Controversy Explained: Gen 1 Beta Sprite Leak

Written by Dr Lava, February 21 2019 • Updated January 2, 2020

Well, it’s been another exciting week for Pokemon beta leaks. Helix Chamber, a group dedicated to preserving old Pokemon media, was able to get their hands on some Gen 1 prototype assets. These assets included back sprites (but not front sprites) for 17 previously-unknown Pokemon, including Marowak’s evolved form, baby Zubat, and many who are unnamed and can’t be identified. But the actual reveal of the leak was a disaster, leaving Helix Chamber with egg on their face, and leading many to believe the entire leak was fake. So let’s have a look at who was involved, what the leak contained, and why its publication was so controversial.

Who Are These People?

You might be wondering, who is Helix Chamber? HC is a group of preservationists who operate a blog primarily focusing on Pokemon’s first generation. The group is composed of about 5 core members and a dozen non-core contributors, and they cooperate on various projects via Discord. Since starting their blog about six months ago, they’ve published eight articles — a small body of work, but every article they’ve written has been extremely well-researched. These eight articles gained them a lot of street cred in the Pokemon community, as well as 3000 followers on Twitter.

There was another group involved in this week’s debacle — Pokethon. A Twitch team consisting of 62 members, the group live-streams Pokemon marathon runs to raise money for charity. And they’ve been quite successful — in recent months they’ve raised over $26,000 for DirectRelief, a charity dedicated to disaster-relief. I wasn’t familiar with Pokethon before this week’s events, but by all appearances, they seem to be very nice people.

How the Leak Happened

Now that you know who was involved, let’s talk about how the leak occurred. It started in summer 2018 when Helix Chamber was contacted by a collector in possession of assets dating back to Pokemon Red & Green’s development. Helix Chamber claims they’re frequently approached with fake beta content, so they put this collector through a series of tests to confirm their legitimacy. The collector was able to provide information that Helix Chamber knew to be true, but wasn’t in the public record yet.

For example, Helix Chamber explained that, “At first we were skeptical, as you should be when someone makes a claim like this. However, at the time we were working on the Kaiju Zukan enhancements. We were the only ones who had seen Kotora in slot 159, and when asked to see 159, there it was in full detail.” The collector passed Helix Chamber’s tests, which seemed to prove his prototype assets were legitimate.

[January 2, 2020 Update: Court records and a recent confession have revealed the source of this leak wasn’t exactly a “collector,” or at least it wasn’t the kind of collector people were imagining back in February 2018. Helix Chamber’s source was actually a hacker who broke into Nintendo servers, although they didn’t know that at the time they published the leak. This same hack was also the source of the Gold & Silver demo leak and the Gen 4 beta sprite leak. The story covering that hack can be found in this December 2019 article. The article about the hack also explains why only Gen 1 back sprites were leaked, and not the corresponding front sprites.]

After obtaining some never-before-seen back sprites and some other beta content like map and trainer data, Helix Chamber produced a romhack with these newly discovered assets. They also implemented some front sprites, Pokemon names, and Pokedex entries — which they created themselves — in order to complement the back sprites. After all, you can’t make a Red & Green romhack without Pokemon names and front sprites… but this is where they started to get themselves into trouble.

Fast forward to mid-February 2019. Pokethon and Helix Chamber began promoting a February 18 stream they said would showcase a playthrough of the long-anticipated English translation of the Spaceworld 1997 demo of Pokemon Gold and Silver. The stream was scheduled to begin at midnight on a Sunday — which some interested Pokefans found annoying as they had work in the morning. But despite that, many decided it was worth their time to tune in anyway.

Just before the stream began, Helix Chamber tweeted: “Our own @RacieBeep is about to totally stream Spaceworld at Pokethon and definitely nothing else in 1 hour. The run will last for 3 hours, followed by a post here and an article on our website. For a normal Spaceworld demonstration. So if you have questions about that, hold them.”

In addition to her role as Helix Chamber’s artist, Racie’s also one of Pokethon’s 62 members — so she’s actually part of both groups. Full disclosure: this is the same RacieBeep whose artwork I use regularly on YouTube and Twitter. Her Sugimori-style recreations of lost Pokemon are really fantastic — like her artwork for Kotora and Raitora, two Pokemon whose sprites appeared in Gold & Silver’s Spaceworld 1997 demo, but were scrapped from G&S’s final build.

