FireRed hack: Pokemon Vega Minus

Pokemon Vega. Probably one of the most well-known foreign language hacks, and regarded as one of the, if not the best. By far its most glaring problem? The absolutely brutal difficulty.

I'm here to fix that.

This is Pokemon Vega Minus, basically just a difficulty patch of Pokemon Vega. The entire game has been edited, and barring minor bugs, the patch is complete. In general, I have:

- Lowered levels across the board
- Drastically reduced the stupid coverage that boss trainers have (it comes back in postgame though)
- Replaced or removed all the hax held items that boss trainers' Pokemon have.

In addition, to facilitate more game balance I have lowered the levels of or moved to postgame many of the legendaries throughout.

The game is still meant to be somewhat difficult, I would say slightly harder than Platinum.

Some level changes so you can get the idea:


Miscellaneous notes:


Known bugs:


Credits:


And some screenshots:


Here's the download: Version 1.1 - Released November 12, 2019.

This hack is complete and may only be updated in the future for bugfixes. I hope everyone continues to enjoy my little contribution to the romhacking community. Thank you for playing.

Thanks for making this. :D

I appreciate that this was done. I might have to revisit this game having given up on the post-game of the original.

Looks great! Is it possible that you can increase the variety of wild Pokemon in the beginning of the game? Like from Route 501 to Gamboge City?

@Mosmero: There's already decent diversity, I think, but having played the game through four times while playtesting, I kind of get where you're coming from. What did you have in mind exactly?

Like obtaining Maneko and Embird a lot earlier, since in the original you can get them after the 7th badge, which is pretty late in the game

Mosmero said:

Like obtaining Maneko and Embird a lot earlier, since in the original you can get them after the 7th badge, which is pretty late in the game

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I agree with this, plus from what I saw in a youtube Let's Play of this game by a user called ShadyPenguin a few moths ago it would be nice if all or most of the proper official pokemon that recived new fakemon evolutions in Vega are avaliable before post game too.

Otherwise thank someone for finally doing something like this for Vega! Been really wanting to try out the hack for myself finally but felt the brutal difficulty would be too much for me.

Main post has been updated. The hack is now more or less complete, every single area is now edited.

There were also a few bugfixes, and per suggestion there were more Fire, Electric, and Water types added to the earlier routes to spice things up a little bit.

@Da Man: I can't add those official mons to before postgame, because that would basically require me to do a 386 patch and I'm not doing that, sorry. Already took me too long to finally finish this :P

That being said, yeah I'm still planning on fixing the broken egg moves. Currently busy with school though, so don't expect it until at least mid-November (if at all).

Thanks for playing, everyone! Really appreciate it.

MKCocoon said:

@Da Man: I can't add those official mons to before postgame, because that would basically require me to do a 386 patch and I'm not doing that, sorry. Already took me too long to finally finish this :P

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That's understandable I suppose but still a shame, least you added more pokemon in the wild early game anyway so that's a consolation.

Wait i thought the last mission required you to obtain all 386 Pokes before you could even do the mission? So not all pokes are available? Or is that just before the post game?

Also what were the most recent changes?

Haven't seen any added pokemon in route 501 and 502 so far, gonna assume its the ones coming up where they are.

Got my first badge now and just thought of a idea, how about making the TMs infinite use like the later gens if possible? Maybe make the prices of the ones you buy more expensive to make up for it.

@jastolze: Yes, last mission requires a complete dex. But it's just like vanilla FireRed, there's only 151 Pokemon available before you enter the Hall of Fame, and the other 235 become available in postgame. So you can catch 'em all and do the final mission.

Detailed changelog:
- Wilds in Sphere Ruins levels lowered to 59-70 instead of like 65-100 or whatever it was in vanilla.
- Asphere lowered to lv 80.
- The three trainers' levels were lowered to 70-72.
- The final mission's enemy Pokemon are level 90 instead of 100, letting you have a level advantage.
- Fixed a bug in Darthatron's Repel script where if you said "no" after a Repel ran out and there was a moving NPC on the screen at the same time, and then you talked to the NPC, the game would softlock. All I did was add a "release" command.
- Reverted my Raging Flame custom animation because it softlocked the game if I leveled up on the turn an opponent used it. Weird glitch, didn't want to figure out the cause.
- Nerfed Psyburn to 70 accuracy and removed its +SpDef effect.
- Nerfed Geo Impact to 80 accuracy
- Added Buizel, Elekid, Maneko, and Magnemite to Spirit Mansion and the routes surrounding Russette City. (Sorry if you guys wanted a bit more, but I didn't want to go overboard. This should provide enough elemental diversity until lategame.)

@Da Man: There's a bunch of TM shops in this game, along with one with all 50 TMs in the final postgame area. Level-up moves are generally very good too, so don't worry. also i grew up with gen 3 and i'm used to single use tms

Vega isn't really that hard, though. Unless you're a casual.

Mantager said:

Vega isn't really that hard, though. Unless you're a casual.

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Try telling that to the numerous people doing playthroughs of Vega that lose at least the first time to every gym leader before going on. I had to grind like crazy to beat the game. What team did you have that made you feel it was simple?

Mantager said:

Vega isn't really that hard, though. Unless you're a casual.

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The point of this hack was to make Vega easy enough to be playable by casuals. :)

I hope the Mos remains as always xD

sz said:

I hope the Mos remains as always xD

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Mos makes me laugh too often. And that first battle with him in Vanilla Vega, didn't expect that last Pokemon he used that early on.

Are you planning to add the Stats Judge in a future update? I've seen a couple of FR hacks that have it and I'm actually a bit annoyed that there isn't one here.

Also, were there any plans to edit the learnsets of certain Pok?mon? My biggest problem with the regular Vega isn't the difficulty, but with the learnsets. In particular, with how Zapdos lost access to Thunderbolt while many other Electric-types were given access to Hydro Pump via the Move Tutor.

You are doing the Lord's work here, just wanted to let you know <3

Silent S said:

Are you planning to add the Stats Judge in a future update? I've seen a couple of FR hacks that have it and I'm actually a bit annoyed that there isn't one here.

Also, were there any plans to edit the learnsets of certain Pok?mon? My biggest problem with the regular Vega isn't the difficulty, but with the learnsets. In particular, with how Zapdos lost access to Thunderbolt while many other Electric-types were given access to Hydro Pump via the Move Tutor.

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...annoyed that there isn't a stats judge? lol. I don't know how to implement that and it's completely unnecessary anyways. This is supposed to be a casual game, not Smogon.

About the learnsets, well... I wasn't planning to go through every mon and tweak their sets. I did it for some - Phantonate lost all access to TMs and tutor moves so you can't solo the game with it anymore. Suppose I could give Zapdos Thunderbolt back if you'd like, but about Hydro Pump I think if the player has access to it (which you do), it's fair game. Pretty sure I took off any instances of Hydro Pump on electrics anyways until postgame.