Pokémon: Team Rocket

[Mankey]

I'm very new to hacking but I have a great idea for a storyline, but I can't script and I'm okay at map editing.

I'm hacking 'Ruby, BTW.

The storyline goes that [Player] is Giovanni's child, and you have started Pokémon training. You choose between three Pokémon, Ekans, Weezing or Slowpoke (I'm considering changing those for Meowth/Rattata, not sure yet). Your father tells you to venture forth and rebuild Team Rocket's reputation. You must claim Gym Badges and steal Pokémon for yourself, also you must steal money from people too (this is done in the normal way of just beating trainers though, but text will be shown of you stealing their money). Once you acquire all Gym Badges you must face your father, who will test to see how good you've become. If you beat him, he will tell you to go and defeat the Elite Four etc.

Basically, it's like every other Pokémon game but you're Team Rocket this time.

Like/Dislike the idea?

 

[Banjora Marxvile]

I'm very new to hacking but I have a great idea for a storyline, but I can't script and I'm okay at map editing.

I'm hacking 'Ruby, BTW.

The storyline goes that [Player] is Giovanni's child, and you have started Pokémon training. You choose between three Pokémon, Ekans, Weezing or Slowpoke (I'm considering changing those for Meowth/Rattata, not sure yet). Your father tells you to venture forth and rebuild Team Rocket's reputation. You must claim Gym Badges and steal Pokémon for yourself, also you must steal money from people too (this is done in the normal way of just beating trainers though, but text will be shown of you stealing their money). Once you acquire all Gym Badges you must face your father, who will test to see how good you've become. If you beat him, he will tell you to go and defeat the Elite Four etc.

Basically, it's like every other Pokémon game but you're Team Rocket this time.

Like/Dislike the idea?

Interesting... Not very original in my eyes, but it isn't that bad. There were rumours of the rival in GSC being Giovanni's kid (with the Scientist in FR inside 5 Isles Rocket Warehouse saying a red haired kid was his son). Would we play as him?

 

[machomuu]

Ah...another Team Rocket hack, ok.
Why do you face your father after you get the eight badges?
Why does he tell you to defeat the Elite 4?

 

[Mankey]

Yeah, I've noticed Team Rocket hacks aren't original so I'm trying to make it as original as possible.

He tells you to go and defeat the Elite Four so that the world knows of Team Rocket's power.

 

[Micro SD]

This seems like a good idea, and I see how the stealing money concept would work. However, how would you be able to steal Pokemon? And who would the gym leaders be? Whoever they are, it seems like they would have a high reputation, so you might have the townspeople talk a lot about them (just an idea).

If you could overcome a few bumps, I think it would be a good hack.

 

[ckret2]

Basically, it's like every other Pokémon game but you're Team Rocket this time.

There are a whole lot of other hacks out there that can be boiled down to "Basically, it's like every other Pokémon game but ________________ this time." But you're in a new region. But there are Fakemon. But it's set a generation into the future, a thousand years into the past. But the bad guys have taken over and you have to overthrow them.

So the intro to the game is going to be different: instead of a Professor handing you a starter, it's your father Giovanni. That's a difference of an overworld sprite and a bit of dialogue. Between the eight gym and the Elite Four, there's a bonus battle with Giovanni--unless Giovanni is made the leader of that eighth gym, as he is in Kanto; in which case there's no difference in the general plot, just the dialogue. The text "PLAYER received $1200 for winning!" will replace the word "received" with "stole". What else?

Those are a lot of small cosmetic differences, and it would take, maybe, three days to implement them all. (Heck, just for the fun of it, I once switched out the female OW in my FireRed ROM with the default female Rocket Grunt OW, so that I could pretend I was playing as a Team Rocket member. Reusing the basic walking frames for the running frames, it took me all of fifteen minutes. Speaking of which, I wouldn't recommend doing that; it makes jogging look really funky.) If you want to steal Pokémon, that would just be a bunch of NPCs with givepokemon commands in their scripts. Tada, you're done.

What makes this different? What makes this not "like every other Pokémon game" other than the fact that you're in Team Rocket? If I want to play every other Pokémon game, I'll go play every other Pokémon game--and in half of my current games I'm pretending that I'm an undercover Rocket agent already, so that's nothing new.

I'm sure you can do more with a Team Rocket plot than hand out a weird starter and kick the player out into yet another beat-the-gym become-the-champ game. Why are you battling gyms? How would that help "rebuild Team Rocket's reputation"? Team Rocket's leader used to be the toughest gym leader in Kanto, why couldn't Giovanni rebuild the reputation himself if the reputation-building absolutely must be tied to the gyms? Wouldn't it be more reputation-building if, say, your mission were to track down all the gym leaders, sneak up on them outside of their gyms, and steal their Pokémon from them? Kids come along and beat gym leaders all the time, after all. Just look at Brock: two routes east of him, there are little girls with Clefairy stronger than his best Pokémon. It would take more than another humdrum beat-the-gyms become-the-champ mission to bring Team Rocket back--especially since going on a gym quest is absolutely, totally, completely irrelevant to anything any Team Rocket member has ever done in any game that includes them. If you can come up with a connection, something that makes beating gyms truly relevant to Team Rocket's mission statement (which according to G/S/C is "Steal Pokémon for profit! Exploit Pokémon for profit! All Pokémon exist for the glory of Team Rocket!" but is pretty much any variation on that theme), then more power to you and I wish you luck with it. But you haven't made it relevant yet.

This game certainly has potential. You just haven't done much with it yet. I hope that you will in the future.

 

[Mankey]

Wow, thanks for that. You got me thinking!

I was thinking of maybe recruiting NPCs into Team Rocket, and having some Rocket Leader (or Giovanni himself) tell you what to do on the phone, giving you missions such as stealing Pokémon and money, starting off small with making Marts Team Rocket's and working your way up to taking-over those SuperMarts or from Casinos etc., of course they include Pokémon battles with the shop staff and security.

I'm also thinking about making your rival at first some low-ranking police officer, but as you work your way up the ranks, so does he, so in the end you're the Team Rocket master and he's the head of Police.

Also, I was thinking of maybe scrapping fighting the Elite Four but instead, when you beat your father, you have learnt that you are more powerful than him and so you become Team Rocket's leader, although I haven't thought yet of what this might entail.

How about now, is this better content to include?

 

[Roxasabridged]

How about for the Gym leaders... After you beat one, you 'steal' their best pokemon. 'You stole _______ from _______' instead of 'recieved TM__ from _________'.