Problems?
Issues playing Game Boy and Game Boy Advance hacks
Sometimes, your Pokémon hack won’t work as you expect it to — if you’re receiving errors such as white screens or crashes that other people don’t seem to be having, read on.
Check if the ROM you’re trying to patch is correct — assume that if the game you’re patching is FireRed or Emerald, that they are the English 1.0 versions. Try following the guide above with ROM Patcher JS and comparing the checksums. Any 1.1 version or higher version or any version that has been modified in any way will not match, and attempting to patch on them will lead to crashes. Do not ignore mismatch errors from your patching app; if these do appear, or you get crashes, you’ll need to find the correct ROM.
White screens and errors such as “The 1M sub-circuit board is not installed”, “The previous save file will be loaded” or “The battery has run dry” should never occur if you’re using an up-to-date emulator (or some Android/iOS emulators). If you have no other options, and you’re trying to play Pokémon fan games, check the emulator’s settings:
- Make sure the "Save type" is "Flash 128K".
- Also ensure that the "Real-Time Clock" is enabled — this should allow Ruby-, Sapphire-, Emerald- and day/night-based FireRed hacks to run.
Certain ROM hacks may require overrides to work. Your emulator's help pages should be able to tell you how to set these.
Issues playing Nintendo DS hacks
Unlike with GBA games, modern DS emulators are much better at automatically detecting the settings to run. If your game won't load, be sure to check if you're patching the correct games.
Some games may crash on flash carts due to compatibility issues with the cart’s firmware, and may be resolved with a firmware update.
Dealing with issues in general
Some issues can be dealt with by checking for any settings or patching procedures supplied by a hack’s developer, so check the documentation, MD5 sums, etc. for the hack you’re trying to play. In addition, some hacks just might not work with the emulator you’re trying to use; in which case, try a different emulator. It’s likely the hack’s page or questions asked in a hack’s thread will have suggestions as to what you should do.