PokeLink

Play your own copy of Pokémon Red, Blue, Gold, Silver or Crystal inside World of Warcraft - and trade and battle with other players over WoW.

PokeLink is a full Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator written in Lua that runs in a window in your game. Bring your own legally owned ROM: PokeLink turns it into addon data on your own computer. Nothing is uploaded, and no game data is included in this download.

Features

The games, in WoW

• Pokémon Red and Blue (USA/Europe), and Gold, Silver and Crystal (USA/Europe), with the original music, sound effects and cries.
• Gold, Silver and Crystal play in full Game Boy Color colour.
• Several games side by side: switch from the minimap menu, and each one continues where you left it.
• Rebindable controls, a resizable window, and it works on Retail and Classic-era clients.
• Saves like a real cartridge. Log out mid-route and pick up exactly where you left off.

Play with other people

• Link cable over WoW: trade Pokémon and battle other PokeLink players from anywhere in the world, and trade evolutions work.
• Red and Blue trade and battle each other; Gold, Silver and Crystal trade and battle each other.
• Time Capsule: Red/Blue and Gold/Silver/Crystal players can trade with each other (the original 151 only, just like the real games).
• Team cards: see anyone's team (sprites, levels, moves, held items and badges) from their portrait, the Inspect window, the guild window or a right-click, whichever game they play. Compare Pokédexes to see what you could trade each other.
• Battle records: your wins and losses against every opponent.
• Guildmates with PokeLink show up in the guild window.

Challenge WoW's NPCs

• City leaders: Thrall, Bolvar, Magni, Sylvanas and more each give a WoW badge, plus a secret one somewhere neutral.
• Zone trainers: 16 quest givers in the starting zones and first towns battle at levels 8-35 and give ribbons, so there's something to win while your team is still young.
• Gold, Silver and Crystal players face them too, against teams of Johto Pokémon. The badges and ribbons are the same in every game.
• Alliance and Horde opponents come in matched pairs: same levels, equally strong teams.
• Link-battle rules: no items, no experience, and your team is restored afterwards.

Achievements

• 33 goals. 21 are about playing together (link up, trade, battle different players, check out each other's teams) and count in every game.
• Badges, Pokédex and Hall of Fame goals are per game: Red and Blue have their own, and Gold, Silver and Crystal have 7, including all 16 badges. A full Pokédex needs trading, just like the originals.

Fair and stable

• Red/Blue battle bugs that could desync linked games are fixed (Focus Energy, the 1-in-256 miss, Psywave, Counter and more). The games' balance is otherwise untouched.

Getting started

1. Download and open PokeLink Setup.html in your browser (it's also inside the PokeLink folder).
2. Choose your own Pokémon ROM: Red or Blue (.gb), or Gold, Silver or Crystal (.gbc). The page builds your game's folder, entirely offline.
3. Put the PokeLink folder and your game's folder (for example PokeLink_Data_Crystal) in World of Warcraft\_<version>_\Interface\AddOns, then start WoW.
4. Click the handheld button on the minimap, or type /pokelink.

More than one game? Run Setup once for each ROM and add each game's folder. Updating PokeLink later never touches your game folders.

Commands

/pokelink open/close - /pokelink game [name] - /pokelink link <name> - /pokelink trade - /pokelink battle - /pokelink team [name] - /pokelink badges - /pokelink achievements - /pokelink settings

Made with Claude

PokeLink was created with the help of Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant (Claude Code). The code, the logo and this description were written with Claude; the author directs the project, tests it in game and decides what ships.

PokeLink is an unofficial fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures Inc., The Pokémon Company or Blizzard Entertainment. Pokémon and World of Warcraft are trademarks of their respective owners. PokeLink contains no game data: you need your own legally obtained copy of the game. Sound is encoded with LAME (LGPL).