Post by goldensandslash on Dec 26, 2022 23:06:27 GMT
Section 1: Introduction
Ah, Pokémon. We all know and love it.
I've been playing official Pokémon games since 2003, though I stopped enjoying them in 2013. At least, the newer ones. The old ones are still enjoyable.
Why? Because they actually offer a decent challenge.
What's the point in playing a game if you always win?
That's not to say that Pokémon games that are created nowadays are never difficult - there are plenty of difficult Pokémon games that are released all the time. They're just not official.
The world of ROM hacks is full of really good creations, and I... avoid this area like the plague.
Yeah, I've made it no secret how I feel about digital piracy. My dad is a retired cybersecurity expert. It was his job to make sure that people DON'T pirate things. And he instilled that value into me - you don't pirate stuff. I have relaxed this in more recent years. By which I mean, I no longer yell at or shame anyone who pirates software, though I still don't pirate it myself.
Until today.
I decided that it was finally time for me to take the plunge and play a Pokémon ROM hack. But which one?
Well, I could go find a decent ROM hack and then start playing it... or...
I could just jump into the deep end of the pool and pray that I learn how to swim fast.
The latter option sounds a lot more entertaining.
Lunar Magic was the first computer program to make ROM hacking very easy and user-friendly. Anyone could make their own ROM hack with it. The only limitation was that the game being hacked had to specifically be Super Mario World. But still, for a 2001 program, it's insane! The existence of this has made Super Mario World, no doubt, the most hacked game ever made. There are tens of thousands of ROM hacks for this game, and maybe even hundreds of thousands. The ROM hacking scene for this game in particular is absolutely massive, and unlike anything else.
But I want to talk about one ROM hack in particular: Kaizo Mario World.
The word "Kaizo" is the Japanese word for "asshole". It is quite literally "Asshole Mario". It's a ROM hack full of level designs that intentionally try to kill the player. It is absolutely brutal, especially for the time period when it came out. In the time since then, many ROM hacks have come out, a lot of which are far more difficult.
But Kaizo Mario World became so well-known that "Kaizo" has sort of taken on a second meaning besides "asshole". "Kaizo" is now a term used to refer to any custom-made video game where the game design is actively trying to make the player suffer. Several ROM hacks, both of Super Mario World and of other games, use this term when describing themselves if they are meant to dial up the difficulty through the roof. Custom levels in games like Super Mario Maker 2 and Levelhead have levels that refer to themselves as Kaizo levels when this applies. And so on.
I'm sure you can see where this is going.
I decided to play not just any Pokémon ROM hack... but a Pokémon Kaizo hack.
"hurt me daddy"
So... anyways... there's a ROM hack author named Sinister Hooded Figure, or SHF for short. SHF made three Pokémon ROM hacks called Pokémon Blue Kaizo, Pokémon Crystal Kaizo, and Pokémon Emerald Kaizo. These hacks change just about everything about the game - from route design, to Pokémon movepools, to trainer rosters, to even some stats and evolution levels. And I decided to give this a go, without looking up anything about the game.
I am going to start with Pokémon Blue Kaizo. Will I play the other two afterwards? Depends on how I feel and how fun this is.
While I won't be looking anything up myself, I will say that I know a little bit about it beforehand. Here's what I know:
* The stat experience system is disabled, so you can't earn any EVs.
* Enemy Pokémon can go up to Level 115.
* All 151 Pokémon are available on a single save file.
* You can encounter Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle in the wild before the first gym - I think on Route 22.
* Vitamins to grant EVs cannot be obtained, and if you hack them in anyways, Professor Oak will tell you that it isn't the time to use that.
* Revives and Max Revives do nothing in battle. You can only use them outside of battle now.
* I think Fly is mandatory now? Not 100% sure, but 90% sure.
* The prices of Poké Balls is now $10 and the prices of Repels is now $30, so you never have to worry about that.
* Once you make it to the Indigo Plateau, there's a guy there that will give you as many Rare Candies and Master Balls as you like, for free.
* I did a quick test playthrough to get used to playing on an emulator - something I'm not accustomed to. I only played up until I got the Pokédex, but yes, I know that the rival has a Mew in the first battle. No idea if he keeps it throughout the whole game or not.
