Alpha and Omega

Emerald Rogue Ex and Mini were really the only games I cleared, huh...

Emerald Mini: Currently Playing:

What if the reigon was tiny? It's an adorable concept.
Gym battles are all in a row, trainer battles work a bit like that too since the routes are so small that all battles are pretty much mandatory now.
Wally is in place of your rival for the entire run, they're just gone now. It's an interesting way to build up his team since otherwise he only has 3 battles in base emerald.
Some of the small additions are real neat.
Like the trick master room is now just a long hallway Backtracking's not a big problem since everything is so small you can just run through all of Hoenn no problem! Kind of makes me appreciate how tight the gameplay loop is of pokemon like it's an equivalent to emerald rogue minus the randomization elements.
I'd love to see how other games would be handled in this "mini" format to be honest, when you strip everything down to its bare essentials and still have a fun experience that's a good way to start off!

Emerald Mini Cleared!

Since the game revolves around being super tiny to play and travel, I kind of slipped over victory road, so I ended up at the e4 in my 40s. Training montage!
Mostly hunting trainers down on the pokenav since there’s no vs seeker like FRLG, checking areas I didn’t clear, and just hunting down rare candies on the ground through balls I never opened.

Definitely a gauntlet with the e4 having no healing in between until Jasmine who replaced Drake, so I guess the champion might’ve changed too…

Zinnia! Idk if the AI was bugged or what but salamance got looped into using fly over and over and eventually it died because of sandstorm chip damage.

Then altaria used perish song while it was the only one left. The heck? What a flatline ending. I might consider doing the postgame part later but for now it’s a bit of a bummer the final fight of the main story sort of stumbled over.

Emerald Seaglass It’s quite nice looking We could do with more games that change up the overworld This is pretty much still emerald base game though but it’s super nice.

Emerald Hacks

I was working with an older build of emerald rogue (pre 2.0) and the gym leader AI does in fact cheat. Why? I happened to reload a save before fighting one and I switched which Pokémon I had in the lead and the gym leader’s entire strategy and team changed! No wonder I’d get teams tailor made to beat me every time. I might try beating 1.3.5 just to see if it helps me out even though with 2.0 out it’s practically an entirely different game.,
the 7/11 Easy Mode Emerald Rogue Run



I beat emerald rogue 2.0! On easy mode.

I picked classic, but it featured variants, so there were some head scratching moments where I went “tf is that weak to” because of variants past Gen. 7

The pokemon that caused me the most violent reaction of “WHAT IS THAT” had to probably be sneasler because I had blocked the PLA tag so I never knew that long thing existed and I had the reaction of “who put that goth mean girl in my pokemon game”

unfortunately i have never played competitive and my style of battling is either "i hit you hard and beat the fig out of you" or "I poison you to death" so i learned that things like poison spikes and stealth rock are somewhat useful but then most fights had some way to get rid of that stuff anyways. Unless its an attack that’s got 90% because that means it’s actually 10% and it’s not hitting.

Easy mode was way more of what I was expecting tbh, quick paced. Now maybe I can get my normal mode going since I’ve had practice. But since I picked a kanto trainer I got the kanto roster… wait, that means the entire thing is gonna be different for the johto save. Damn. whenever i hear petalburg woods theme now i'm just gonna think about when i was playing this game and being like "should i stick with the team i have or switch out anyone for a trained pokemon and like... no." getting to the final fight and i could hear my heart pumping and then IT was a fakeout and I had to do ANOTHER fight as if I shouldn't have been expecting to actually fight the champion and this was just easy mode so maybe I need to accept that I'm actually a scrub at pokemon and my brain kept trying to sabotage me the later i got in because i was like "why am I sending out nidoking against a psychic pokemon" once i got the latios it was a lockin tbh like how in the world would i not have it in the bag especially when i sold my items to get soul dew

Blue (rival)’s final team was weird as fig though. Helix, Dome, Mewtwo, Registeel, Pinsir, and Snorlax Why two fossilmons? Is it randomized every time?

so uh. that was very cool! now it's back to normal mode

the johto run is going terribly why am I on easy and silver has a phanphy with earthquake and bulldoze before gym 2 real roguelike energy is having RNG completely heck you over i guess

blazing emerald or the version i have confuses me why is there mostly johto mons now why is the diamond ost playing fear this is some alternate universe shit

Emerald Rogue V2 came out which I know is gonna be a huge time sink for me when I remember to play it but I have awful roguelike luck and have never beat a run which is going to make me look like a scrub if I set to easy mode like I did with radical red because I was like "I haven't played a game since gen 7 and i'm not going to know all these new mechanics and I do not think I'm going to legitimately play this game with all of these options that are giving me choice paralysis." Sometimes less is more for me, like a limited roster, because I've never been the type to complete the full pokedex. I mean I’m still working on that one translated green save but I dropped that off during the SS Anne.

Emerald Trashlocke, Tentacruel MVP

Otherwise known as, how I learned to love(subjective) underrated Pokémon.
A few years ago, I went nuts on a Pokémon website dedicated to rom hacks. The repercussions of this are still being felt to this day as I whittle them down and go through seas of varying ideas, quality, and execution. Or in my case with this game, finding a dedicated Pokémon team and ignoring the premise of the actual game, which is to be a nuzlocke. I’m bad at those. And this is a game with just bad Pokémon in it.

It’s more or less a war of patience to try and find something that’s good out of nothing, because playing this taught me that there are a lot of Pokémon I’ve never considered using in a team. And I probably never will, because Pokémon games either have good pokemon, or mid pokemon, and to be mid might as well be signing a death contract because no gimmick or level grinding on earth will save a mid Pokémon from getting two shot by something.
there’s also a gag in game where every gift Pokémon is replaced by an unown and various stores and methods are closed by the rom hacker to prevent a person from say, just going to the game corner and buying better TMs. But nothing to keep someone from doing the same at lily cove mall, but I didn’t do that and just bought junk for my secret bases. I want to say that this at least taught me the values of patience and favoriting Pokémon but honestly once I grabbed Tentacruel that was my go to Pokémon since surf and STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus) wipe stuff. I only realize now that my end team had two normal types on it. They pretty much were the MVPs alongside Tentacruel for being able to learn so many moves. Instead of going to the battle frontier or anything grandiose like hunting the Latis (which are likely also Unown), I decided to park this character in her house. I think she deserves a rest. Trashlocke runs are an interesting concept because it’s more or less forcing yourself to look at pokemon you’d never normally use in a playthrough by limiting the roster. I’m not great at nuzlockes, I failed my first one in emerald so I mostly stick to my pseudo nuzlocke rules of doing only first catch per route which is why some of my teams have looked so weird in the hall, I don’t go for other options. Emerald Trashlocke taught me that common route 1 mons and stuff I was always annoyed with encountering can really pull through