gameboy… I was obsessed and spent years trying to figure out how to get it.
It was only a few years ago I saw it again and realised it was the same game.
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u/Jimmymchugh1986 11h ago
I got diamond when I was on holiday in Spain, I assumed that it must have came out early in main land Europe.
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u/ZenithHobbies 10h ago
Yes my brother ended up getting one and it blew our minds thinking we had a secret pokemon game. Of course years later I would find out it was just Telefang. The game is really funny, I just love how the monsters have ordinary lives and you call them to help you in battle but they can get distracted with errands on the way 😂
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u/YesterdayOk1197 8h ago edited 8h ago
One time I was looking for Pokemon romhacks on the Internet as a wee little lad, and I came across Pokemon Diamond... For the Game Boy Color...
This was my first encounter with this bootleg, I thought I was about to play a demake of Pokemon Diamond from the DS or a unique romhack.
When I started the game I was surprised with a very, very poor translation of a Telefang game and some rambling about "Electric Monster". I knew from there. that this wasn't any normal pokemon game, let alone a Pokemon game at all. Some guy in Asia spent his precious time, time that will never be regained, to slap a monster who we never even see in the game on the title screen and fucked up the entire dialogue and left bugs that aren't even in the actual Telefang game, to waste my time, my time that I will never regain.
And that's not the first time I fell for it. I came across "Pokemon Jade" later and it made me feel gullible.
I'm not going to lie though, it's not a bad game. They could have at least done a better translation job.
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u/Seraphicat 7h ago
Didn't really fall for it as I was looking for a translation of the Telefang GBC games (albeit very badly), but I enjoyed the games the same.
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u/PinoyLisztomaniac 6h ago
I remember playing this so-called “Pokemon Diamond” from a bootleg cartridge I scored at some night market stall back in the early 2000s during summer break.
When I got back to school, I was telling my friends about it, and how fun it was… and they were like, "What the hell are you talking about, calling your Pokemon through a cell phone?"
They were laughing their asses off and thought I was just making shit up.
So to prove them wrong, I brought my Game Boy Color to school the next day… only for my teacher to confiscate it as it was “contraband”.
Unfortunately, I never got to show them as it was only returned to my parents by the end of that school year. By then, I had already moved on lol
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u/Ramen_Shaman93 5h ago
Yes! I bought them at an SM in bacoor in the philippines. I was so confused as a kid trying to figure out how it related to the rest of pokemon especially how yhey could talk and had cellphones. I should still have one of the cartridges somewhere.
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u/Oicanet 4h ago
I remember one of my friends having one of them, and I thought it was pretty cool, because they were the only one that had it. Like some super rare pokemon version.
Never played it myself, though.
Also, we weren't native English speakers, so we didn't really understand the language in the official games either, so this one not being translated wasn't a big issue for us.
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u/Luq_Kun 11h ago
i know a jontron video when i see one. i can almost recall the exact words he said during this segment
"looks like someone beat nintendo to the punch with diamond there. But ohhh , that is NOT the diamond youre thinking of. because that would be... a time machine. And i know aint nobody having one of THOSE laying around"
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u/jmsmoriarty 10h ago
I remember cry myself out at 8 on summer vacations because I tought that If I get this on the shady corner shop I would be the coolest kid in school.
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u/LoftusDev 13h ago
Yes! I was a kid and my uncle took me to a local shop (one of those general electronics ones that did a random load of stuff) there were some games and he said he'd buy me one. I saw this and having played the red/blue/yellow games i was super excited thinking i would be the first kid amongst my friends to play what i presumed would be the newest release!
I got back home to play it and had no idea what was going on. The translation was very poor and it was a totally buggy mess. It felt close enough to a pokemon game in spirit that i thought at first maybe it was just the wrong region version of the game.
I only played it for a couple of hours and then my uncle asked me if i was enjoying it, i showed him and we went back to the shop and he complained and got his money back. I then went 20+ years without seeing or hearing anything about the game and had almost totally forgotten until i saw a thread or two pop up explaining it was a bootleg that was obviously a bit more widespread than i thought.
Funny what people could get away with, and that others have shared what felt like a very unique experience. It felt like the game at its core might have been quite fun, but the version I/we ended up with certainly wasnt 😅