Okay, without further ado... let's get started.
Ah, nothing like a Mewtwo on the title screen. This is gonna suck, isn't it?
Sticking to the default names because I am unoriginal!
All right, let's start our adventure!
Ah, some things never change. Free Potion ftw!
As far as storyline is concerned, everything so far is the same - you attempt to leave town, Oak stops you, and then he gives you a starter: Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle.
In the vanilla unhacked game... I would choose Squirtle.
This is, in my opinion, the best starter.
However, the starter choice doesn't matter so much here, since all three can be found in the wild shortly. Pretty much the only thing that matters is the first rival fight. With that in mind...
Charmander.
Squirtle and Bulbasaur's default attacking move is Tackle, with 95% accuracy. Charmander, by contrast, has Scratch, which has 100% accuracy. It has the best chance of surviving this battle.
Let's go!
Level 3 Mew. Yep, that's what we're dealing with here. Let's go ahead and-
Oh. Huh, looks like it has Ember from the get-go.
I honestly forgot that this was a thing in this hack. But yeah, in my test playthrough, I started with Squirtle, and it came with Water Gun. Totally forgot about that. (I'm guessing Bulbasaur comes with Vine Whip.)
I mistimed my screenshot program, so you missed it, but... this Mew has THUNDER WAVE. At Level 3. In the vanilla game, Mew only comes with Pound, and it can't get Thunder Wave by Level Up at all - it needs TM45 to use that move.
Thunder Wave is pretty brutal when I haven't had a chance to fight anything yet.
Oh, and, just as a reminder, this is Gen 1 - a Pokémon's base Speed determines its crit rate. Mew has base 100 Speed (assuming it wasn't changed), so this will be tricky...
Or I can just get super-lucky and get crits myself, while breaking through the paralysis. Yeah, that also works.
I killed a legendary! Can't wait to get a ton of experi-
Oh you've gotta be kidding me.
Forty? That's it? Ugh... this is gonna be hell.
To add insult to injury, this is actually a step DOWN from what he gave you in the unhacked game. In the original, you got $175 for victory.
Though with cheaper Poké Balls, I'm actually not too concerned about it.
Here's my Charmander's stats, by the way. I should have probably checked this before the battle. Meh.
Incidentally, this means my IVs are terrible. At Level 5, Charmander's HP can be 18-20, Attack can be 10-11, Defense can be 9-10, Special can be 10-11, and Speed can be 11-13. This means that HP is the only one that I got a good value in. Speed is average, and the others are all the worst that they could possibly be.
Something that I didn't notice in my test playthrough: the southern exit to Pallet Town is blocked off.
This makes sense to me. It was too easy to get to Cinnabar from Pallet. This forces you to take the route from Fuchsia, which will require you to traverse the Seafoam Islands. If you want to make your Pokémon game harder, this is a good way to do it.
Anywho, moving on to Route 1, we can see that it has been flooded with tall grass everywhere.
And yes, that guy still gives you a free Potion for talking to him.
What these images DON'T show you is that the encounter rate is through the roof here. I was encountering a new wild Pokémon on virtually every single tile.
I think that this is okay, but honestly? I think it's a little much to have both. You can add a ton of tall grass. You can increase the encounter rate. But... doing both? Really?
The wildlife on Route 1 consists of:
Pidgey - Very Common
Weedle - Common
Caterpie - Common
Rattata - Uncommon
Ekans - Uncommon
Sandshrew - Uncommon
Spearow - Rare
Nidoran-F - Rare
Nidoran-M - Rare
Pikachu - Very Rare
Not that it matters much, since I can't catch any of it yet due to a lack of Poké Balls.
Viridian City seems to be untouched by the hack's author.
Blah blah blah, story stuff.
Hmmm... I wonder...
Okay, it looks like the Town Map is not altered in any way. I don't know if that's laziness, or if there are indeed no major changes to the world's geography.
Anywho, join me next time when I go catch a bunch of new Pokémon, and possibly fight Brock.
