Who Said It?

A real line of dialogue from Pokemon Red and Blue or Crystal, word for word, in its Game Boy text box. Four people from that game could have said it. Only one did. Who was it?

How Do You Play Who Said It?

Dialogue, I love it! Every Pokemon game on the Game Boy talks to you through the same little box at the bottom of the screen, eighteen letters wide and two lines tall, and somehow that tiny box produced lines people still quote more than twenty-five years later. Who Said It puts one of those lines back in its box, word for word, and asks you who said it. Pick one of four people from the same game, and the answer tells you exactly who it was, where they are standing, and when they say it.

The lines are the real thing. All 255 of them (138 from Red and Blue, 117 from Crystal) were decoded straight out of the games' disassemblies, with the original line breaks, the original ellipsis tiles and the original spelling, POKéMON and all. When a line gives away its own speaker, like "I'm BROCK!", the name is blacked out until you answer, one black tile per letter so everything else sits exactly where the game puts it. Where the game would print a name you typed, you get a default name from the game itself: RED for you and BLUE for your rival, the first names on Red's naming menus (Blue swaps them around), and CHRIS and SILVER in Crystal (SILVER is the name Crystal fills in if you leave your rival nameless, which is a very rival thing to do).

Long lines scroll just like on the cartridge, so tap the text box, the A button, or the A key to keep reading. The Daily is ten lines, the same ten for everybody on the same UTC date, five from each game. Endless keeps going until your third miss, and you can narrow it down to Red and Blue or to Crystal if one of them is your home turf.

Why Did These Lines Stick With a Whole Generation?

Honestly, a lot of them had no business being memorable. They are one or two sentences from strangers you battle once and never see again! After reading every line in this game more times than I would like to admit, here is my theory, with the evidence pulled straight from the cartridges.

1. The box made every line short. Eighteen tiles per line does not leave room for speeches, so most trainers get one good sentence and then a battle. "Hi! I like shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear!" is the entire personality of a YOUNGSTER on Route 3, and its first line, "Hi! I like shorts!", is exactly eighteen tiles long, not a letter to spare. Short lines are easy to repeat at recess, and people repeated them.
2. The games repeated their jokes, so we did too. Another YOUNGSTER on that same route opens with "Hey! You're not wearing shorts!" and Crystal kept the bit going when it brought you back to Kanto. BUG CATCHER ED on Route 2 asks "If you walk in tall grass wearing shorts, do you get nicks and cuts?" and YOUNGSTER JASON on Route 11 reports that "It itches and tickles a bit when I wear shorts in the grass." That is a running gag across two generations of cartridges, about shorts. I respect it.
3. Some lines you heard over and over. Professor Oak's "This isn't the time to use that!" is not tied to any place. Red and Blue pull it up anywhere you try an item that has nothing to do right then, so everyone who ever poked around their bag in the wrong spot got scolded by Oak, by name.
4. The creepy ones were really creepy. In Lavender Town a little girl asks "Do you believe in GHOSTs?" and if you say no, she laughs: "Hahaha, I guess not. That white hand on your shoulder, it's not real." Up in Pokemon Tower a CHANNELER moans "Give...me... your...soul..." and on Cinnabar Island the Pokemon Mansion diaries tell the Mewtwo story one page at a time, ending in the basement with "MEWTWO is far too powerful. We have failed to curb its vicious tendencies..." (That last diary even starts "Diary; Sept. 1" with a semicolon, where the other three use a colon. It is in the original text, so it stays in here.)
5. The games laughed at themselves. In Pewter Gym a JR.TRAINER♂ warns you that "You're still light years from facing BROCK!" and after you beat him, he corrects himself: "Darn! Light years isn't time! It measures distance!" The man in the Mt. Moon Pokemon Center sells you a MAGIKARP for ₽500, and if you talk to him again afterwards, all you get is "Well, I don't give refunds!" And on the third floor of Celadon Mansion, the people who made the game are standing around waiting for you: "I'm the graphic artist! I drew you!"
6. The most famous line in Crystal has no words in it. RED, waiting at the top of Mt. Silver, says "…… ……" and that is his entire script, two lines of the game's ellipsis tiles, and then the battle starts. Whitney went the other way in Goldenrod: beat her and she bursts out with "Sob… …Waaaaaaah! You're mean!", and the game will not hand over the PLAINBADGE until she has stopped crying. Nobody forgets that gym.

Watch out for this oneCrystal has two people who open with the exact same words. The Elder of the Dragon Shrine asks "Strong POKéMON. Weak POKéMON. Which is more important?" as part of his quiz, and KAREN of the Elite Four starts with "Strong POKéMON. Weak POKéMON." after you beat her, then tells you "Truly skilled trainers should try to win with their favorites." If either one shows up, read all the way to the end of the line!

And one famous line is missing on purpose. Youngster Joey bragging that his RATTATA is in the top percentage is not in the Game Boy games at all. I searched the Gold and Crystal disassemblies for "percent", and the only hit is COOLTRAINER MIKE in Blackthorn Gym saying "My chance of losing? Not even one percent!" The Joey you can meet in here stands on Route 30 and says "I just lost, so I'm trying to find more POKéMON. Wait! You look weak! Come on, let's battle!" Which, to be fair, is also a very Joey thing to say.

Where Do the Lines and the Text Box Come From?

Every line is decoded from the Red and Blue and Crystal disassemblies, the fan projects that turn the cartridges back into readable source code. The game's own shorthand is expanded the way the game expands it: its # symbol prints as POKé, and its money tile prints as the Poke Dollar sign, ₽. Trainers in Red and Blue have no personal names in the game data, only a class, so a youngster is just YOUNGSTER. Crystal gave its trainers names, so there you will meet YOUNGSTER JOEY by name. The short descriptions of unnamed people, like "Old man, Viridian City", are mine, and I kept them to where the person stands so they never give the line away.

The text box is drawn fresh by this page, with no graphics copied from the games. Its frame is plotted pixel by pixel on a 160 by 48 canvas, which is exactly the size of the real box (20 tiles wide and 6 tall, the bottom third of a Game Boy screen), and every letter sits in its own 8 by 8 tile, two text lines to a box. A few pairs like 's and 't take a single tile, the same as in the games. Red and Blue get the green of the original Game Boy screen and print the blinking ▼ at the end of the second line. Crystal gets the pale yellow and black its disassembly lists as the text palette and prints the ▼ on the bottom border instead, just like the real thing.

Your homework: think of the one Game Boy line you still say out loud for no reason, then play Endless until it shows up. If it never does, tell me which one it is, it might deserve a spot! Then come back tomorrow for a new Daily. If you want more, Sprite Era asks which game drew a sprite, Dex Riddle turns Pokedex entries into riddles, and Weigh-In and Size Up test how well you really know Pokemon weights and heights. And if the grumpy old man in Viridian City is your favorite character, he is the star of the Old Man glitch.