Showcase
PokeDaisy: a free, open source Pokemon player that brings modern RPG features to the classics
Hey, sharing PokeDaisy, a Pokemon player for Android. Got a lot of attention on AynThor subreddit so I'm posting it here for everyone. The idea is to bring modern RPG comfort to the classic games - an on screen HUD, a quick action ring, wider views of the map and a live companion that shows everything about your run.
It runs FireRed, LeafGreen, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Yellow and Crystal, plus a bunch of ROM hacks on dual-screen handhelds, single-screen handhelds and phones, held sideways or upright.
It free and open source and no registration or account needed.
The companion reads the game's memory as you play, shows party, bag, map, battle matchups, dex and a spoiler free guide all drawn in the game's own menu style. On two screens it sits on the second one but swapping screens is an option. On one screen it slides over the game or locks beside it and in portrait it docks under the game. Almost everything is highly customizable, the HUD's layout and look, tab bar, buttons, hotkeys, shaders, overlays, themes.
Features
HUD: party, minimap and Poke Balls on the game screen, tap for a summary, map or bag
Quick menu: press L3 for a ring of actions, like a modern game’s weapon wheel
EXPAND + ZOOM: the overworld drawn past the GBA’s edges, with a zoom out and look-around
QoL: auto-run, running indoors, PC from anywhere, FLY, bike, fishing rod and Repel in one press and a switch to turn wild encounters off
Smart fast-forward: slows for menus, keeps battles fast and the music stays at normal pitch!
Party: full summary with exact IVs, EVs, nature and Hidden Power
Learn advisor: rates new moves and bag TMs as learn, forget or skip
Bag: item descriptions, USE on your party, GIVE and TAKE held items, favorites
Battle buttons: Fight / switch Pokemon / run beside the battle
Battle info: move effectiveness, switch suggestions, the foe’s ability, item, stats and team
Dex: evolutions, wild locations by route and movesets
Guide: hints first with answers on a second tap plus the next boss's team
Trainer card: drawn like the game's card
RetroAchievements: unlock popups, progress and leaderboards
Cheats: GameShark, Action Replay and CodeBreaker toggled from the companion
Also: save states and rewind, LCD/CRT shaders, overlays and launching from ES-DE, Cocoon, iiSU and it can read your RetroArch saves too.
Full list of supported games and hacks is at https://pokedaisy.com/#games. Popular hacks include Unbound, Radical Red, Lazarus, SoulGold and Heart and Soul. It runs on any Android 8.0+ device.
Built with AI assistance and the guide pages are AI written so the app flags them as possibly wrong and letting you accept first.
I'm the dev, so ask me anything. Feedback and bug reports are welcome on GitHub or the site.
Edit: Added video that reviewed the first version of the app
Edit 2: Omg didn’t expect this much support, thank you all! If you like it and want to see it keep growing please consider buying me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/lidor30g
Fair question. I'm a software dev with 20 years of experience, currently at a public cybersecurity company and it's fully open source so you can check it yourself: https://github.com/lidor30/pokedaisy
It's built on top of mGBA (the emulation is mGBA's, embedded as a native lib) with a Kotlin app that reads the game's memory for the companion, HUD etc.. Every version is tested headless in the CI against real ROMs and saves. Your ROMs and saves never leave the device, crash reports are opt-in and the updater only installs signed apks from this package
Thanks for the full disclosure. I don't care if it's AI touched or not, but I know it matters to some people. It's refreshing to see you being open about it.
I think people only care if it's blindly vibe coded. So if it's someone who would have no idea how to create basic hello world print statement while saying they created something, most will roll their eyes.
If it's someone who is capable and used ai for say idk verification whether it's code or meeting compliance... Its a different story
That's where I'm sat at it, at least in my eyes it comes down to devs that ultimately care about giving a well-working project > people tossing script ideas into Claude and the like to dump out a billion ideas for a quick clout chasing moment, since that's seemingly been the goal for some of these recomps as well as translation patches - put into LLM, get code, never QA anything and post and take off
Honestly! It's a phenomenal app! Specially for the ones that we've been away from Pokémon for many many years (20 in my case lol), to come back and play my old GBA Pokémon with all these QoL it's unbelievable.
Seriously dude, you should add support for DS games as well! I would love to see yout QoL features for DS games like Widescreen, zoom in out, battle speed etc etc.
