Adam “Koolboyman” Vierra and his team made a ROM hack called Pokémon Prism. The hack was for Pokémon Crystal and would have allowed fans the opportunity to explore new territories in Naijo. After working on the ROM hack for over eight years, the project was shut down by Nintendo with a cease and desist order. The cease and desist order came four days before Pokémon Prism was set to release.
While fans were disappointed, they will be happy to know that the project has surfaced online! Many fans were waiting for the fan-made ROM hack and are glad that the Pirates had the chance to get copies of it and have uploaded them.
Tech Times reported that Adam “Koolboyman” Vierra and the others working with him are going to face lawsuits from the leading game developer. The pirates who have uploaded the files on 4chan forums have made it clear that there isn’t any affiliation with the developers of Pokémon Prism.
The Pirates made it clear that the developers hadn’t uploaded the Pokémon Prism files on the internet. The Pirates got access to the files because of carelessness on the part of the developers.
While the pirates uploaded the files with this note, they were sure to remain anonymous since they will be fined thousands of dollars for circulating a game that has a cease and desist order against it.
Kotaku reported that the pirates feel that the cease and desist order from Nintendo wasn’t a very smart move. They could have used the fan-made ROM hack, Pokémon Prism to popularize the Pokémon franchise. The Pirates added that Nintendo wasn’t right in destroying the hard work put in by the developers for Pokémon Prism.
The ROM hack for Pokémon Crystal saw the developers manipulate the read-only memory of Pokémon Crystal to provide new experiences within the same game. Players could have had the opportunity to play as Lance’s son or daughter. They could have also taken the role of Elite Four Champion from Pokémon Blue and Pokémon Red.
Pokémon Prism would have also offered the players the chance to discover Pokémon types like Gas, Abnormal, and Sound during the game.
The game that is currently available on the internet, thanks to the pirates, is slightly different from the version that players would have access to if Pokémon Prism were released on 25th December. The Pirates have also avoided copyright issues by slightly altering the game and changing the end-game credit with a thank you message for the players.
The pirates said that it would have been a risky move to keep the names of the developers of Pokémon Prism in the end credits and hence they replaced it with a thank you note. While the players need to recognize the original developers for the amount of effort they had put in for Pokémon Prism, it would have been an unnecessary risk, and hence they deleted the credits.
Pokémon Prism was much-anticipated. Some players had the opportunity to try the demo version on the Twitch Plays Pokémon channel. Nintendo ordered the cease and desist on the 21st forcing Adam “Koolboyman” Vierra to shut down his website.
This action consequently removed Pokémon Brown and Rijon Adventures, which were ROM hacks for Pokémon Red and Pokémon FireRed respectively. While the final build for the rest of the ROM hacks is available online, the same wasn’t true for Pokémon Prism and fans feared that this would be the end of the road for Pokémon Prism. However, thanks to the pirates, the files turned up online on the very next day along with a README file.