pokered

This repository contains a disassembly of the original Pokemon Red and Blue games for the Game Boy, released in the late 1990s. A disassembly means that someone took the finished game files and worked backwards to reconstruct the original source code in a human-readable form. The result is an Assembly language codebase that, when compiled, produces byte-for-byte identical copies of the original game cartridge files.

Assembly is the lowest-level programming language, sitting just above the raw instructions that a processor executes. Writing or reading it requires understanding the specific chip inside the original Game Boy hardware. The project targets that chip and produces the exact same game ROM files that Nintendo shipped, verified by matching cryptographic checksums.

The main use of a disassembly like this is to let people study how the original games work, find and document bugs, or create modified versions of the games. The repository links to a wiki with tutorials explaining how to make changes, a symbols file listing the names of functions and variables found in the code, and a set of tools for working with Game Boy assembly code.

To build the ROM files from the source code, you follow setup instructions in a separate install document. The project is part of a broader effort by the pret community, which has produced disassemblies of many other Pokemon games and Game Boy titles. There is a Discord server where contributors and enthusiasts discuss the project.