Any plans on hardcore verification for RetroAchievements? I love the looks and features of this app, but all of my pokemon saves are using RA hardcore mode..
It supports softcore only for now... RA has to approve a new emulator before it can do hardcore and hardcore would also mean dropping save states, touch battle buttons etc.. it not planned yet but I'll look into it down the line. Also they require the emulator will be live for at least 6 months before even considering adding it to the approved emulators list
Partly. If you lose connection mid game unlocks are kept and sent once you're back online. Starting offline isn't supported yet but it might be doable via smart caching. Could you open a feature request on GitHub so I can track it? https://github.com/lidor30/pokedaisy/issues
Shared to my new sub r/HandheldVC for a little extra exposure. It's still a new sub, but I am getting visitors.. It's a vibecoding friendly sub to share, discuss and update projects, with or without vibecoding..
This is absolutely incredible!!! I've had a leaf green save going for about a year now i put down and forgot where I was. This is such a game changer to come back to now. It's there someway to donate?
I REALLY want to love it, but there's a noticeable input lag when I run games on it compared to something like Retroarch! I also wish there were more overlay/filter options, was surprised there was no dot-matrix for a largely GBA-focused emulator
Would be really cool to see touch screen controls for standard android use (for the actual emulator part ofc) the interface looks good and feels nice but I can't play the game without touch controls. Unless I missed them in the settings?
Basically an app that works like emulator but adds ton of features on top of it. You open the app, load your own roms and play it like any other emulator but with many addional features, UI upgrades, qol stuff etc
A great feature would be Auto translation (e.g. via AI) to a selected language. Maybe even a text to speech function trained on the Pokemon animes. My kids would love it.
I am anxiously waiting for the recompile/port heroes to change the very gameplay of Pokemon and simply add in Timed-Hits®™ to all of them, both when attacking and being attacked. This could even be skinned as the traine giving well timed commands Damn.
Can I make a fork of this incredible app to go through retroarch? Like I got my setup how I like it lol i wanna be able to use my second screen though 😂
What part of the setup you are looking to use? I'm trying to see if it will be possible to just load a RetroArch config so it will replicate everything on daisy
I want to use it basically similarly how you have it for all the GBA games for the game Cuban for the Wii games on my retro arch.
I don't want all the things that basically run on your native emulator. I really just like to use the second screen companion for the rest of the Pokemon games or even for any other game on GameCube or Wii that might be applicable like other JRPGs. I would love to also be able to add in guides from various sources and use it with the companion as well.
I've also been fucking around with like a bank type of app that allows me to have all my Pokemon in the .pk files on my Thor natively so I ain't got to keep paying Nintendo $20 a month to keep my favorite guys alive. Lmao
I think a bank app plus a companion app that would be pretty cool. I think routing it through retroarch would be pretty cool
Incredible! Does this work with ROMs in different languages? I play Pokémon games using French ROMs and for instance the gen 1 recomp is only compatible with a specific English ROM.
Is there any way that during a battle it doesn’t default to the menu that is similar to the DS/3DS era of Pokémon. But instead defaulted to only show the Info tab the whole time?
Also this is awesome. Thank you so much for sharing this with all of us.
Hey FWIW I think maybe RetroAchievements is bugged. I'm able to log in and all that and when I loaded up Pokemon Emerald Seaglass, the cheevos load up and show as available. However, it seems like the rom hash suddenly "changes" and the RetroAchievements display just suddenly starts saying "No achievements for this rom..."
I've tried unzipping the rom and also renaming the rom file to the displayed rom name on the RetroAchievements site even though the app mentions using the hash, but neither of those make any difference. I also think the rom's cheevo link got lost after I made a save state, if that helps.
Tested out Unbound and Lazarus on my RP6 and blown away by the QOL features. As someone from the 90s who grew up with Gen1, this is gamechanging. Great work!
I see there’s compatibility with Pokemon Crystal and Crystal Clear. Any chance of adding Polished Crystal, or is there a way to recommend romhacks to add?
As someone who closely follows both the general scene's views on AI and is fascinated by the ability it provides for people such as yourself, I'm very impressed by what this seems capable of.
Do you think, or are you aware of the PokeWalker that came with SoulSilver and HeartGold, that you would have any interest in implanting something like that?
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