Pokemon Game Editor: Part 2

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 to de-capitalize every name in the game, which you can do with the "Decap. all names!" button.

With that settled, we need to set up sprites for our new Pokemon. Since I don't have any fitting hamburger sprites to use here, lets use a preset one from the game. Under "Pokemon Selection", scroll all the way back up until you select "BULBASAUR". Click "Export A-series Sprite Sheet" so we can have a .png of the used Bulbasaur sprites. Make sure to click "Export" under the Icons and FootPrint tabs as well for those sprites.

For sake of ease, here are the exact sprites in particular.

Once you have the Bulbasaur sprites, go back to your new Pokemon and simply hit the "Import A-series Sprite Sheet" and "Import" buttons. Choose the correct .png files for each, otherwise your Pokemon will look odd.

With the sprites set up, we can look at the various other tabs in the Pokemon Editor. Under "Base Stats", we can decide the various statistics for our Pokemon. This will impact how they fare in combat and their overall potential for growth. Now, I am no expert when it comes to Pokemon stats, abilities, or Natures, so I will not be playing around with this too much.

For HAMBURGER's stats, I decided to make everything ridiculously huge. Since burgers are a good source of protein, I also decided to make it a Fighting/Normal type Pokemon with the HUGE POWER ability. Since hamburgers lack the ability to reproduce, I made HAMBURGER have no Egg Group.

Under "Evolution data", we can set up how the Pokemon's evolutionary line. You can set up if the Pokemon can evolve into another Pokemon or if the Pokemon already is the evolved form of a Pokemon. Alternatively, you can skip this part entirely and just have your Pokemon not evolve. Hamburgers can only evolve into gastric acids in the body, and I don't want to have that image in my mind nor in this Pokemon game, so I'm going to ignore this section.

Next we have "Learnable attacks". As the title implies, this is where we choose what attacks our new Pocket Monster is capable of learning. We can edit the amount of learnable attacks a Pokemon learns upon leveling-up as well as what those attacks can be. Click "Insert attacks at offset", check off the box that says "Automatically find free space," and use the hex pointer it assigns you. This will be the location for our Pokemon's new moves. Alternatively, you can edit an existing one and use that. Note that this will also impact other Pokemon who use that same hex code for their learnable attacks. We can also choose what Hidden Machines (HMs) and Technical Machines (TMs) we can teach our Pokemon in addition to what moves the Move Tutor can teach to them.

Finally, we have the "Pokedex" and "Cry Data" tabs. However, I will not be going over the latter tab in much detail. PGE would not let me edit or import new Pokemon cries. All the tab could be used for is simply playing a Pokemon cry and swapping it out for another existing one. With that out of the way, let's focus on the "Pokedex" tab.

In this tab, we can set up where our Pokemon appears in the game's Pokedex and various bits of data for our newly made Pokemon. We can set up a size comparison to the Pokemon Trainer, establish the Pokemon's weight and height, and a short description for our Pokemon. Again, we'll need to define a new hex pointer so our Pokemon's Pokedex description will save.

And on that note, we have created a new Pokemon! Technically, at least. Creating sprites for a new Pokemon requires art skills and knowledge of pixel art, which I lack in.

Tune in for my next post where I'll show off another one of the hacking tools we can use! If you have any suggestions or requests, please leave me a reply and I will respond as soon as I am able!