I have no idea how often I'll be posting, it'll probably just be whenever I've made significant enough progress to warrant it.
Ah, Pokémon. We all know and love it.
I've been playing official Pokémon games since 2003, though I stopped enjoying them in 2013. At least, the newer ones. The old ones are still enjoyable.
Why? Because they actually offer a decent challenge.
What's the point in playing a game if you always win?
That's not to say that Pokémon games that are created nowadays are never difficult - there are plenty of difficult Pokémon games that are released all the time. They're just not official.
The world of ROM hacks is full of really good creations, and I... avoid this area like the plague.
Yeah, I've made it no secret how I feel about digital piracy. My dad is a retired cybersecurity expert. It was his job to make sure that people DON'T pirate things. And he instilled that value into me - you don't pirate stuff. I have relaxed this in more recent years. By which I mean, I no longer yell at or shame anyone who pirates software, though I still don't pirate it myself.
Until today.
I decided that it was finally time for me to take the plunge and play a Pokémon ROM hack. But which one?
Well, I could go find a decent ROM hack and then start playing it... or...
I could just jump into the deep end of the pool and pray that I learn how to swim fast.
The latter option sounds a lot more entertaining.
Lunar Magic was the first computer program to make ROM hacking very easy and user-friendly. Anyone could make their own ROM hack with it. The only limitation was that the game being hacked had to specifically be Super Mario World. But still, for a 2001 program, it's insane! The existence of this has made Super Mario World, no doubt, the most hacked game ever made. There are tens of thousands of ROM hacks for this game, and maybe even hundreds of thousands. The ROM hacking scene for this game in particular is absolutely massive, and unlike anything else.
But I want to talk about one ROM hack in particular: Kaizo Mario World.
The word "Kaizo" is the Japanese word for "asshole". It is quite literally "Asshole Mario". It's a ROM hack full of level designs that intentionally try to kill the player. It is absolutely brutal, especially for the time period when it came out. In the time since then, many ROM hacks have come out, a lot of which are far more difficult.
But Kaizo Mario World became so well-known that "Kaizo" has sort of taken on a second meaning besides "asshole". "Kaizo" is now a term used to refer to any custom-made video game where the game design is actively trying to make the player suffer. Several ROM hacks, both of Super Mario World and of other games, use this term when describing themselves if they are meant to dial up the difficulty through the roof. Custom levels in games like Super Mario Maker 2 and Levelhead have levels that refer to themselves as Kaizo levels when this applies. And so on.
I'm sure you can see where this is going.
I decided to play not just any Pokémon ROM hack... but a Pokémon Kaizo hack.
"hurt me daddy"
So... anyways... there's a ROM hack author named Sinister Hooded Figure, or SHF for short. SHF made three Pokémon ROM hacks called Pokémon Blue Kaizo, Pokémon Crystal Kaizo, and Pokémon Emerald Kaizo. These hacks change just about everything about the game - from route design, to Pokémon movepools, to trainer rosters, to even some stats and evolution levels. And I decided to give this a go, without looking up anything about the game.
I am going to start with Pokémon Blue Kaizo. Will I play the other two afterwards? Depends on how I feel and how fun this is.
While I won't be looking anything up myself, I will say that I know a little bit about it beforehand. Here's what I know:
* The stat experience system is disabled, so you can't earn any EVs.
* Enemy Pokémon can go up to Level 115.
* All 151 Pokémon are available on a single save file.
* You can encounter Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle in the wild before the first gym - I think on Route 22.
* Vitamins to grant EVs cannot be obtained, and if you hack them in anyways, Professor Oak will tell you that it isn't the time to use that.
* Revives and Max Revives do nothing in battle. You can only use them outside of battle now.
* I think Fly is mandatory now? Not 100% sure, but 90% sure.
* The prices of Poké Balls is now $10 and the prices of Repels is now $30, so you never have to worry about that.
* Once you make it to the Indigo Plateau, there's a guy there that will give you as many Rare Candies and Master Balls as you like, for free.
* I did a quick test playthrough to get used to playing on an emulator - something I'm not accustomed to. I only played up until I got the Pokédex, but yes, I know that the rival has a Mew in the first battle. No idea if he keeps it throughout the whole game or not.
