What's your favorite ROM hack/fan game (and why)?

YukiHoshikawa

ROM hacks and other fan games come in all shapes and sizes. From small adventures, to rebalancing the vanilla games, to completely custom regions with new Pokemon, there's so much out there. No matter what you like about Pokemon, there's bound to be something out there for you.

My favorite is probably Unbound. While the writing is a bit cringe and edgy (I haven't played 2.0+, which rewrote the story; I should probably do that), it's otherwise an incredibly solid game with custom music, multiple difficulty modes, numerous side quests, and an expansive custom region. As someone who's been playing the series for 20+ years, I especially appreciate the difficulty modes and how some of the boss battles in the game throw you for a loop (for example, one of the gyms uses Inverse Battle rules).

I'm really looking forward to Celia's Stupid Romhack to get finished, though - I watched a video of someone playing through the first gym, and it's legit one of the funniest things I've seen in my life. I haven't watched or played any more to keep myself as blind as possible for the full release.

KomodoZero

Lately I've been playing Alpharad's Too Many Types 2 and it is just chaotic. What do you mean Ralts is a Brat? What do you mean Maushold is Family and Guys type? What do you mean Sans is just in the game and can randomly OHKO you???
His team also made Super Mariomon, which is an entirely original, from the ground up game that has pretty much every Mario enemy you can think of as cap captures, with various major characters acting as gym leaders/elite four. Bowser is naturally the villain, and it's written just like any other Mario RPG, so it's really funny.

On the more traditional Pokemon side of things, Prism is an absolute classic and I really need to go in and play it proper some day.

YukiHoshikawa

Super Mariomon is really fun, although I did run into some bugs and glitches that did hamper my experience with the game, including one where my saves would corrupt, resulting in the previous save being loaded. This struck multiple times throughout the early game, meaning I had to play through multiple parts of the opening to the first gym multiple times. I started saving more frequently, and eventually, I thought to wait a couple of moments after the saving process finished. This wound up fixing my issues with saving, thankfully.

Also, I really really hate The Pit; it legitimately made me so angry that I just gave up on doing it. A shame, since it's required for Pokedex completion, and I'm stuck on the last round of it that you need to do.

centiskorch

My favourite is probably Crystal Clear or Heart & Soul. I love Gen 2 so I like anything that enhances the experience and both of those do it in different ways. Honourable mentions for Lazarus, Emerald Seaglass, and PureRGB.

YukiHoshikawa

centiskorch I don't think I've heard of Lazarus or PureRGB before; what are they about?

centiskorch

YukiHoshikawa Lazarus is set in a new Ancient Greek-inspired region. It uses Emerald as the base game but uses Gen 2 sprites and inspired graphics and I've been enjoying it so far. There's a new storyline, Pokémon from different gens, new characters, different modes, overworld encounters, puzzles from HGSS, and some other features from post-Gen 3. It's a cute little game and while it isn't necessarily groundbreaking, it feels like the kind of ROM hack that someone made in their own vision rather than trying to "fix" older games or increase the difficulty like a lot of ROM hacks seem to do atm

PureRGB is like an enhanced version of the Gen 1 games with some QoL improvements and new features that don't detract from the main game. Rebalancing of moves and Pokémon, bug fixes, etc. it even has some beta content in there. I've not got far in it but it's been nice so far.

KomodoZero

I started playing Lazarus a little while back, it's fine I guess, but it feels a little by the numbers I guess.
Beyond its Gen II styled visuals, I don't feel like it's doing anything particularly unique yet, though I am only at the first gym. First impressions are very much "it's alright" and then I forgot about it.

MissingnoMaster

I've been giving Seaglass Emerald a shot, and I'm liking it. Very charming visuals, making Gen 3 look more like Gen 2.

