Well, actually, essentails can be a full game now, Maruno has put all the features for it to be somewhat a full game, if you see it that way.
But either way, ROM hacking a fire red ROM and using essentails are almost the same thing.
Only when you make your own engine can you really say what you did.
Also, people do call my game a hack, when people actually reply to me, I just tend to ignore them.