FireRed hack: Pokemon Red Fire Version

[SmithJack]

Introduction
Pokemon Red Fire Version is my take on a difficulty hack of Fire Red. I was inspired by Emerald Kaizo, specifically nuzlocke runs of Emerald Kaizo. My aim was to create a romhack that's difficult to nuzlocke, balanced, and linear while retaining the general feel and structure of the original game. The linked zip file contains the patch as well as full documentation of trainer battles, wild pokemon, learnsets, item changes, and move changes.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/q8ngan5p7xcxubo/PokemonRedFireVersion.zip/file

Features
To achieve linearity certain roadblocks had to be implemented to eliminate branching paths. These take the form of altered environments, new NPCs, added Strength boulders and Rock Smash rocks, and rearrangement of some key items. The world map has been similarly altered to reflect the modified region.

There are 300 trainers, 299 of which are mandatory. Trainers have been repositioned such that they cannot be avoided. There are added double battles, a rain section, and a sun section. The pokemon count of trainers gradually increases throughout the game with bosses always having 6. The level curve has been tuned to minimize the need for leveling outside of trainer battles. Blue has access to the same set of resources and pokemon as the player relative to his location in the game, limited to 1 pokemon per area.

Wild pokemon placement and encounter rates have been changed significantly. New encounter locations have been added. Gift pokemon and trade pokemon have been removed.

Pokemon have revamped learnsets that greatly improve their viability and effectiveness. Power points have been changed and accuracy has been boosted on many moves.

Some evolutions have been adjusted for increased accessibility of pokemon. EVs have been removed. Each pokemon species has 1 ability.

Shop inventories have all been changed. Berries are widely available for purchase. Rare Candy is available in Viridian for $1 to cover any miscellaneous leveling without grinding. Healing items have been disabled in battle.

Field items both visible and hidden have been changed. 15 Big Mushrooms are scattered throughout the region for the Move Reminder who's been moved to Celadon.

Level Curve

Spoiler:

Blue - 5
Blue - 9
Brock - 14
Blue - 20
Misty - 24
Blue - 27
Lt. Surge - 30
Erika - 36
Giovanni - 40
Blue - 42
Koichi - 45
Koga - 50
Blue - 54
Giovanni - 56
Sabrina - 60
Blaine - 65
Giovanni - 70
Blue - 72
Lorelei - 100
Bruno - 100
Agatha - 100
Lance - 100
Blue - 100

Made With

Spoiler:

AdvanceMap1.91
HopelessTrainerEditor v1.0
Gen3Tools v2.9
GBA Intro Manager v0.1.4
Nameless Tile Map Editor
GBA Graphics Editor V 2.2
unLZ-GBA
HxD

Credits And Thanks

Spoiler:

My family
This project would not have been possible without my family's support and encouragement.

PokeCommunity, Anthroyd, and everyone who's posted tutorials and created tools
I was able to learn how to make this hack with minimal questions because of the hard work and research of many people over the years, far too many to list fully. Most notably I used tutorials, tools, and research from this site, Anthroyd's tutorial videos, and some data sets I found posted on Reddit. I'm very appreciative.

SinisterHoodedFigure
Emerald Kaizo is a fantastic game that raised the bar for difficulty hacks. After playing it for a number of weeks and watching some streams I thought, what would a Fire Red version of a hack like this be like?, and then began the multi-month project that became Red Fire. I'm very thankful for the inspiration that enabled me to accomplish a childhood fantasy of making a videogame.

PokemonChallenges
Jan's videos, streams, and love for the franchise got me back into Pokemon games after several years of hiatus. His content helped me become a better Pokemon player.

PokemonChallenges community
I've learned a great deal about Pokemon and game design from playing and talking with Jan's stream and Discord community. Their suggestions and feedback helped improve the quality of the hack.

Aurateur
He suggested the name Red Fire when I asked him during a stream what a good name would be for a Fire Red hack. It grew on me.

 

[baruag]

Ooh, looks neat :)

 

[ShinyTillDawn]

There's a severe exploit you can use early in the game, but then it makes the game so unfun. You might want to look into how to force level caps in the game (just like how Radical Red does it).

 

[SmithJack]

If you're referring to the ability to overlevel by means of the available Rare Candy in Viridian, then yes. I'm aware. The accessible Rare Candy as well as the choice to do whatever one wants with that is intentional. Its purpose to alleviate grinding and to bypass the commonly taken step of using an Action Replay code to obtain the same items. It's up to the player to decide how many to use and when to use them. If someone wants to deliberately trivialize the game by overleveling they certainly can (and could anyway), but as you said that would be rather unfun.

