This is easily one of the best, if not THE best, translations of Pocket Monsters Midori (aka: Pokémon Green). I prefer it over the Pokémon Blue hack (which basically just “skins” it to look like Green) because it maintains all the original glitches of the original game. It also maintains the five character limit for names, just like it’s supposed to be. This is it. This is the real deal, and not a hack that simply tricks you into thinking you’re playing the Green version.

Unfortunately, although the translation description claims this to be complete, and the version number also seems to indicate a 100% translation (v1.0), the fact is the author of the translation missed a piece of dialogue between the main character and Professor Oak.

My review is, overall, positive. You can certainly play the full game to completion with this, and the translation is serious (not silly, like some others out there). However, I’d also like to make this a warning to anyone who may mistakenly believe this to be complete, as well as a request to any translators out there who may have an interest in finishing the job… it’s so close! Please, finish the translation!

I will now explain how to find the non-translated text.

After you get your starter Pokémon, battle your rival for the first time, and proceed with the quest to deliver a Parcel to Professor Oak, you will finally have access to buying Pokéballs. Which most people do, so they never find the non-translated conversation.

The secret is, do NOT buy any Pokéballs. At all. Instead, grind your starter Pokémon until he is strong enough to beat your rival’s team, on Route 22 (just West of Viridian City), by itself. After you defeat your rival, go BACK to Pallet Town and talk to Professor Oak… and you’ll find it. A whole conversation that never got translated. With this patch, you don’t even get the original Japanese symbols, just garbled text.

The conversation is relevant because you get free Pokéballs this way. IIRC, the conversation is basically Professor Oak explaining that you can’t trust just on your starter Pokémon to beat the game, and encourages you to go out and actually catch some new Pokémon, finishing with the gift of a few Pokéballs to get you started (maybe as a safety measure against the player wasting all his money on Potions or other items).

As I said, this is still the best translation ever made for this game, or at least one of them (as far as my knowledge goes), but it’s a shame that it is incomplete, and the way it’s described here may have discouraged others from having a go at a full translation.

The last update, according to this page, was July 2013, so, over seven years ago. This means it’s unlikely that the author will ever read this review, let alone proceed to make a “v1.1″ that is truly complete. My hope is that someone who has been tempted to translate this game will read this and realise there’s still a need for a 100% full translation of Pocket Monsters Midori.

I’ll take this opportunity to also remind potential translators that, AFAIK, no 100% translation was ever made for Pocket Monsters Aka (aka: Japanese version of Pokémon Red) or Pocket Mosnters Ao (aka: Japanese exclusive “Blue”), either – and the latter is actually quite important because it’s the only version of the game where you can legitimately acquire a Golem and a Gengar via in-game trades (no need to link with other games), and has a unique Pokémon distribution throughout Kanto.

I’d do it myself, but I have no idea how :/

Thank you for reading.