ROM hack
ROM hacks, or hack ROMs, also known as fan games or bootlegs depending on the circumstances, are video games that have been edited or altered. While many fans distribute hacks of Pokémon games for free over the internet, some people have been known to sell them in the guise of legitimate games. Some of these games are hacked onto the actual game cartridges and sold over the internet on sites such as eBay.
Due to their nature, there are an uncountable number of hacks available on the Internet, so this article will limit itself to only the most notable ones. It should also be noted that all current Chinese language Pokémon game cartridges are pirated as there have yet to be any official Chinese language Pokémon games.
Game Boy and Game Boy Color
Pokémon Adventure
Pokémon Adventure is a hack of an existing pirated game called Sonic Adventure 7 for the Game Boy Color. It has five levels, and the intro sequence consists of a few Japanese Pokédex screenshots from Gold and Silver. Other than the intro, title screen, and ending, the game has almost no relationship with Pokémon, with most of the enemies being from other pirates made by the same company, such as Rockman 8 and Super Mario Special 3. While the game is paused, one can move themselves away from enemies.
Pokémon Brown
Pokémon Brown is a hack of Pokémon Red. This hack began production in mid 2002, as a sequel to Koolboyman's "Rated M" ROM hack "Fukémon", titled "Fukémon 2". Finally, on January 16th, 2004, the hack was released to the public. The hack had a complete change of all maps, minor script tweaks and almost all the Pokémon sprites have been changed. Pokémon Brown takes place in the Rijon region.
It should be noted that some of the cities in Brown have a close resemblance to the beta maps found in Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions. For example, Botan City slightly resembles the Azalea Town beta map, Jaeru City resembles the Blackthorn City beta map, and Castro Valley strongly resembles the Olivine City beta map.
The author of this hack released an updated version of Brown that was released in April 2009. The remake contains second and fourth generation Pokémon, new areas, several glitch repairs, new features and new additions to the storyline.
Pokémon Diamond and Jade
Possibly the most well-known bootleg "Pokémon" games are the notorious Pokémon Diamond and Jade (not to be confused with the official Generation IV games Diamond and Pearl). In truth, these games were poorly translated versions of a Japanese game known as Keitai Denjū Telefang. Telefang is divided into two versions: Power and Speed; the Power Version became Pokémon Diamond and the Speed Version became Pokémon Jade. Pokémon Jade is sometimes found on the Game Boy Color on the same cartridge as Pokémon Crystal, but could also be found as a standalone cartridge. The hacks had numerous glitches that the original game did not have, such as the inability to load a save properly. The game also contains profanity and swearing, which is absent from all official Pokémon games licensed by Nintendo.
Pokémon Prism
Pokémon Prism is a hack of Pokémon Gold made by Koolboyman, as another entry into his series of hacks, preceded by Pokémon Brown. This hack completely overhauls the original game, and also won Pokécommunity's Hack of the Year award in 2007. [1] It takes place in a new region called Naljo, with new music, Pokémon from the first four generations, new Pokémon types, and more. One feature is to replace the player's sprite with another at a special shop. The game also has crafting systems and the ability to send a Pokémon out of its Poké Ball outside of battle. There are also a few minigames included such as a Pachisi-type board game. Like many other hacks, Prism is still in progress, with periodic updates being released to the public. Its latest version was released in August 2010.
Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal
"Pocket Monsters Crystal Version" (popularly known as Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal) is a bootlegged version of Pokémon Crystal. Having gone through several translations from Japanese to English, the dialogue in the game (now Engrish) is often nonsensical and unintentionally humorous. All Pokémon, character and location names are similarly badly translated, often resembling romanizations of Chinese transliterations of the Japanese names. This particular hack was made popular by various "Let's Play" video series on YouTube, with the most notable one being by DeliciousCinnamon.
Game Boy Advance
Moemon
Moemon (short for "Moekko Monsters") is a hack of Pokémon FireRed that changes all Pokémon into gijinka. It is a simple change of FireRed, but with additions such as the ability to catch the three starters, Eevee, and a mix of both LeafGreen and FireRed Pokémon (thus making it simpler to obtain all Pokémon). The game still receives a fair amount of attention, as a patch was released solely for the FireRed hack that updated both the sprites of the Pokémon as well as their menu sprites, functioning like DLC would for any game.
A ROM hack of Emerald has been released as well. Like the FireRed hack, it's a simple change of Emerald, replacing all Pokémon with ginjika counterparts, however, a few aesthetic changes have been applied to both Route 101 and Littleroot Town, adding many puddles to the town, and the Oran Berry has, curiously, been renamed the "Weed Berry", possibly for comedic effect.
