- If you’re thinking of revisiting Kanto, this ROM hack made by some friends of mine gives you a very, very good reason to play like it’s 1996.
- What do you get when you take a crack team of tinkerers, a couple of existing open-source projects, and get ’em to jam like they’re Zappa on stage? A ROM hack oozing with soul.
- SPOILER WARNING: Some Story changes and postgame content.
If Pokemon fans must explore Kanto again, under protest, there seems to be little reason to do so by revisiting the original Red and Blue, except for nostalgia’s sake. Granted, I’ve only ever experienced Gen I through ROM hacks, but Kanto has been remade, remastered, and rereleased so many times at this point that even George Lucas would think it’s a bit much.
On second thought, forget the remakes – FireRed and LeafGreen ROM hackers know the game better than they know their own postcode. The CFRU project on Github allows anyone to make a FRLG-based ROM hack with all the bells and whistles of Pokemon’s modern battle mechanics, as well as (almost) every single Pokemon:
https://github.com/Skeli789/Complete-Fire-Red-Upgrade
You currently have a very, very good reason to play like it’s 1996. I’ve had the absolute privilege of sitting on my arse for two years watching the development of the Kanto Expansion Pak – first as a pet mod on Smogon, playable on alternate Pokemon Showdown! servers, and now, a faithful feature-length expansion to the original Kanto adventure:
https://github.com/PlagueVonKarma/kep-hack
“Faithful?” Ye gods, where to start? Dark, Steel, and Fairy have been added, but this ain’t your zoomer type chart – Dark and Steel’s matchups are based on the SpaceWorld ’97 demo of Gold and Silver. Among other stark differences, Dark types are weak to Normal, and vice versa; Steel resists Fighting and is immune to itself.
The Pokedex has been expanded to include most future Pokemon related to the original 151, as well as some new additions based on unused beta sprites. If it evolves to/from a Kanto mon (e.g. Electivire and Magmortar – some babies are excluded), is an alternate form (e.g. Alolan Ninetales/Exeggutor), or is derived from a Kanto design (e.g. Scream Tail, Sandy Shocks, Toedscruel), it’s in. The Meltan line is the sole exception, but that’s because it was first obtainable in LGPE.
While the story remains largely unchanged, some familiar locations feature new buildings or set pieces or helpful NPCs – It’s chockablock with side content. Trust me, you’ll not be left wanting – most quality-of-life features from later games are here, and it’s no small miracle. Perhaps most important to the early game, though, is that the asshole who stops you from leaving Pewter City is gone. Goodbye, and good riddance!1
Remember Bill’s Secret Garden? Y’know, that place where you could catch Pikablu if you just beat the Elite Four a hundred times? It’s in the game! It’s a post-game location – no Pikablu, though. Take Raichu’s lost trade evolution as compensation.
The Giovanni fight at Silph Co. has one major update. To get to him, you have to fight Silph Co.’s latest invention first: Omegadge. It’s a robotic re-imagining of Gawarhed, a new fossil Pokemon taking inspiration from beta designs resembling the substitute doll and Tyranitar.
Mecha Godzilla. It’s Mecha Godzilla. And it’s based.
Up until that point, at least on my first playthrough, you fight nothing else like it. You can catch it, but that doesn’t change the fact that Giovanni tries to fight you with a seven-Pokemon team, not unlike Ghetsis in Black and White 2, or Volo in PLA. It’s such a impactful, memorable fight – if it was in the original RBY, I’d bet kids on the playground wouldn’t let each other hear the end of it.
Several important events and encounters are vignetted by new (and unused!) music tracks. Some of these can found in a playlist from LuciShrimp, one of the KEP team’s composers:
KEP is what happens when a crack team of tinkerers butt heads together and jam the fuck out. From the gargantuan amount of people hours that went into disassembling the original RBY:
https://github.com/pret/pokered
To the gorgeous, quintessentially Kanto sprites made by PvK, MementoMartha
and Albatross; OG translator Nob Ogasawara providing English names for all the new Pokemon; thornAvery and LadyMisticus’s bugfixing and documentation efforts…
And ALL OF THESE PEOPLE:
- Ema Skye
- BlueZangoose / Vimescarrot
- jojobear13
- Mateo
- ausma
- Paulluxx
- DuoM2
- dannye33
- Frrf
- erosunica
- Chatot4444
- Enigami
- HeadBoiSkye
- ZumiIsawhat?
- FrenchOrange
- Helix Chamber (RacieBeep & Orchid)
- Vortiene/Vortyne
- Pigu-A, RevoSucks, walle303
- Rangi
- BGVC
- Rainbow Metal Pigeon
- SatoMew
- wrulfy
- suloku
- 大吟醸 (Daiginjo)
- Molk
- Shellnuts
- ViWalls
- Dr. Lava
It’s open-source, it slaps, you shouldn’t have, but you did; it’s crazy, ignorant of what “could” and “couldn’t” be done, and in every seam, there is that deftly-woven dedication, breathing new life into an old classic with creatures and features it inspired, and mending those who were left behind, like gluing an old book and its torn, forgotten pages back together. Thank you.
If you want to be really, really faithful, you can play the whole game on original hardware for that extra bit of 90s charm. Or, get yourself one of them modern Gameboy-lookalike doodads that you can charge with a USB-C…
Either way – play it. NNNNNNNNOW.
Kanto Expansion Pak – Red and Blue, but New ‘n’ Tasty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.