Okay, without further ado... let's get started.
Ah, nothing like a Mewtwo on the title screen. This is gonna suck, isn't it?
Sticking to the default names because I am unoriginal!
All right, let's start our adventure!
Ah, some things never change. Free Potion ftw!
As far as storyline is concerned, everything so far is the same - you attempt to leave town, Oak stops you, and then he gives you a starter: Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle.
In the vanilla unhacked game... I would choose Squirtle.
This is, in my opinion, the best starter.
However, the starter choice doesn't matter so much here, since all three can be found in the wild shortly. Pretty much the only thing that matters is the first rival fight. With that in mind...
Charmander.
Squirtle and Bulbasaur's default attacking move is Tackle, with 95% accuracy. Charmander, by contrast, has Scratch, which has 100% accuracy. It has the best chance of surviving this battle.
Let's go!
Level 3 Mew. Yep, that's what we're dealing with here. Let's go ahead and-
Oh. Huh, looks like it has Ember from the get-go.
I honestly forgot that this was a thing in this hack. But yeah, in my test playthrough, I started with Squirtle, and it came with Water Gun. Totally forgot about that. (I'm guessing Bulbasaur comes with Vine Whip.)
I mistimed my screenshot program, so you missed it, but... this Mew has THUNDER WAVE. At Level 3. In the vanilla game, Mew only comes with Pound, and it can't get Thunder Wave by Level Up at all - it needs TM45 to use that move.
Thunder Wave is pretty brutal when I haven't had a chance to fight anything yet.
Oh, and, just as a reminder, this is Gen 1 - a Pokémon's base Speed determines its crit rate. Mew has base 100 Speed (assuming it wasn't changed), so this will be tricky...
Or I can just get super-lucky and get crits myself, while breaking through the paralysis. Yeah, that also works.
I killed a legendary! Can't wait to get a ton of experi-
Oh you've gotta be kidding me.
Forty? That's it? Ugh... this is gonna be hell.
To add insult to injury, this is actually a step DOWN from what he gave you in the unhacked game. In the original, you got $175 for victory.
Though with cheaper Poké Balls, I'm actually not too concerned about it.
Here's my Charmander's stats, by the way. I should have probably checked this before the battle. Meh.
Incidentally, this means my IVs are terrible. At Level 5, Charmander's HP can be 18-20, Attack can be 10-11, Defense can be 9-10, Special can be 10-11, and Speed can be 11-13. This means that HP is the only one that I got a good value in. Speed is average, and the others are all the worst that they could possibly be.
Something that I didn't notice in my test playthrough: the southern exit to Pallet Town is blocked off.
This makes sense to me. It was too easy to get to Cinnabar from Pallet. This forces you to take the route from Fuchsia, which will require you to traverse the Seafoam Islands. If you want to make your Pokémon game harder, this is a good way to do it.
Anywho, moving on to Route 1, we can see that it has been flooded with tall grass everywhere.
And yes, that guy still gives you a free Potion for talking to him.
What these images DON'T show you is that the encounter rate is through the roof here. I was encountering a new wild Pokémon on virtually every single tile.
I think that this is okay, but honestly? I think it's a little much to have both. You can add a ton of tall grass. You can increase the encounter rate. But... doing both? Really?
The wildlife on Route 1 consists of:
Pidgey - Very Common
Weedle - Common
Caterpie - Common
Rattata - Uncommon
Ekans - Uncommon
Sandshrew - Uncommon
Spearow - Rare
Nidoran-F - Rare
Nidoran-M - Rare
Pikachu - Very Rare
Not that it matters much, since I can't catch any of it yet due to a lack of Poké Balls.
Viridian City seems to be untouched by the hack's author.
Blah blah blah, story stuff.
Hmmm... I wonder...
Okay, it looks like the Town Map is not altered in any way. I don't know if that's laziness, or if there are indeed no major changes to the world's geography.
Anywho, join me next time when I go catch a bunch of new Pokémon, and possibly fight Brock.
I have no idea how often I'll be posting, it'll probably just be whenever I've made significant enough progress to warrant it.