I also like FireRed Rocket Edition. Basically the story of FireRed, but from the point of view of the player, a newly recruited Rocket Grunt, and thus, life in the Pokémon world is not so filtered and sanitized as it is for the kiddies. Which I guess makes it sound like it's just some edgy romhack, and there's a bit of edginess to it, but it's a lot more than just that. A lot of thought went into this story, there's some exclusive mechanics that are just really cool, and when I tell you that the final boss's battle music is amazing...! Yeah, I'm not gonna go into spoilers, for the sake of those of you who might want to check this out yourselves, but if you want a well-written, somewhat gritty alternate take on Kanto's story, this one won't disappoint.

And also, I feel I would be remiss if I did not at least touch upon two romhacks that are particularly near and dear to my heart, because I am the person that made them. Pokémon Purple Version, a romhack of Red, and its sequel, Pokémon Purple Version 2, a romhack of Crystal. Boxart in the spoiler below, mainly because the images are kinda huge.

What happened was, one time I was searching to see if I could find a romhack that would let you start with a Koffing, since Weezing is my favorite Pokémon. And if possible, I wanted one that didn't have you playing as a bad guy. I like the idea of the protagonist, the hero, with a Weezing as their first partner and team's ace. And, well, nothing I found could scratch that particular itch, so I went, "screw it, I'll do it myself." And I did. Twice. Obviously enough, all the starter "choices" are Koffing, but the changes go beyond that. In Purple Version, a lot of the changes amount to Pokémon distribution and movepools, as well as lots and lots of text changes. In Purple 2, there's more of that, but also some quality of life improvements, such as getting multiple berries from a tree each day, an overhauled swarm mechanic, and I also got a lot more adventurous with the story if I do say so myself, plus a few other secrets I'm quite proud of. Here's a few Purple Version screenshots, too, and I can give a few for Purple 2 as well, if anyone wants to see.

YukiHoshikawa

MissingnoMaster I love the box arts you made! The ESRB rating being "Everyone be aware" is great, LMAO. Is that a female protagonist I spy in the screenshots of Purple you posted?

Also nice to meet a fellow ROM hacker - I made one myself (apparently at the start of the COVID pandemic; I legit don't remember, that's just what a friend told me), but I'm not really proud of it, especially after a recent replay I started. I've been trying to make another ROM hack, an actually good one this time, but it's been slow progress. The main thing holding me up is that I want to use HG/SS style graphics, but that requires a decent amount of tinkering, and my virtually nonexistent pixel art skills can only carry me so far.

I need to boot up FireRed Rocket Edition again - I played it once, thought it was pretty neat, and then never touched it again, lol.

centiskorch Lazarus sounds like it could be interesting! I remember a random comment I read somewhere mentioning how it feels like a lot of the ROM hacks nowadays are just enhanced difficulty, Radical Red or Renegade Platinum type of deals. In that sense, Lazarus sounds like it could be a nice breath of fresh air!

MissingnoMaster

YukiHoshikawa Heheh, I'm glad you like the boxarts! 🙂 I was pretty pleased with how the ESRB bit turned out, and it always feels good to see someone appreciate the little details like that. And that certainly is a female protagonist you see! It took some doing to get it all to work right, but I got there in the end. If it was just outright replacing Red, it probably would've been a bit easier, but no, you can see him in some of those screenshots as well- you choose whether you play as Red or Violet.

Honestly, I can understand wanting to improve on one's first work. I do still think Purple Version is decent, I like a lot of what I did with it, but at the same time, I feel like I did even better with Purple Version 2. Hoping you can make your second romhack something you're satisfied with as well!

And yeah, FireRed Rocket Edition is definitely worth seeing through to the end.

MissingnoMaster

So, just announced this today!

Haven't narrowed down a release date beyond later this year, still got some work to do, but it's coming along pretty nicely so far, so I figured the time was right to announce it.

Duke

Hmm. Before I started making my own, I used to play Pokemon 20XX and Pokémon Theta Emerald EX (the former because i was a kid who didn't want to grind, the latter because it was one of those "all pokemon" hacks.

(I make my own romhacks now, but I'm grandly unsure if it'd be considered advertising to name it.)