This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/roms by /u/SpicyPopcorn_25 on 2024-03-18 02:19:30.
I've been on a binge of replaying Pokemon Sapphire, since it was my childhood game. After beating it and glazing over the post-game content, I wanted to see if anyone had made Johto the gen 3 engine, which I knew was stupid since HG/SS existed in the similar gen 4 engine, but I digress. After my disappointing search, I wanted to see if there were any other generation demakes into the gen 3 engine. Which was again a disappointing search. So here are my findings, collected in one post for the comfort of those on the same search. The list is gen 1 - gen 9, ordered by how finished/good(lol) the ROM is.
Gen 1:
Well, it'd be kind of redundant to just list off the remake games, wouldn't it? ;)
Red and Blue G1S: A remake of the original Red and Blue in the FireRed engine, but still in the gen 1 style? Seems to be a parity/just-wanted-to-use-the-firered-engine hack that has widescreen, so there's that.
Gen 2(A mess):
- Crystal Dust: Said to be the best remake on the gen 3(Emerald in specific) engine at the moment. Developed by DoMoreAwesome. Unfinished, the latest version leads up to the Sudowoodo event. Version 2 was released in 2013 and was left dormant for 7 years until version 3 was released in 2020. You can catch the dev working on it Sundays at 5PM EST on their twitch channel
- Fire Gold: A good, finished, version of gen 2 on a gen 3 engine. Made by u/black_fragrant. The most recent release as far as I know is 1.4, which has all 16 gyms from Johto to Kanto, and all post game content. Have fun with this one, because it's one of the few ambitious hacks created and finished, let alone by the same person.
3.1. Shiny Gold(+): Unfinished and dropped, with beta5 being the most recent. Made by Zel, who was last online on the pokecommunity in 2011, and on romhacking.net in 2013, if that tells you anything. It's fairly buggy, from what I've heard, but mostly finished. All of Johto is done, and half of Kanto as well. A few people have tried to pick it up and finish it, with varying success...
3.2. Shiny Gold Faithfully Fixed Beta5: Shiny Gold fixed by Hacksrepairman. While still not the best, it is finished and playable. Even though it's "faithfully fixed," you can read about possible mistakes and glitches here.
3.3. [Ultra] Shiny Gold Sigma: USGS and it's predecessor SGS are finished versions of the original SG, although supposedly very buggy and unpolished. As a cherry on top, the developer refused to continue developing the hack unless he received "donations," which is illegal... You can read a more thorough review here.
- GS Chronicles: A mashup of Gold, Silver, and Crystal all in one, with a few custom story elements thrown in there as well. " Pokemon GS Chronicles is a game that honestly negatively surprised me. I enjoyed the game, as it was nicely made in general and the story and graphics appealed to me, but a lot of things were simply not as good as I had expected from what I had heard." "...7 out of 10..." - u/EnarTogo Full review here.
- Liquid Crystal: Finally, the one, the only, Liquid Crystal. I've seen a lot of back and forth about if this is a good ROM hack or not, so here's the gist. If you want a true-to-original GBA version of Pokemon Crystal, don't go with LC. If you want a spiced-up/changed but slightly buggy GBA version of Crystal, go for it. The hack has all of Johto, Kanto, and even some of the Orange Islands(although unfinished). There are complaints of bad OC's, poor implementation, and that it's just flat out too different.
Here's a positive/neutral review and here's a negative review.
- Golden Sun: "There's Golden Sun (no relation to the Nintendo franchise of the same name) which is an incredibly faithful, albeit slightly buggy, remake of Pokemon Gold on the Fire Red engine. It lacks the RTC and related features from gen 2, but aside from that the biggest hurdle to playing it is the fact that it's only in Japanese... " - u/KeithTheGeek
- Unfinished, promising, and well made
- Finished, good, well made
- 3.1: Unfinished, dropped, decently made
3.2: Finished, good, decently made
3.3: Finished, bad, poorly made
- Finished, good, decently made
- Finished, decent, decently made
- Finished, good, well made, only in Japanese
Gen 3:
Again, it'd be kind of redundant to just list off the Gen 3 games, wouldn't it? ;) but wait... there actually is something?
Delta Emerald: "Delta Emerald, which ports the storyline from ORAS as well as features like Mega Evolution into Emerald. It's ... on the buggy side, but for the most part it's relatively tame. Off the top of my head, sometimes Pokemon will Mega evolve by themselves during double battles. It's been a bit since I've played it so I don't really remember the other bugs, but it's playable through the elite four." - u/KeithTheGeek
Gen 4(Another mess):
~~Light Platinum: The only one on this list that has an actual download available on the internet. Although I found it's download, I couldn't find much information on it, but hopefully this quote will help. "Light Platinum is really a tedious romhack. It was one of the first completed romhacks so people praised it; it aged terribly." -~~ u/LackofSins Light Platinum is not actually a demake of gen 4
- Platinum Red & Blue: Unfinished and dropped. Developed by GoGoJJTech, it was last updated in 2014 with Alpha 1.3. I have yet to find a working download for it, so at this point in time I will say it's also lost.
- Diamond and Pearl Advance: Unfinished and unreleased. Developed by RB11, who was last active on the pokecommunity forum in 2022. It looked very promising, but unfortunately we don't have a beta to gauge if it was truly a good hack or not.
- Unfinished, future not promising, lost media
- Unfinished, future not promising, no releases
Gen 5(Still convoluted, but only once this time):
- Black & White Advanced: Unfinished, and dropped. Developed by Vytron. The dev dropped the original and started again from the ground up with Pokemon Black(&White) Redux, but dropped that one as well. You can still find the short demo for the original B&W Advanced online.
- Kanto Black: Pretty much just Fire Red with Pokemon through gen 5-6
- Unfinished, future not promising, decently made
- Finished, decent, decently made
Gen 6(A Promising Era):
- XY GBA Demake: Unreleased, but maybe, just maybe, still in development. The developer is u/darkeon75, who last posted 8 months ago about this romhack. The first promising in-development hack on this list.
- Kanto Black(Again): Pretty much just Fire Red with Pokemon through gen 5-6
- Unfinished, promising future, well made
- Finished, decent, decently made
Gen 7:
Nothing, unfortunately. The only thing close I could find was just a Fire Red hack with pokemon up to gen 7.
Gen 8:
- Sword & Shield (GBA): A finished gen 3 demake of Pokemon Sword & Shield. Developed by PCL.G. Includes the base game and both DLC's. There is a complete English translation floating around, you just have to look a little deeper than normal.
- Finished, good, well made
Gen 9:
- Scarlet & Violet (GBA): A finished gen 3 demake of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet. Developed by TeamSolga. Unfortunately, the text is about half Portuguese and half English.
- Finished, good, decently made
And there you have it, folks. That's everything I've gleaned about GBA demake specific roms. I was kind of surprised that the modern games have been remade in full, but the arguably "simpler" games of the past have been left to rot in development hell for years. So I hope I've helped, and hope that I haven't left anything out. If I have, feel free to let me know in the comments, and if there's any hope that any of these do get completed, it'll be nothing short of a miracle.
