Plot



This is an interesting one. If you try to leave your room at first, your Mom stops you. So much for staking out Oak's lab and getting the first pick. Ha! The first thing you do in this game is get in your pyjamas and go to sleep. If you pick girl, your character will morph into Ash Ketchum when the PJs go on, but your trainer card will still have a girl on it. Then you start dreaming about a certain trio of Pokémon and when it is time to wake up you are already late for your appointment with Professor Oak. You go to his lab in your PJs and he makes you check all the Poke balls on the counter before he tells you all the Pokémon are gone. Thank you science! Luckily (or is it my destiny?), there is one Pokémon left, but this one is a little hard to handle. Enter electric mouse! Then Oak talks your ear off for a minute, you leave and your Mom stops you on your way out and gives you a few things. Then PJ mode is over for the rest of the game I presume.



When you decide to leave town, Pikachu will refuse to battle with a pigeon Pokémon. If you try to talk to him, a sparrow Pokémon will attack him. After Pikachu defeats the sparrow, four more will block your path back to Pallet Town. The only place you can go that is not tall grass is jumping in the water. When you come out the other side, a girl approaches you and acts like you somehow disturbed her fishing spot. Then you take her bike (and morph back to girl if you picked that) and flee the scene of the crime. Then you get into another spear-type incident. Pikachu comes to your defence. Zap! Right after that, the Ho-oh looks nice as it makes its way across the game screen.



On your way into the next city, a police officer stops and questions you. She said my Pokémon was in bad shape even though he did not have a scratch on him. Then she takes you to the Pokémon center in town. Upon entering the center, the girl from earlier finds you and vows vengeance. As you try to leave, Jesse and James Team Rocket ambush you. The snake goes down in about three hits to a level 5 Pikachu. It is the same for the bag of poison. After the battle, Team Rocket will disappear and the center returns to normal. You can also call home with the phones in the corner and talk to your Mom for a bit. Then you can receive a call from Professor Oak. There are Rockets guarding the Gym door. Now there is a sure sign the Gym leader is Boss Rocket.



Graphics changes



Your character, if you pick boy as I did, is the spitting image of Ash Ketchum of Pallet Town. He even has a PJ mode. Most of the exploration realm has changed from Pokémon Fire Red. Pallet Town is much bigger. You can now explore the fully complete Pokémon sanctuary in Oak's backyard, the upper half of which is part of Route 1. You can also go to the houses of the two Pallet Town trainers who left the same day as Ash and Gary. They even have names. The hacker entirely redesigned Route 1 to fit the bike stealing and Pikachu rescue scenario.



The Pokémon centers take their model after the television appearances on the outside. Route 22 looks the same, except there is no guard at the Pokémon League front gate so you can explore up to the water until you know how to SURF outside battle. Viridian City itself is a creative redefining of meagre proportions. Viridian Forest is more like the actual maze they say it is with turns that can lead you nowhere. If you see a cabin, you have gone in the right direction. The museum in Pewter City is gone. You can meet all nine of Brock's siblings now. They all have names too. Mount Moon is now a completely different cave than the one experienced Pokémon players know. New characters along the way have fresh new dialog to spout off. Occasionally the shading of the character’s surroundings will change. That is apparently the night and day shift as far as I can tell.



Difficulties



All of the cocoons have damaging attacks now. Watch out for the one that stings. Butterfree learns Sleep Powder instead of Confusion right after evolution. The first gym leader Brock must be defeated twice. Something tells me that the game programmer was following the Anime cartoon a little too well for the good of the game. There is a glitch where if you teleport back to Viridian City and go back to Pewter City through Viridian forest, Team Rocket will appear again and if you talk to them this time they will freeze you on the spot until you return to your last save point. Due to a glitch at the mouth of Mount Moon, you cannot go through it from Pewter City again once you have reached Cerulean City. So to summarize those last two points, do not bother using teleport outside of battle if you wish to make any progress at all.



Sounds



The sounds are all the same, except for the Pokémon League front gate building. The musical theme for it seems to be Viridian Forest.



Depth



I can really tell the game designer went all the way with this one. There are sure to be many more surprises to come. Maybe they will not be so surprising if I read brief notes on the Anime. That is only if you like to be prepared which I usually do.



Addictiveness



I will play this game again. Probably a lot because it is Labour Day weekend. I could possibly spend ten hours a day just on this game.



Summary



There are multitudes of modifications that make this hack much different from Pokémon Fire Red, but also better in some spots. It is a very enjoyable game as long as you do not trap yourself with the game ending Teleport glitch. Please let me know what you make of this game.