Trainers

This is a sub-page of Proto:Pokémon Gold and Silver/Spaceworld 1997 Demo.

The demo features a decent handful of trainers (some of which are named after Game Freak staff members, funnily enough), which you can fight as you traverse the first two routes and their accompanying forest dungeon. They were meant to give players a sneak peek of the new Pokémon that you could expect to see in the upcoming games. These trainers are moderately difficult due to the fact that you have limited Poké Balls to capture Pokémon, and that there is no way to heal your party due to the Pokémon Center not being functional.

General Notes#

• Losing to any trainer, Rival included, will make you black out and then kick you back to the title screen.
• None of the trainers can spot you from afar. This feature was likely disabled so that you could choose not to fight any trainer, letting you progress onto the end of the demo. In order to battle a trainer, you will have to talk to them first.
• Each version has different trainers. Indeed, while they share their map position and overworld sprite, they are almost entirely of a different Trainer class, complete with different names and dialogue before and after you fight them.
• Interestingly enough, trainers that are only featured in a given version also exist in the data of the other, unused, and with slightly different team attributes.
• Since the game was built from Red and Green, data for many of the original Red and Green parties exist unaltered as well. There are also additional parties that are Gold- and Silver-exclusive that use the original format, which the game no longer properly recognizes.

Gold Version#

Used Trainers#

Unused Trainers#

Silver Version#

Used Trainers#

Unused Trainers#

Old Format#

When Gold and Silver started development, the code base borrowed a lot from the original Generation I games. Namely, the data for trainer parties, for instance, still consists of the mostly unaltered data from Red and Green. The Generation I format used to represent trainer parties is different in comparison to the one used in the demo and beyond.

The old format only lists the level of the Pokémon and the Pokémon's internal ID, since trainer names, items, and specific moves weren't a feature in those games. During the time of the demo, a new format was created to represent trainer parties consisting of the trainer's name, AI, and individual properties for each Pokémon (level, held items, or moves for example). The data present in the demo suggests that there was a time that the game was implementing new trainers using the original Red and Green format, with the newer format being implemented very late - shortly before the completion of the demo. This is evident in the rival battle in story mode, which still uses the old format. This is also the reason why the battle is broken when running in-game, since the game engine itself expects the data to be in the newer format, suggesting that story mode was made quite early on in development, when the old battle format was still being used.

The table below consists of the unused trainer party data that was added for Gold and Silver, with the majority of the unused trainers consisting of Generation II Pokémon. It's possible that some of the trainer parties are simply test parties made up by the programmers for various reasons, as some of them don't seem to match the trainers carrying them. Moreover, in most cases these random Pokémon are relatively close to one another in the Pokédex.

Unused Trainer "Line of Sight" Function#

In this build, trainers cannot spot you from afar. However, all of demo trainers still have a variable for this exact purpose. In fact, every apparent trainer NPC up to West has a non-zero value; after this, the value is always set to 0 (as is the case for Gym Leaders and regular NPCs). The given number represents how far the trainer can spot the player, depending on which direction they are facing.

Silent Hills (dungeon)#

• Bug Catcher Junichi/Bug Catcher Kenji: 4
• Bug Catcher Sousuke/Bug Catcher Ken: 4
• Beauty Megumi/Lass Atsuko: 5
• Firebreather Akito/Fisherman Hisao: 2
• Schoolboy Tetsuya/Sportsman Shigeki: 5

Route 2#

• Kimono Girl Koume/Kimono Girl Tamao: 3

Old Gym/League#

• Old League Trainer A (bottom left pillar; Youngster OW sprite): 1
• Old League Trainer B (bottom right pillar; Youngster OW sprite): 1
• Old League Trainer C (top right pillar; Lass OW sprite): 1
• Old League Trainer D (top left pillar; Super Nerd OW sprite): 1
• Gym Guide: 1 (most likely a copying error)

Five-Story Pagoda#

1F

• Pagoda 1F Trainer A (Sage OW sprite): 3
• Pagoda 1F Trainer B (Sage OW sprite): 2
• Pagoda 1F Trainer C (Sage OW sprite): 2
• Pagoda 1F Trainer D (Sage OW sprite): 4

2F

• Pagoda 2F Trainer A (Medium OW sprite): 2
• Pagoda 2F Trainer B (Medium OW sprite): 2
• Pagoda 2F Trainer C (Medium OW sprite): 2
• Pagoda 2F Trainer D (Medium OW sprite): 2

3F

• Pagoda 3F Trainer A (Sage OW sprite): 2
• Pagoda 3F Trainer B (Sage OW sprite): 3
• Pagoda 3F Trainer C (Sage OW sprite): 2
• Pagoda 3F Trainer D (Sage OW sprite): 2

4F

• Pagoda 4F Trainer A (Sage OW sprite): 3
• Pagoda 4F Trainer B (Sage OW sprite): 5
• Pagoda 4F Trainer C (Sage OW sprite): 5
• Pagoda 4F Trainer D (Sage OW sprite): 4

Route 3#

• Route 3 Trainer A (Youngster OW sprite; along southern fence): 5
• Route 3 Trainer B (Youngster OW sprite; near gate): 3

West Gym/League#

• West League Trainer A (Lass OW sprite; outside tree perimeter): 3
• West League Trainer B (Cooltrainer♀ OW sprite; spins): 3
• West League Trainer C (Lass OW sprite; in front of the fountain): 2
• West League Trainer D (Twin OW sprite; weirdly solo): 2