Imagine a timeline where Pokémon didn’t need to sell ten of millions of copies to please its corporate masters. Imagine a timeline where, instead of ceaseless and unending exploitation by a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, the beloved monster-catching caper was instead an indie passion project cobbled together by a rough and rambunctious development team.

We don’t have to imagine that last bit — because that’s exactly how Pokémon started. In 1990, a team of almost 30 began work on a game about collecting monsters. They had no time, no money, but loads and loads of ambition. That led to their monster-catching game becoming the most profitable intellectual property of all time.

But that original timeline, the one where Pokémon remains in the hands of that rambunctious development team, still exists today — sort of. It’s a timeline where the series remains an indie passion project, instead sustained by a fandom that seemingly wants more from the thing it loves.

That timeline exists today in the form of ROM hacks: code-level changes to your favourite Pokémon game. If you want Emerald to comprise almost entirely double battles, the aptly titled Double Emerald has your back. If you want a take on Crystal where knocked out Pokémon stay dead forever, you can find it in Polished Crystal.

But why might someone bother? Here’s my guess: Pokémon is a game that, in this author’s opinion, demands you keep your ball-throwing arms inside the car at all times. It’s a game about making sure that you, aspiring Pokémon master, can safely beat the game at virtually any cost — even if it’s at the expense of actually having fun.

And because it’s a series so unwilling to change, fans are choosing to do it themselves. Or so my theory goes.

That started in the late ‘90s when a Pokémon game was modified — but it wasn’t a hack as we’d recognise it today. Changes were said to be small: dialogue tweaks, sprite swaps — nothing you’d call substantive, and certainly nothing you’d call fun. A big deal perhaps by virtue of the fact that ROMs could be hacked at all. A ROM was hacked. They showed it could be done. These people were and are, in effect, one-person versions of the rambunctious development team that started it all.

That led to the development of one of the first notable known-name ROM hacks, Pokémon Brown — based on 1996’s Red version. Brown featured an entirely new region and new moves. It appears to be the first documented game changer in a very literal sense, and went to on receive remakes in 2009, 2014, and 2024.

Searching far and wide

But Brown was just the start. What began as modifications to existing Pokémon games evolved into entirely new ones. In 2017, Skeli released Pokémon Unbound, a game styled more on the trappings of a traditional JRPG than a traditional ‘mon adventure. It rearranges the guts of Fire Red into something genuinely unrecognisable. It’s a new Pokémon game with missions, difficulty settings, and daily events. From its soundtrack to its story to its setting — it has its own everything. It’s not a ‘mon game as we’ve quite known them, and it’s considered to be the pinnacle of ROM hacks, if that moniker even applies here.

In FireRed Rocket Edition, you play as a member of the infamous Team Rocket and, in what might be the most non-Nintendo thing ever, you can steal Pokémon from opposing trainers. Other hacks import Pokémon from other generations or import quality-of-life enhancements from newer iterations, while others include Nuzlocke rules like permadeath. Hacks such as Kaizo crank up the difficulty to unbelievable levels, and have since spawned an entire sub-genre of content dedicated to people clutching their way to the credits of their favourite Pokémon game.

Examples of hacks are almost endless, such as Blaze Black by AphexCubed. Its change log — which feels like a derogatory term for such an extensive overhaul — reads like it’s for a game just coming from early access and into its official, debut version. Little has gone untouched. The word ‘hack’ feels like a misnomer here for something that would go by the word ‘mod’ or ‘expansion’ for any other product.

Whether it’s a re-balance or a re-imagining, hacks feel like unreleased expansion packs or cancelled projects of the games we’ve played for decades, such is their high quality. They feel a bit mischievous, even — like you’ve discovered some suppressed, secret build of your favourite Pokémon game. They feel like games transported from different timelines, ones where different creative decisions were made about the games we love. We get to play what could’ve been.

And there’s a lot of what could’ve been, as each Pokémon, each enemy trainer, each item, each move, and each wild encounter is a variable that can be tweaked, a dial to be turned. Each hack turns those dials in a different way to the last, meaning each is like encountering a Pokémon for the very first time — you want to discover what’s special about each fan-made build to see whether or not it’s for you. 

