Low Budget Crystal
Three regions on one Game Boy Color cartridge, 525 Pokémon, and a world that scales to you so you can take the gyms in almost any order.
More about the game
Low Budget Crystal is aaron's rebuild of Pokémon Crystal on the Crystal Shire Engine, a fork of the Crystal disassembly that carries more than 255 Pokémon and moves. It puts Johto, Kanto and Hoenn on one cartridge with 525 Pokémon, regional variants, megas and a set of new species, and it rebuilds every trainer in the game twice — once for Normal and once for Hard. The part that changes how you play it is the level scaling: wild Pokémon and trainers work their levels out from how many badges you have, so the three regions are all open from the start and you can take twenty-four gyms in almost any order. There are two leagues, a World Tournament, a level cap you can switch on or off at the start, and three places to begin the game. It is a beta, and the creator says so.
What's different, point by point
- Johto, Kanto and Hoenn on one Game Boy Color cartridge
- 525 Pokémon, including regional forms, 42 megas and a set of species original to this game
- Wild and trainer levels are worked out from your badge count, so nothing is out of your depth and nothing stays easy
- 24 gyms in almost any order — all three regions are open from the first hour
- Gym leaders bring a bigger team at 4 badges and a bigger one again at 14
- Two leagues: the Indigo Plateau and Ever Grande
- A World Tournament in Hoenn, with its own bracket of fights
- An optional level cap you switch on or off when the game starts
- Start in New Bark Town, Pallet Town or Littleroot Town, and pick from 18 starters
- 32 abilities on a Generation II engine, and 82 TMs and HMs
- A Normal and a Hard set of trainers, chosen when you start
aaron
This guide is built from aaron's own documentation. The game, the ideas and the work are theirs — the site just makes the numbers searchable. Play it from the official page, and send them the feedback and the thanks.
What this guide covers
Every guide here is built from the game's own documentation. Where a ROM hack changed something but never published the numbers, this says so rather than quietly filling the gap with the original game's — which would be worse than leaving it out.
| Section | Source | |
|---|---|---|
| Wild Pokémon by area | From the game itself | Every wild table in the game: grass by time of day, surfing, all three rods, headbutt trees, swarms, the Bug-Catching Contest, the set-piece battles written into the map scripts and the gift Pokémon. |
| Encounter rates | From the game itself | Read from the game's own probability table and each area's own encounter rate, not assumed from Crystal. |
| Wild levels | From the game itself | Grass and surf levels are steps above a base the game works out from your badge count, and are printed that way. Fishing, headbutt, gift and contest levels are fixed and printed as they are. |
| Stats, abilities and movesets | From the game itself | All 525 species: stats, types, abilities, level-up moves, TM and HM compatibility and evolutions, read from the game's own tables. |
| TM and HM compatibility | From the game itself | All 75 TMs and 7 HMs, with compatibility for every species. |
| Where TMs are found | From the game itself | Found by reading the map scripts. 67 of the 82 have a pickup written into a map; the rest are handed over by an event the scripts don't tie to one place, and say so. |
| Trainer and boss teams | From the game itself | Every trainer party in the game, on both Normal and Hard, including the gym leaders' three teams each and the World Tournament bracket. 18 fights build a random team at run time and have nothing fixed to list. |
Credits
- Low Budget Crystal: aaron
- The game's source code, which every number in this guide is read from: aaronjeter/CrystalShireEngine, branch LevelScaling
- CrystalDex, the game's documentation site, used here to check this guide's numbers: Snorelaxe
- Sprite art for the regional variants, megas and new species: Nuuz, SageDeoxys, Rosie, Accad501, HexTheSpriter, Kester Henrick, rainbowdevs and Aonyx
- The Crystal Shire Engine the game is built on: Fellowship of the Roms
- The Pokémon Crystal disassembly the engine is built on: the pret team
- Sprites via PokéAPI; base move and TM data from PokéAPI and Bulbapedia.
Reading the tables
LevelsWild levels are not fixed. The game stores a step for each slot and adds it to a base that grows with your badge count, then adds a random 0 to 4. Those slots are shown as Base+1, Base+3 and so on. Fishing, headbutt trees, gifts and the Bug-Catching Contest are fixed and print as plain numbers.
TrainersA trainer's Pokémon works the same way, on its own base. The levels here are real numbers, worked out at the earliest badge count the game will field that team: for a gym leader or an Elite Four member that is the badge count named in the fight's title or the one the door to their room wants, and for everyone else it is no badges, which is the earliest you could meet them. Each Pokémon also says how far above the base it sits, so you can work out what it will be when you get there.
DifficultyEverything is the Normal game unless it says otherwise. Where the Hard teams differ, the fight is listed twice and each one is labelled.
NamesWhere the game gives two Pokémon the same name — a regional form, one of the alternate designs, or a mega — this guide adds the form in brackets so each has a page of its own. Alola, Galar, Hisui and Mega are the game's own groupings; Variant is the set the game files keep together as alternate designs.
RatesSlot percentages come from the game's own probability table: 30/30/20/10/5/4/1 for the seven grass slots and 60/30/10 for the three water slots. The per-area “N% of steps” figure is that area's own encounter rate. * marks anything at 5% or less.
AreasAreas are named after the game's own map constants, so floors and halves of a route are listed separately, the way the game stores them.
AbilitiesThis game adds its own 32 abilities to an engine that had none. They are not the official abilities with the same names, and a Pokémon can have more than one; what each does is in the “How it plays” section.