Pokemon FireRed ROM Hacking: A Blog

Hello again. In my last post, I discussed the various features and hacking capabilities that comes with the Pokemon Game Editor hacking tool. Please view my last post if you need a refresher, because, for this post, I will be showing off how to use the tool to create our own custom Pokemon! First, follow my last few steps in my previous post until you create a new spot for a Pokemon in the Pokemon Editor. Your screen should look like this From here, we can begin actual progress. The first (and easiest) step is renaming our new Pokemon. As you can see from the "Pokemon Selection" drop-down menu, our Pokemon's current name is just a bunch of question marks. Choose whatever name you would like, but, since I am hungry, I will dub this Pokemon as "HAMBURGER". Note: in the Game Boy Advance Pokemon games, all Pokemon and characters have their names spelled with capital letters. For consistency, I recommend you do the same with this new Pokemon, unless you want

In this post, I will be looking at the Pokemon Game Editor (PGE) tool. This lovely little tool works across all the mainline Pokemon games on the Game Boy Advance, otherwise known as Generation III of the Pokemon games. Specifically, these include Pokemon Ruby, Pokemon Sapphire, Pokemon FireRed, Pokemon LeafGreen, and Pokemon Emerald. This hacking tool was created by Gamer2020 and published onto GitHub originally in 2010. The tool was last updated on May 13, 2017. I will be using this tool often throughout the blog, so, if you wish to follow along, be sure to download it from the above hyperlink. Once downloaded, extract the contents of the .zip file and run PokemonGameEditor.exe. This is how the screen should look upon initial startup. Now, before the tool can actually be used, a ROM must be loaded with it. Simply click the big button that says "Load ROM" and select the .gba file of your Pokemon FireRed ROM. NOTE: If you see an error upon loading the ROM, then the

Do you like Pokemon? Do you like to read blogs? Do you have an interest in creating (or at least transforming an existing game into) your own Pokemon game? Well, dear reader, do I have news for you! If you couldn't tell from the title, in this blog I will be examining and going over the basics and fundamentals to ROM hacking Pokemon games and creating my own in the process. Now, for those who have no idea what that is, allow me to explain: ROM hacking refers to modifying the ROM file of a video game to alter dialogue, graphics, maps/levels, gameplay, and more. ROM hacking is typically done through hex editors and various tools or applications. The mainline Pokemon games on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance have arguably the most accessibility to hackers due to the wide variety of tools and support for hacking the games. Many different kinds of ROM hacks exist. Some ROM hacks are created to remove instances of censorship and restore a game to its original state. Other hacks are crea