You might want to know what it’d be like if Typhlosion was in Red, or what it’d be like if Crystal was free-roam from its outset or had modern quality-of-life-features. Whatever prospective timeline takes your fancy, a rom hack probably has you covered.

Some hacks go further. Hacks like Unbound and Radical Red interrogate you like a butler desperate to please. Want easy puzzles? Go ahead. Want difficult combat? You can have that too. Want to impose a level cap? It’s all on tap. You can build an experience for you, meaning hackers don’t need to. They mod the game to help you mod the game. It’s a refreshing change for a series that seems resolute in its refusal to let you customise your experience in any meaningful way.

But for every hack that seeks to drastically alter a game, others look to refine what came before, like the Legacy series. The pitch: to retain the original feel of games like Yellow and Crystal while fixing bugs and perceived imbalances and flaws. SmithPlays Pokémon, series lead, documents his workings out on YouTube, talking about how he arrived at decisions to rebalance one thing or another. In doing so, he and creators like him reveal that our childhood aspirations were in fact made by very human people with very human limitations. It felt like magic back then, but it was anything but behind the scenes — and many, many mistakes were made.

Hacks and the content created around them have awoken an appreciation for just how engaging Pokémon’s mechanics can be, forcing me to shed my perceptions of the series formed in my ignorant youth. 

And it turns out that Pokémon is really bloody good.

The power that’s inside

Or more accurately, Pokémon can be really bloody good.

Hacks reveal how little has to be changed for Pokémon to become a true master of the craft it created. A series replete with depth and complexity that its main quest never demands you use nor truly understand. ROM hacks can bring that knowledge to the fore, demanding that you understand everything about the ‘mons in your roster and theirs. They manifest a world where an understanding of every aspect of  Pokémon’s deceptively intricate design is an absolute must.

That might be understanding how Effort Values and Individual Values influence a ‘mons effectiveness or, heaven forbid, using moves that do something other than damage your opponent’s ‘mons. It’s stuff that’s been in Pokémon for decades — but it’s something that both me of 25 years ago and 2 years ago barely knew or leveraged. The classic ‘mon campaign only ever really asks that you to do some kind of damage to get by, or lets brute-force with level advantage to overcome virtually every obstacle.

You might take these changes as an affront to the creator’s original vision, a desecration of some sacred holy text. I see it a bit differently, though: these hacks are preserving Pokémon’s past, which, without these efforts, will likely fall into the abyss of history. Famous and beloved games, sure, but ones that have or will be supplanted by games of modernity and inevitable remakes. It’s hard to envision a world where swaths are playing 2004’s Fire Red decades from now.

And it’s not like there’s ill intent behind these, either. They aren’t some scam to make money from the work of others — it’s pure passion at play. Nothing is for sale. And it’s a passion that’s allowing these creations to grow up with their consumers. Pokémon Red might’ve been relatively simplistic, perfect for the 8-year olds of 1996. Now, though, that generation drives cars, pays mortgages, and wants an experience that feels becoming of their age. Whether they know it or not, hackers are allowing the games we love to grow up with us in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. Hacks allow fans to contribute to the Pokémon pantheon too, as unofficial and unsanctioned as they might be.

And regardless of which hacks take your fancy, they all speak to just how compelling the beating heart of Pokémon is and just how restrained that heart is by a commercial mandate to appeal to tens of millions of players. The very thing that made it successful has ironically kept it from ever truly evolving. Decades later, Pokémon’s combat is still choosing four attacks from a text-based menu and, while hacks don’t change that ’90s Game Boy core, they expand upon it in a way that might make the experience compelling for lapsed trainers and long-time detractors.

And to that word we return once more: hack. A word that does its creators a grave disservice. It suggests something off-the-cuff and cobbled together. Yet it’s clear that these would-be indie developers are doing what they love with care and attention. They’re preserving the timeline in which the Pokémon remained in the hands of that rambunctious development team from all those decades ago.

And the efforts of those hackers — or modders or creators — are keeping the series’ sense of exploration and discovery alive in an attempt to craft a monster-catching RPG that, to them, is the best there ever was.

Because that, it seems, is their cause.

Image via Foxeaf on DeviantArt.