Remember those pixelated Pokémon battles on your Game Boy? This AI trick lets you remake them in stunning detail

If you grew up clutching a chunky Game Boy and squinting at a pixelated showdown between a stubborn Rattata and your overconfident starter, you know exactly how iconic those old Pokémon battle screens were.

They look incredibly dated now, but at the time they seemed disarmingly cool and advanced. Now, you can recreate how it felt to play those games when you were a kid, thanks to Google's Nano Banana 2 image generator and a clever prompt shared on X.

To start, fire up Gemini (which is how you access Nano Banana 2) and use a prompt like this: "Make an image inspired by a classic Pokémon battle on a Game Boy, but a highly detailed version with beautiful pixel art and minimal UI."

That will lead to the kind of image you see below:

Nintendo can be somewhat litigious, but if you're just making images just for fun, you can turn it into an actual Pokémon battle from your childhood by following it up with this prompt:

"Change the image to a new location for a Pokémon battle and set it between two new random Pokémon from the Kanto era."

Copyrighted battle

The Charizard versus Arcanine battle looks more like something from a Super Nintendo game in an alternate universe, but it evokes the feel of Pokémon games from the era in fun ways.

A little experimentation showed that I could create similar scenes with all kinds of Pokémon, and not just Pokémon, but pretty much any character you care to name. I had Nano Banana 2 make one between various sets of Disney characters, though I won't show them here.

The same goes for random movie and TV characters. Who knew Walter White would look cool battling Buffy using his "Blue Meth-od" attack? But to avoid lawsuits, I recommend playing around with original characters to see what different kinds of battles might look like.

Try asking Gemini: "Change the image to a new battle between two original superhero characters."

Public domain fun

As part of my effort to avoid lawsuits, I actually stumbled upon a much more fun kind of imaginary video game. By asking Gemini to "Change the image to a new location and set the battle between two random literary characters," I could get the battles we've all wondered about, like Dracula versus Elizabeth Bennet or Don Quixote versus Huckleberry Finn.

I'm not saying Literary Wars would have been a big seller back in the 90s compared to Pokémon, but it certainly would have made English classes a lot more lively.

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