When folks began tuning in at the scheduled time, the Spaceworld demo wasn’t being shown — a marathon run of Pokemon Platinum was occupying the stream instead. The Platinum playthrough ran for another couple hours or so, which understandably left some of the stream’s viewers feeling their time was being wasted. To be fair, it appears this delay was the fault of the Platinum-playing Pokethoner, not Helix Chamber. But the long delay was already putting many of the steam’s viewers in a sour mood.

Finally, Racie came onto the stream and began playing the aforementioned Gen 1 romhack (not Spaceworld, as promised). Rather than explain what viewers were actually watching, Racie presented the romhack as a leaked prototype of Pokemon Green. Some of the stream’s viewers were positive it was actually a fan-made romhack (which it was), but anyone who pointed that out was banned from the stream’s chat.

To make matters worse, Racie began soliciting donations in exchange for showing Pokedex entries — Pokedex entries that were presented as content created by Game Freak, but were actually created by Helix Chamber. This went on for a while, but it wasn’t revealed that what viewers just saw was a fan-made romhack until after the stream had ended. Some viewers described what happened Sunday night as committing fraud, which from a legal standpoint, might be true. Though I find it unlikely any sort of suit will actually be filed.

[January 2, 2020 Update: No lawsuit was ever filed, and nobody even bothered to ask for their donations back — which were mostly around $5 each.]

**Related article: Everything There is to Know About Gorochu**

During the stream — which attracted about 8300 viewers at its peak — some viewers tweeted Helix Chamber to ask what the heck was going on… was this a romhack? HC tweeted “For those confused, relax. It will be explained at the end of the stream.” Implementing the prototype assets into a playable rom was HC’s idea of a fun way to reveal the content. In hindsight, this probably wasn’t the best way to reveal the information. I can see what the team at HC was going for — but it clearly didn’t go over the way they’d hoped. According to Helix Chamber, another individual was supposed to come on-stream to explain the technical aspects of what people were seeing. But because the Platinum playthrough pushed the stream behind schedule, that individual wasn’t able to show up.

As soon as the stream ended, Helix Chamber posted their 9th blog entry on their website — the culmination of months of research on these newly-discovered prototype assets. But some fan-made content was mixed in with the legitimate information, like front sprites and unofficial Pokemon names. This confused many, and angered some who felt it was a continuation of the deceit they’d just seen on the Pokethon stream. Helix Chamber quickly went into damage-control mode as angry commenters on their blog, 4chan forums, and Twitter accused them of trying to pull a fast one.

In the days following the Pokethon stream, HC apologized profusely and updated their blog post to remove all the fan-made content, leaving only the legitimate assets. It’s worth noting that Helix Chamber’s website doesn’t display ads, nor do they have a Patreon — so they don’t stand to financially benefit from any of the attention this leak has attracted.

So what is legitimate? According to Helix Chamber, the back sprites, concept art, trainer data, and beta maps are for real. These include back sprites for a number of scrapped Pokemon, including Marowak’s evolved form, Deer, baby Zubat, and baby Vulpix. Understandably, many are calling the whole thing into question, saying its all fake. On the other end of the spectrum, some gaming news sites and YouTubers have taken everything shown on the stream at face value. Then these sites and YouTubers presented Helix Chamber’s fan-made assets as legitimate assets produced by Game Freak to their audiences, which has led to lot of misinformation getting spread.

[Jan 2, 2020 Update: Now that the source of the leaked assets has been revealed as coming from a hack of Nintendo servers, a hack that’s documented by court records, the legitimacy of these assets are no longer in question.]

As a result, Helix Chamber’s stellar reputation has taken a massive blow. Which is unfortunate — they made some questionable decisions, but they also put months of work into the project, and it’s thanks to them we got to see all these assets from Red & Green’s development. And their work in the past has always been fantastic and without controversy. If the leak is legit, this means 17 newly-discovered lost Pokemon have now been at least partially identified. As for Pokethon, maybe they should have stepped in, considering it was on their stream where all this took place. But most folks have been holding Helix Chamber responsible for the controversy, not Pokethon.

Mistakes were made, but there are no bad people involved in this story. Although Racie made some questionable decisions during the Pokethon stream, her contributions to the community with her artwork and Pokethon charity efforts should be applauded. Despite this incident, I support Helix Chamber’s efforts and I look forward to the work they produce in the future.

For more stories about Pokemon beta leaks, developer interview translations, and all kinds of Lost Pokemon History, check out this site’s homepage. And if you like watching videos about Pokemon beta and cut content, you might also wanna check out my YouTube channel. To contact me about beta leaks, or for any other reason, the easiest way to reach me is on Twitter, where I’m @DrLavaYT.