Pokémon Red and Blue Fan Builds a Fully Playable Voxel 3D Remake
One fan has taken the Game Boy classic Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue and pushed it into a fully native-looking 3D remake built from scratch around a voxel approach—turning the original HD-2D idea on its head by rebuilding the game’s visuals as Minecraft-style blocks, while keeping the core content, structure, and dialogue fundamentally the same.
The project is the work of a modder known as BryanThaBoi, who set out to convert Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue into a 3D experience. Rather than relying on emulation, the modder used recompilation: the Game Boy source code was retrieved and rewritten to run natively on Windows and Android. That distinction matters for modding, because a native port generally gives more flexibility for changes like camera placement and model adjustments, with less of the overhead that comes with emulation.
The visual transformation is straightforward in concept but dramatic in practice. Each original pixel is replaced with 3D cubes, and the volumes are adjusted directly so the world reads as true 3D space. The project also allows the player to reposition the camera, which means battles and exploration no longer feel like they’re trapped inside the original 2D presentation. Importantly, the underlying “heart” of the games is preserved: the same content, overall structure, and dialogue remain intact, just presented through a new, literal perspective.
Gameplay also shifts in a specific way. Battles occur directly in the location where they were started, rather than transitioning to the Game Boy-era “white room” battle space. That small structural change helps sell the new 3D framing without changing the fundamental identity of the original titles.
Performance and display support are part of the pitch too. The port is playable in 4K, the framerate is uncapped, and it supports ultrawide displays. To play it, there’s an additional step required to set things up, and the necessary files are provided through the project’s accompanying download instructions. As with most recompilation-based ports, you still need to supply the ROM of the specific Game Boy game for the port to work.
