A cross-platform recompilation of the Game Boy Color Pokémon Trading Card Game. The project builds the game from the pret/poketcg disassembly, recompiles it into portable C with gb-recompiled, and runs it on an SDL2 runtime for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

GitHub: drproteus/pokemon-tcg-gbc-recomp

The longer-term goals include widescreen and other quality-of-life improvements, plus a data pipeline that lets card sets be edited as CSV or JSON and levels be edited in Tiled.

Status

This is early-stage work. The native runtime boots and renders the title screen, and the card data tools work. Map extraction and widescreen patches are planned but not yet done.

• Reference ROM build (RGBDS, byte-identical): done
• Native recompiled runtime: boots and renders the title screen
• Native-patch SDK: spike proven
• Card extractor, compiler, and CSV/JSON converters: done, with a byte-exact round trip
• Card art mapping and new-card scaffold generator: done
• Map extractor (to Tiled) and widescreen/QoL patches: planned

How it works

The project separates three concerns so each can be swapped independently:

1. Ground truth. The pret/poketcg disassembly, assembled with RGBDS, is the reference implementation and the source of truth for data formats.
2. Recompiled runtime. gb-recompiled turns the ROM into a portable C project with an SDL2 runtime. Native patches and host presentation live here.
3. Data pipeline. Cards, decks, boosters, maps, scripts, and text are extracted into external formats (CSV/JSON, Tiled TMX/TSX) and compiled back into the game's native formats.

Legal

This repository contains no ROM images and no extracted game data. You need your own ROM that you are legally entitled to use. The build tools check it against a known hash before producing any derived output. The extracted card data is generated locally and git-ignored.

Pokémon is a trademark of Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, Creatures, and Game Freak. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.