Moemon received a short burst of fame when it was posted to gaming site Kotaku in late 2007.[2]
Pokémon Amber
Pokémon Amber is a hack of Pokémon Ruby which sports brand new Pokémon sprites, a brand new region (Sider), and new characters. It is made by the hacker 'Joy', and can be played in Spanish or English. There is a team much like Team Rocket, which is called Team Solaris. Pokémon Amber was released on Whackahackpokemon.com as a beta, Beta 1 (Final). The overworld sprites have also been heavily edited, as has the script of the game. The playable characters are Xander or Ann. The maps have also been edited.
Pokémon ChaosBlack
Another infamous hack is Pokémon ChaosBlack, which is a modification of Pokémon FireRed that was released on the Game Boy Advance. This game contains many fake Pokémon, including Mewthree. Although it has a reputation as a bootleg cartridge sold illegally, the original creator of the hack released the patch for it onto the Internet. ChaosBlack is infamous for including numerous created Pokémon and harsh language.
The description on the back of some boxes can inform gamers that it is a bootleg, as there is a missing accent on the "e" in "Pokémon". Another large giveaway is the fact that Chaos from the Sonic the Hedgehog games exists on the front cover. Also the game is apparently developed by 'Mewthree Inc.' instead of Nintendo, meaning it couldn't have been endorsed by Nintendo, Pokémon's usual trademark. Despite these obvious flaws, the bootleggers still included a fake Nintendo Seal of Approval on the box and cartridge.
Pokémon Diamond 2 and Jade 2
Similar to the first fake Diamond and Jade games, Diamond 2 and Jade 2 were hacked from Keitai Denjū Telefang 2. Also, like Diamond and Jade, the Power Version of Telefang 2 became Pokémon Diamond 2, and the Speed Version became Pokémon Jade 2. They are in Chinese, and their title screens have been altered to poorly drawn Pokémon characters along with the character Dragon from the film Shrek (possibly due to her superficial similarity to a Charizard). The similarities between the title screens of this and the original Diamond and Jade (as well as the fact that they have Pokémon names in the first place) suggest that these may be made by the same pirates. Diamond 2 crashes after the title screen, making it unplayable without a save state, and Jade 2 has graphical glitches. There is also a poorly translated English version of the Power Version of Telefang 2 called "Pokémon Ruby," which has no relation to the real one.
Pokémon Naranja/Orange
Pokémon Naranja is a Spanish hack of Pokémon Ruby in which the player plays as either Ash or Misty and travels around the Orange Archipelago. Naranja is a Spanish word which means Orange. Celebi appears on the box art and title screen.
This game is based on the Orange Saga in the anime. The game starts after the player had won the Indigo League. Despite this fact, the player starts with only a Lv. 5 Pikachu. Many characters, plots and events in the Orange Saga are included in the game, such as the GS Ball, Ash's Lapras, the Orange Crew, the Crystal Onix, the Golduck from Bye Bye Psyduck, and Ash's Snorlax.
This game also includes a special feature: the player's character actually speaks during some of the story sequences, which has never been implemented in any official Pokémon game.
The game maker originally planned to release a third beta version before Christmas in 2005; however, the creator canceled this for an unknown reason. Therefore, the game is currently incomplete.
Naranja has, much like Chaos Black and ShinyGold, also been published in cartridge form and sold as a bootleg game by pirates. This is the only sold Pokémon game to ever feature the Orange Islands.
Pokémon Quartz
Another hack of Pokémon Ruby, released by the author as a patch file intended to be played by VBA users who already owned the Ruby cartridge and had a copy of its ROM image. The game has a great number of spelling and grammatical errors, which result from the hack being translated from Spanish, although the grammar improves throughout the game. The game also contains profanity and adult themes, which are absent from all official Pokémon games. Pokémon Quartz replaced all names and graphics of traditional Pokémon with new, made-up Pokémon, although some of the changes were only cosmetic and did not change learnsets or types. The game takes place in a region known as "Corna", a heavily edited version of Hoenn, and requires the player to navigate a very different series of paths during gameplay. It also been published in cartridge form and sold as a bootleg game.
While the best-known bootleg cartridge as played on the actual GBA contains serious glitches and errors, the current patch file release works well with VBA when the patch is applied to a clean image of an actual Ruby cartridge.
Zorak of Something Awful did a complete Let's Play playthrough of the game, which ended in an interview with the creator of the hack.
A sequel to the game, Pokémon Marble, is in its beta release. This version is a hack of FireRed and has vastly improved grammar and spelling.
Pokémon Marble
Pokémon Marble was made as a sequel to Pokémon Quartz, and uses Pokémon FireRed as a base. It has a new Rival, new maps and graphics, a brand new plot and more than 250 fake Pokémon. It takes place 20 years after Quartz, and starts this time in Lowheaven. Professor Baro reappears and participates in the storyline much more than in Quartz.
