Usually headlines are a bit hyperbolic in order to get clicks. In this case, there's nothing hyperbolic about the insane amount of dedication and skill applied to a Minecraft mod that actually allows people to play a full rendition of Pokemon within Minecraft. It's insane!
The video was posted up over on the YouTube channel of user Requag. It's only two minutes long but it contains a lot of information and visuals to process.
For instance, we first get a glimpse of a giant Gameboy built in Minecraft, with buttons and different colors and everything. From there we get a short glimpse of the redstone programming blocks that were used to create the game via pseudo-emulation within Minecraft. The redstones don't look particularly complex based on the little that we see, but it's enough to require a couple of button presses from the end-user in order to get things up and functional within Mojang's building block creator.
From there, things become surreal as we realize that Pokemon is actually playable in Minecraft. We see a small sprite of Ash moving around, we see the houses, the grass, the bushes, gates and streets that can be traversed.
While the redstones didn't look particularly complex at first, we get a nice big, zoomed out look at the structure blocks used to actually emulate Pokemon within Minecraft. This is where things get hectic, because we can see that there are nearly hundreds of structure blocks to help display the images to the giant Gameboy Advanced screen.
Using texture modifications based on Pokemon assets with structure commands to generate a playable game world, the mod manages to take Minecraft to a whole new level.
The only downside is that the frame-rate was absolutely atrocious. However, that's the likely cost one has to pay to render those kind of visuals at that size. The whole thing is super impressive and the YouTube comments on the page are as dumbfounded and baffled at this level of creative expertise as I am.
We've seen the redstone blocks used before in Minecraft to create some very impressive coding structures, mechanics and side-programs, but this is the first time that we've seen someone successfully manage to render a makeshift emulator in the game.
Now there is a caveat to this project. It does not feature Pokemon battles. If you were hoping to see some of the little pocket critters get whipped out and go head to head against another rival, you're in for some disappointment. Most of it all appears to take place on a single map that can be customized and modified with a built-in editor. The editor is crude and simple, but allows users to rearrange some of the ground, shrubbery and other items to create an original Pokemon map.
Again, this is really impressive stuff here and it's a shining example of what a little time, dedication and creativity can produce.
