A game from 1999 always hides a few oddities: misspelled names, letters left over from translation, pieces of the game abandoned in the cartridge. Pokémon Pinball is no exception. Here are the curiosities noted by players and by series specialists, all of which you can check on your own cartridge.
Errors on screen
Letters that come from Japanese
The upgraded Balls on the table carry an engraved letter: S on the Great Ball, H on the Ultra Ball. These initials come from the Japanese names (Super Ball, Hyper Ball) and were not adapted for the English version, where they are called Great Ball and Ultra Ball. In French, the match is perfect: the official names are precisely Super Ball and Hyper Ball. The details of the Ball progression are explained on the Ball Upgrade page.
Two misnamed locations
On the map, the location displayed as “Rock Mountain” actually represents Rock Tunnel, and “Fuchia City” is missing an s compared with Fuchsia City, the name of that city in English. Our page the map and locations gives, for each location, the displayed name and the place in Kanto it represents.
The Pokédex
- Copied descriptions: the Pokédex texts in Pokémon Pinball are those of Pokémon Red and Blue, with one difference: each description ends with a period.
- Yellow in Japan, Red and Blue elsewhere: the Japanese version uses the descriptions from Pokémon Yellow. The English version, released before Yellow outside Japan, reused those from Red and Blue.
- Names in Latin letters: the Japanese version displays its messages in English, but with the Japanese names of the Pokémon written in Latin letters, for example “You got a Poppo” for Pidgey. The Japanese Pokédex, for its part, writes the names in katakana.
- Mew’s invisible slot: the Pokédex shows only 150 slots at the start; the 151st appears only once Mew has been seen. The whole story is on the Mew page.
Mew and its 1,024 hits
The game’s most famous curiosity: once Mew has appeared at the Indigo Plateau, catching it takes 256 hits for each of the four steps of the sequence, or 1,024 hits in total, compared with a handful for any other Pokémon. It is a practically impossible task, which the game makes pointless by registering Mew in the Pokédex as soon as it has been seen.
What the cartridge contains without showing it
The game’s internal files contain a pinball table that is never used and two game logos, very slightly different from the final logo. Nothing indicates what this third table was supposed to offer: it merely shows a design that evolved before release.
Depending on the console used
- On Super Game Boy, the rumble feature is disabled.
- On Game Boys older than the Game Boy Color, the game starts but changes its graphics: the table borders change texture, the letters on the lights disappear and the Pokédex animations are turned off.
See the rumble pack and the cartridge for details on compatibility.
Localization nods
- The lights of the side lanes spell CAVE in Western versions, HOLE in the Japanese version.
- During a catch, the game displays CATCH! in the West and GET in Japan.
- Pikachu smiles on the title screen of Western versions, but not in the Japanese version.
- The European version corrects “Poké Dex” to “POKéDEX” in the menu.
The full list is in regional differences.
