Pokemon CrystalDust

What would Pokemon Crystal have looked like if it had been remade for the Game Boy Advance the way Red and Green became FireRed and LeafGreen? Pokemon CrystalDust tries to answer exactly that. Created by Sierraffinity under the DoMoreAwesome name, it rebuilds Crystal's Johto on top of the Emerald engine, aiming for the look and feel of an official GBA-era remake rather than a modernised fan reimagining.

You step back into the shoes of Gold or Kris and leave New Bark Town for Johto, with towns, routes and music redrawn in the third-generation style. The project is built on pokeemerald, the community decompilation of Emerald, which let the developer add systems the GBA games never had: a custom day/night cycle that gradually shifts the colour tint across the day, the return of the Pokegear complete with a working Radio Card, and Pokemon that only appear at certain times of day, just like in Crystal.

The current version, v3, was rebuilt from the ground up. Its first public alpha arrived in late December 2020 and was followed by quick bug-fix releases up to Alpha 0.5 on 5 January 2021. That build covers the opening part of Johto, roughly up to the Sudowoodo roadblock, and some systems such as the Phone Card were not finished yet.

That is the important caveat: CrystalDust is a demo of an ambitious remake, not a full game. No newer public build has been released since January 2021, although the source code remains public on GitHub. If you go in expecting a polished slice of a GBA Crystal remake rather than a complete adventure, it is well worth a few hours.

• Crystal's Johto remade in the GBA graphical style
• Play as Gold or Kris
• Custom day/night system with smooth colour transitions
• Pokegear returns, including a Radio Card
• Time-of-day encounters, as in the original Crystal
• Built on the pokeemerald decompilation
• Link features intended to stay compatible with official games
• Distributed as a BPS patch for a clean Emerald (U) ROM

The v3 alpha ends early in the adventure, around the point where Sudowoodo blocks the road. You can explore the first towns and routes, start your Pokedex and get a feel for the remade presentation, but you will not reach the later gyms, the League or Kanto.

Because the project was restarted for v3, older CrystalDust builds you might find online are a different, earlier attempt and should not be mixed with the current alpha. Save files are not meant to carry over between them.

Apply the BPS patch to an unmodified Pokemon Emerald (U) ROM with a tool such as Floating IPS or Rom Patcher JS. Our patching guide walks through the process.

CrystalDust uses a real-time clock and a larger save. If the emulator shows a "1M sub-circuit board" error, set the save type to Flash 128K; if the clock is stuck or you see a clock battery warning, enable the Real Time Clock option. mGBA handles both automatically in most cases.

CrystalDust suits players who love Gen 2 and are curious how it would look in Gen 3 style, and anyone who enjoys watching ambitious fan remakes take shape. If you want a complete Johto experience on a small screen today, Polished Crystal or Crystal Clear are finished alternatives on the original Game Boy Color engine.