Thrilled to hear you like the looks of the game! I completely empathize with the longing for Toxic Purple updates, I assure you.
Well, if you haven't played with ROMs in a while, you'll probably have noticed that getting a hold of legitimate copies is a little harder than it used to be (e.g. in the Toxic Purple days), owing to a harsher crackdown on copyright infringements on the part of Nintendo in the last few years, which is probably why you're having trouble...
Anyway, because your unpatched FireRed ROM plays fine, I'm guessing the problem with the patch comes down to it not being applied to a FireRed Version v1.0 ROM (as is noted in the first post). So I'd advise you to keep looking for a v1.0 ROM and trying the patch on that. Obviously I'm not allowed to send or link you to anything of the sort here, but that would be my best guess. Hope it helps!
Ahhhh, rightio. I must have missed that when I read through the post. I wasn't aware there were different versions, I really haven't played with ROMs in like, years. Entirely my bad, cheers for making the distinction clear.
Following your instruction, I found one and patched it, and it's working great now, cheers!
You've done a decent job giving it that Toxic Purple feel, although I have to agree with the other person about the swearing.
I mean, whilst I don't think rough 'n tough gang members like Team Rocket would watch their language, the blasphemy doesn't actually make much sense and actually kinda ruins the immersion a bit? Like I'm all for creative cursing, but in a world where "god" and "jesus" never actually existed, it's really sorta jarring to have that kind of language in the game, and kinda takes you out of the story. Casual slinging around words like "gay" as insults also has the same effect. Just kinda feels like. I dunno. It's not even humour, it's just kinda. Unnecessary. And it's sort of ruining my enjoyment of the game. They could easily be substituted for something more creative, more fitting for the world, and more amusing.
The Hitler joke was also a bit. Ehhh... I dunno, maybe that's just me. I have Jewish friends so I don't really find holocaust jokes funny any more.
Maybe this is just a personal nitpick as a writer myself, but Giovanni's behaviour seems a touch out of character. He seems a little quick to anger, and jumps to language that would be more common amongst the Grunts than the respected leader of an entire organisation. I'd imagine him to be more cool and calculated than he's been written.
(This is just a tiny thing also, but you've used the word "gleam" in Petrel's speech after Red, when the word for obtaining information is "glean".)
That said though! The stealing mechanic is very nice, and I think being able to pick from the available pokemon is a great touch. The game
itself is pretty fun so far. It's like playing through the story from a brand new perspective, that of the villain, and that's something I've been looking for in a game for years. I like having a wide variety of pokemon to choose from, and I think the ranking system to limit the kinds of pokemon you can steal is an excellent idea.
Overall, I really like the concept and the gameplay. I can see you've worked hard and it's definitely paying off. It's just the things mentioned above that are sorta turning me off a bit. I'd be singing your praises to everyone I know otherwise.