Footprint Detective

What Are the Gold, Silver and Crystal Footprints?

Footprints, I love them, and I am pretty sure you forgot they existed! Open a Pokedex entry in Gold, Silver or Crystal and look at the top right corner of the page. Sitting up there is a little square, 16 pixels by 16 pixels, with a print stamped inside it. That is the Pokemon's footprint. There is no colour and no shading (every pixel is either ink or nothing, one bit apiece), and the game never once asks you about it, which is exactly why almost nobody remembers them. So I made a game that does.

The prints live in one table with 256 slots, one per species number, and Gold, Silver and Crystal use the exact same prints, byte for byte (I checked every file in both disassemblies). The table is stored in a strange order, too: eight top halves, then the eight matching bottom halves, then the next eight Pokemon, and so on. The people who took the game apart left a note about it right in the code: "Whoever was editing footprints forgot to fix their tile editor." Honestly, relatable. After Celebi, five extra prints numbered 252 to 256 fill the table out to 256 slots, five near copies of one lumpy shape that no Pokemon owns.

How Many Pokemon Have No Footprint at All?

Here is the first surprise: 55 of the 251 Pokemon have no footprint, just an empty square. That is 37 from Kanto and 18 from Johto. A lot of it makes sense, since snakes, fish, ghosts and rocks do not leave prints, so Ekans, Magikarp, Gastly and Geodude all come up blank. Then it gets weird! Zubat has no print, Golbat has one, and Crobat is blank again. Gloom leaves a print but Bellossom does not, Smoochum has one but Jynx does not, and Larvitar and Tyranitar both have prints while Pupitar, the Hard Shell Pokemon in the middle, is empty. Onix and Steelix are blank, and so are Ditto and Unown. The game never asks about a blank square, because you cannot solve a case with no evidence.

How Many Pokemon Share the Same Footprint?

The other 196 do have a print, and I compared every one against every other, pixel by pixel. They make 189 different prints, because four groups share a print exactly, 11 Pokemon in total:

• Caterpie, Weedle, Staryu and Starmie all leave the same little blob, which is a lot of Pokemon for one blob.
• Venomoth, Kabuto and Spinarak share a single 2 by 2 square, the smallest print in the game.
• Pidgey and Spearow share one bird foot, the only exact twins that are both birds.
• Sentret and Hoppip share a small rounded dot, which is a strange pair: a Scout Pokemon and a Cottonweed Pokemon.

Count the shapes alone, ignoring where each one sits in its square, and the number drops to 187, because two more pairs are the same stamp pressed one pixel off. Squirtle's print is Bulbasaur's moved one pixel left, and Corsola's is Chikorita's moved one pixel up. And the closest pair that is not a twin? Espeon and Swinub, a Sun Pokemon and a Pig Pokemon, whose prints differ by exactly one pixel. One!

What Are the Best Footprints?

I have stared at all 196 of these for longer than I would like to admit, and a few of them are something else. Tap a button to load one into the lookup above.

• Arcanine. The biggest print in the game, 134 pixels of paw. Its Pokedex category is literally LEGENDARY, so I guess it had to leave a mark.
  Look up Arcanine
• Bellsprout. Not a foot at all, it is a spray of little roots drawn in 16 separate pieces, more than any other print. Weepinbell and Victreebel, meanwhile, leave nothing.
  Look up Bellsprout
• Doduo. The only print that runs the full 16 pixels across its square, wall to wall. Two heads, and apparently very wide feet.
  Look up Doduo
• Hitmonlee and Hitmontop. Their prints have the biggest holes in the game, 21 empty pixels walled in by ink. Snorlax gets a hole too, 16 pixels, right in the middle.
  Look up Hitmonlee
• Kabuto. The whole print is four pixels, the smallest in the game, and Venomoth and Spinarak leave the exact same one, so good luck in court.
  Look up Kabuto

How Does Footprint Detective Keep Every Question Fair?

By comparing pixels, never by eye. Before a question goes out, every suspect's print is checked against the real answer's. Anyone whose print is identical, is the same shape moved over, or comes within three pixels of it (after sliding the two prints up to three pixels in any direction to line them up) gets thrown out of the line-up, so there is always exactly one right answer. Blank squares are never asked about and never show up as suspects.

The wrong answers are not random either. The game prefers suspects from the same evolution family, suspects that share a type or an egg group (a handy stand-in for body shape), and ones whose print is about the same size, so a Water type's print usually stands next to other swimmers. Pick someone from the right evolution family and your result line gets a dark shade instead of an empty one, because you were close.

The Daily is ten prints, the same ten for everybody on the same UTC date, picked from the date alone with no server involved, and never two from the same twin group. Endless keeps going until your third miss.

Where Does the Data Come From?

Straight out of the community disassemblies of Gold, Silver and Crystal. The footprints are the one-bit graphics in their footprints folder, decoded and checked against both games. The names, categories, heights and weights on the reveal are Crystal's own Pokedex data, and the sprites are the real in-game front sprites in the style each Pokemon debuted with: Red and Blue's sprite in its Super Game Boy colours for Kanto, and Gold's sprite and palette for Johto.

Your homework: pick your favourite Pokemon in the lookup and check its print. If the square is empty, I am sorry, you probably picked a fish. Then come back tomorrow for ten new prints, and if footprints turn out to be your thing, Sprite Era does the same kind of detective work on the sprites themselves.