Pokémon ShinyGold
Pokémon ShinyGold is a total conversion of Pokémon FireRed that turns the game into a Gold and Silver remake, much like how FireRed is a remake of Pokémon Red. That makes ShinyGold the very first Generation II remake when counting with hack ROMs, due to the fact that it was first released before HeartGold and SoulSilver. It is considered by many people to be among the best and one of the highest-quality hacked games. As well as illegally releasing the game to ROM communities as a patch, some pirates have copied the hack (as with many others) to Game Boy Advance cartridges to illegally sell the game and trick gamers who genuinely think that it is an official Pokémon game. In response to this, the game's creator, Zel, placed a note at the beginning of the game saying that the game should be returned if the player paid for it. The game features some changes to the storyline, like the fact that a new Trainer, named Carlos, is introduced, a Trainer with which the player keeps fighting during the gameplay. It has also introduced features that allow Pokémon that normally evolve via time-based events or trade to evolve by other methods that are more easily available to the player. For example, Scyther evolves into Scizor with a Moon Stone rather than by its normal method, trading while holding a Metal Coat. The game also features many events which were not available in the original game, as well as many Generation III Pokémon being found in some areas.
Touhou Puppet Play or Touhoumon
Touhoumon is a combination of the Japanese shoot'em up series Touhou Project and the Pokémon games. The (Official) hack is for FireRed while there is a fan derivative that extends to Emerald. There are both English and Japanese versions. The Japanese versions tend to be further ahead in terms of development.
Almost every Pokémon has been replaced from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generations with Touhou characters. The music has also been remixed between the original Pokémon themes with Touhou character boss and stage themes. Certain fan derivative versions of the game uses the physical-special split from Diamond and Pearl. The types and evolution styles have been changed as well according to the newest official Japanese version 1.80.
Pokémon Uranium
Pokémon Uranium appears to be a highly modified version of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen. It is distributed under the name "Uranium Team" and features many fake Pokémon that replace previous sprites. It is not known to have been sold via cartridge, only by ROM. The game features a new region known as "Tandor", a tropical archipelago somewhat similar to Hoenn. The player's starter is determined by a quiz the local professor gives them. Similar to Gold and Silver's PokéGear, Uranium features an application called "PokéPod"--which has all the programs contained in the Pokégear.
Pokémon Uranium has been known to distribute their games as early as 2008, but an official date is unknown.
There is also an executable version of the game.
NES
Pokémon 4-in-1
Pokémon 4-in-1 is a pirated NES game which included four mini-games, "PicaClick", "PicaSlot", "PicaDance" (called 'PiraDance' in game) and Pac-man. "Pika" is notably misspelled. PicaClick is a Collapse clone featuring Pikachu. Pac-man was replaced with a Pikachu face and the ghosts with Vileplume. PicaSlot is a slot machine mini-game including Pikachu, Marill, Clefable, Psyduck, Chikorita, (7), and apple (with worm) icons. PiraDance involves the player stopping Marill and Cleffa on spinning Poké Balls, to the beat of one of three songs, "butterfly", "Babylon" or "sunrise". It used the animated sprite of the title screen Pikachu from Pokémon Yellow in the background.
Drayno's Hacks
One of the most famous Pokémon hacker for GBA and Nintendo DS is called Drayno. He is mostly known to have been the first to release a full hack of the Generation V main series games Pokémon Black, White, Black 2 and White 2 versions. His main goals are to make all Pokémon available using an only game and to make the the game harder by levelling up the trainer's Pokémon or giving six-Pokémon teams to all Gym Leaders (eg. in Pokémon Blaze Black and Volt White, Cilan owns a Lv.12 Snivy, a Lv.12 Bulbasaur, a Lv.12 Chikorita, a Lv.12 Treeko, a Lv.12 Turtwig and a Lv.14 Pansage and can then be rebattled after the final N fight with their final evolutions at Lv.86). Some trainers, such as Morimoto, have Lv.100 Event Legendaries. Pokémon Blaze Black 2 and Volt White 2 also include an even harder Challenge mode with Hilbert and Hilda at Nature Preserve having up to Lv.105 Pokémon and catchable shiny Pokémon such as Arceus, Reshiram, Zekrom, and Therian Forme kami trio members. Some alternate versions of his hacks also include modifications to Pokémon's types, evolution methods and moveset, such as Serperior being Grass and Dragon type and Scyther evolving using the Metal Coat. His hacks include :
- Pokémon Red Omega
- Pokémon Spirit Gold
- Pokémon Sacred Gold
- Pokémon Storm Silver
- Pokémon Blaze Black
- Pokémon Volt White
- Pokémon Blaze Black 2
- Pokémon Volt White 2
None of these hacks were released as cartridges.
External links
- Wikifang - A wiki about Telefang, the game that became Pokémon Jade and Diamond (includes information on the fakes)
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