Okay, so I’ve been on this huge nostalgia kick lately, and I just had to play Pokemon Yellow again. It was my jam back in the day, you know? But my old Game Boy is long gone, and I wasn’t about to go hunting for a used one. So, I figured, there has to be a way to play it online, right?
Finding an Emulator
First things first, I needed an emulator. Think of it like a virtual Game Boy that runs on your computer. I did a quick search and, man, there are tons of them out there! It was a little overwhelming, to be honest. I ended up going with one called VisualBoyAdvance – it seemed pretty popular and had good reviews. I just downloaded the program,installed,pretty standard stuff.
- Download a GBA emulator(VisualBoyAdvance)
- Install
Getting the ROM
Next up, the ROM. This is basically the game file itself. It contains all of Pokemon Yellow *, finding ROMs can be a bit of a gray area, legally speaking. I’m not gonna tell you where to get one, but a little searching around online should do the trick. Just, you know, be careful what you download.I found the rom and download.
- Find Pokemon Yellow ROM
- Download
Putting It All Together
Once I had both the emulator and the ROM, it was time to play! I opened up VisualBoyAdvance and I had to find the “Open” or “Load ROM” option, something like that. Clicked it, selected my Pokemon Yellow ROM file, and boom! There it was, the classic Game Boy startup screen. I was so hyped!
- Open VisualBoyAdvance
- Load ROM
Playing the Game
The controls were pretty easy to figure out. The arrow keys on my keyboard acted like the D-pad on the Game Boy, and I think it was ‘Z’ and ‘X’ for the ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons. I spent, like, an hour just wandering around Pallet Town and talking to everyone. It felt exactly like I remembered it. I choose my starter, and I get into a battle, and it’s all there. The pixelated graphics, the chiptune music. Ahhh, pure nostalgia.
So, yeah, that’s how I got my Pokemon Yellow fix. It took a little bit of setup, but it was totally worth it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a rival to beat and a Pokedex to fill!