I did consider implementing some sort of forced level cap but ultimately decided against it. Experience management is a part of the challenge. Implementing a forced cap would negate that aspect of the game entirely.

 

[TheGameHunter]

Just saw your post about this on reddit, at first glance this hack looks really cool! I am curious though, even though it's not truly vanilla EK adding some gen 4 and 5 moves like earth power, drill run, flash cannon, etc. greatly improved many mons' viability. Was adding moves like that just not part of what you wanted to do? Cause obviously you were able to replace other moves with the various hidden power types, so I'm just curious. Also, I just noticed I see learnset changes but not stat changes. Did you not buff any pokemon's BSTs? Cause I feel quite a few mons definitely deserve stat buffs.

 

[Wolfmoru]

Is it completed?

 

[PiscesLizard]

How many Pokémon are available in the game?

 

[SmithJack]

Just saw your post about this on reddit, at first glance this hack looks really cool! I am curious though, even though it's not truly vanilla EK adding some gen 4 and 5 moves like earth power, drill run, flash cannon, etc. greatly improved many mons' viability. Was adding moves like that just not part of what you wanted to do? Cause obviously you were able to replace other moves with the various hidden power types, so I'm just curious. Also, I just noticed I see learnset changes but not stat changes. Did you not buff any pokemon's BSTs? Cause I feel quite a few mons definitely deserve stat buffs.

I centered the power level of trainers around ADV OU. I wanted to leave the metagame largely in tact so there are no BST changes nor anachronistic moves. Boosting accuracy was largely to minimize winning/losing fights due to luck. From my testing in alpha the power of pokemon relative to each other was minimally effected by the accuracy boosting.

Is it completed?

Barring any unforeseen minor bugfixes or data entry errors to potentially correct, yes.

How many Pokémon are available in the game?

The following pokemon are unobtainable by the player: Legendaries/Mythics, Aipom, Blissey, Castform, Chansey, Delibird, Ditto, Dunsparce, Farfetch'd, Luvdisc, Shedinja, Shuckle, Smeargle, Spinda, Unown. Every other evolution family is obtainable. The greater majority of wild pokemon are at their maximum evolution stage for their level.

 

[slowbrah22]

how do I evolve machoke or kadabra?
how do I evolve yanma or gligar?

 

[Hyulens168]

how do I evolve machoke or kadabra?
how do I evolve yanma or gligar?

This is gen 3, so unless he decided to implement more Pokemon, Yanmega and Gliscor does not exist, so Yanma and Gligar can't evolve

 

[Xq43]

the intro screen just replays over and over again even when I press enter

 

[HaloReborn]

All Fire Red roms I try and patch with seem to have invalid checksums. Is there a specific version of the rom we should be using for it to work? I get the same result as Xq43 where the intro screen appears but it's glitched and just replays.

 

[Ace trainer shan]

Bruh I patched it but HOW DO I PLAY IT IT'S TITLE SCREEN IS GLITCHED EVERY TIME!!! GOSH WHEN I PRESS IT IT JUST REPLAYS!!

 

[gibstack693]

For anyone trying to download this hack, which I do NOT recommend:

-It requires v1.0 of FireRed (instead of v1.1), which is odd but not a red flag by itself.
-It requires v0.9.1 of mGBA or VBA to run. This is certainly a red flag. v0.9.3 (the latest version of mGBA and what most people have been using for awhile) does not work.
-The hack breaks when using any form of speedup.

I was fine with using an old version of mGBA and a different than usual FireRed version, but I'm not interested in trying past that when using speedup breaks the game. That shows there's something especially fundamentally broken with this game, and it isn't worth trying to play more.

 

[Brotendo]

When does kadabra evolve

 

[Brotendo]

For anyone trying to download this hack, which I do NOT recommend:

-It requires v1.0 of FireRed (instead of v1.1), which is odd but not a red flag by itself.
-It requires v0.9.1 of mGBA or VBA to run. This is certainly a red flag. v0.9.3 (the latest version of mGBA and what most people have been using for awhile) does not work.
-The hack breaks when using any form of speedup.

I was fine with using an old version of mGBA and a different than usual FireRed version, but I'm not interested in trying past that when using speedup breaks the game. That shows there's something especially fundamentally broken with this game, and it isn't worth trying to play more.

I have the latest version of mGBA and t runs perfectly for me