Fix for the game freezing when pokemon evolve after beating the E4 (based off what I did 3 minutes before this post):
1. beat the E4 again.
2. don't have pokemon fighting that could evolve during the fight.
3. let the game save using the in game save
4. load that file after reset
5. talk to Prof. Oak
6. go to Oak's lab and receive nat'l dex (again) and instructions to go to 4 point isle
7. level pokemon to test evolution working.
possibility i'd like to test.
1. go straight to Oak's lab and see if he has anything to say to you.
2. listen to what he says if he does.
3. level pokemon to test if evolution freezes game still
awesome hack, LSA. are you also on a lockpicking forum?
P.S. method two worked as well, but it took two tries. using charmander > charmeleon for testing against E4 Lorelei.
If you cancel evolution to attempt to continue, the game will freeze going to Bruno, btw. the only fix i have found is to talk to Oak about the 4 point isle. it seems to fix everything, testing a second evolution.
P.S.S. second evolution of Pokemon worked, squirtle > wartortle. do NOT use speed boost on VBA when evolving. froze it after the fix when testing first time.
P.S.S.S. Defeating E4 again resulted in game freezing for wartortle> blastoise evolution. did not talk to oak after defeating E4 before this error. have talked to oak about 4 point isle previously. never visited 4 point isle. going back and speaking to oak did not fix error. still froze when going from wartortle > blastoise
Finally got wartortle > blastoise to work (third evolution tried after initial glitch fix). it required loading the save from beating the E4 (the game autosave). based off of what i am seeing, it is a glitch caused by skipping the game "ending" and continuing straight. Whenever I picked the "YES" option after Oak, the rival, and I run out of the building, it causes the evolution freezing the game glitch. A save can be fixed after this happens by defeating the E4 and using the in game autosave. This leads me to believe the glitch is caused by the feature of skipping the game reset after the E4 battles. AKA, if you are using an emulator that can't use the in game save, you're screwed as far as I can tell.
Going to 4 point isle seems to have affected nothing.
Emulator used= VBA 1.8.0 beta3
ROM= Pokemon Fire Red with ultra violet 1.22
not sure of pokemon fire red version. don't bother asking unless you can tell. all i can do is send you the rom (i made a copy before i patched it)
Summarization:
1. beat the E4.
2. don't have pokemon fighting that could evolve during the fight.
3. let the game save using the in game save
4. load that file after reset
will fix saves that currently have the "freeze when evolution occurs" glitch.
If you can't use the autosave, I think you're screwed.