Pokemon Prism: A Spoiler-Free Guide to Start You Off in Naljo

I’m sure most people have heard of Pokemon Prism or played it. It started out as a love project and fell through its share of trials to where it is now. If you haven’t heard of Pokemon Prism, then I can give you a quick run down of the history. It started out as a romhack by Koolboyman, based on Pokemon Crystal. It gathered a lot of attention and eventually showed up on a TwitchPlaysPokemon stream. Nintendo caught wind of it and sent a Cease and Desist and the project stopped, but in the process that Cease and Desist got the hack to shoot in popularity. It was then picked up by the Rainbow Devs after some time and is in development to this day, based on the Pokecrystal disassembly, now.

Pokemon Prism was a marvel of the time, it introduced new mechanics from later games and visuals. It was the second hack to create a different region inside of a pokemon game. Prism is the sequel to Pokemon Brown, also by Koolboyman and so it also included the Rijon Region and more. You have the capability to earn more than 16 badges and fight Power Rangers, I mean Palette Patrollers. Mining, crafting, smelting and jeweling are among the mix of new mechanics to it. There are a couple other extra features that didn’t show up in pokemon games, as well. You see a lot of the mechanics from it in other modern romhacks, but many of these were new at the time. The mechanics alone, make it a cool hack, those features really show what our old Gameboy Colors truly can do.

Naljo and Her Story… Vaguely

The main storyline takes place in the region of Naljo. In it you, like many other pokemon games, end up saving the world and fighting your way to the top of the Pokemon League at the same time. You have your rival, who is a rather brutal personality, he eventually changes for the better. You discover pokemon from later generations in the region, too. If you take the time to explore, you’ll find small hints of memes and cool new tools to use. If you ever need help in the main story, there is a point by point walkthrough guide linked on the Prism discord to help you. I’ve used it myself in the multiple times I’ve started the game, because there are just those parts that you don’t wanna fight through over and over.

I really don’t want to spoil the Naljo storyline for you, but I will tell you that it is an interesting ride. There were some parts where it didn’t quite seem obvious to me where to go next. I did use the guide for those moments, but is was a good experience going through and fighting through ruins and a prison. Running through towns that didn’t have a pokemon center is a new experience, too. One of those places had a hotel you could pay to use instead. Naljo did seem a bit more varied than the other regions you see in mainline pokemon games, but I haven’t played every one of them either.

Spoiler-Free Tips

As a standard, don’t be afraid of picking up a new pokemon as you go. There are a couple places where you get given pokemon, granted grinding can be a bit of a hassle sometimes. One important thing, make sure to have an electic and a fire pokemon in your party, you’ll be glad you did. Also, it is never a bad thing to have one in your party as a dedicated HM user.

In conclusion, Pokemon Prism was a great experience as I went through Naljo. I’ll spoil more details in later installments, this one I wanted to give a general overview to wet your palettes. And maybe for those that don’t like spoilers, that haven’t played, you’ll explore further than even I will later on. Go pick it up at the website  or you can join the discord ,too. A lot of the info and a full walkthrough can be found at the massive documentation spreadsheet.