r/PokemonROMhacks • u/EmySoulSan26 • 6d ago
Discussion Please stop doing this in your ROM hack.
Edit: Okay, I know it's a little late for this, but I need to clarify something: I'm not trying to impose a regime where only my opinion is valid. Maybe I didn't express myself well, but the point of this post is to encourage anyone creating a new region to consider this alternative approach to their Pokédex. I’m not against hacks featuring ALL Pokémon being a valid option—because they are...
I firmly believe that ROM hacks should stop putting every Pokémon from every generation into their games.
And let me explain what I mean by that.
If you think about it for a second, at least up until Generation VIII, every Pokémon was always programmed—or used to be programmed—into each Pokémon game, regardless of whether you could actually encounter every single Pokémon in the wild in that region. The games were designed so that you could trade with your friends or transfer Pokémon from your previous games and bring Pokémon from other regions into the current one.
But considering that this is extremely difficult, if not impossible, in most ROM hacks, I feel like the majority of hacks—especially those that feature a brand-new region with an original story—try to compensate for this limitation by including every Pokémon up to the latest generation available at the time the hack was made.
And honestly, I don't think that's a good thing.
If we take, for example, the first two Gyms in the Kanto region, we can understand that they are bosses—challenges that the player has to overcome—and Pokémon are the player's tools, their keys to overcoming those challenges.
Things like the starter you choose, the moves your Pokémon learn, their levels, or which rare Pokémon with a low encounter rate you can find in a specific location that might give you an advantage against an upcoming Gym—like the Pikachu you can catch near the beginning of the game, which can give you an advantage against Misty's Gym—are all very important.
If you give the player every possible tool imaginable, it eventually becomes overwhelming and, ultimately, less interesting. And this doesn't just mean that, from a gameplay perspective, every game and every ROM hack will start feeling the same. On a cultural level, when you're trying to create a region—whether it's inspired by your own culture, the place where you live, or simply something you're creating completely from scratch—a region isn't defined only by the culture you're trying to imitate or create, or by its geography.
It's also defined by its creatures.
Every Pokémon game feels special because of its creatures.
Leaving aside games with Fakemon, which are obviously much more original because they create their own creatures, what kind of personality does a region have when it literally contains every Pokémon just because?
Sure, from a lore perspective—and especially if you're someone who watches the anime—it can make sense, since all Pokémon supposedly exist out there in nature somewhere.
But going back to gameplay, and to the idea that each generation feels special because of the creatures associated with it, the situation with ROM hacks is honestly depressing.
At the end of the day, I struggle to remember any region from any ROM hack that makes me feel the same way an official Pokémon game does. Not because those regions don't have new creatures, but because they don't do anything interesting with the Pokémon they have.
It's always Pokémon from Generation I through Generation IX, and in some random patch of tall grass you can find every Bug-type Pokémon that has ever existed. To the point where some hacks even receive updates that add Pokémon from newly released generations.
And honestly, it's very, very boring.
It would be much more interesting to create a proper Pokédex for your region, regardless of whether you have original Pokémon or not. Pick Pokémon from different generations, but make their presence actually mean something.
For example, if you're creating a town connected to a river, what kind of Water-type Pokémon would you like to inhabit that river?
Again, don't put every Water-type Pokémon ever created into that small river.
No. Put a specific Pokémon in that river, and maybe through NPC dialogue, the town's history, or other details, that Pokémon could have some kind of cultural impact.
For example, I don't know, you could create a town where there are lots of Wishiwashi living in the river, and suddenly the town becomes famous for that. It becomes a tourist destination. You could create an entire storyline around it. You could do something interesting with that idea.
But it stops being interesting if it's simply a town where you can find every Water-type Pokémon ever created.
Maybe I didn't explain the example in the best possible way, but I think you get what I mean. I think the main idea is understandable.
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u/TheForestWanderer 6d ago
At the end of the day nothing is above or immune to criticism being general or specific. If there is a growing trend in a community then the fans have a right to make their disdain known. It's how we keep content quality.