Like, at one point, Professor Oak claims your character once ate nothing but dirt for an entire week. It's not the only strange storytelling choice: Advanced Adventure's protagonist comes from a poor family, which the game repeatedly explains to you in thorough detail.

That plot contributes a fairly strange tone to the game, as you might imagine. Oh, except your rival, Gary, is a bloodthirsty psychopath who rules the world, and the only way to stop him is to best his eight equally evil subordinates. Pokémon: Advanced Adventure, a modified version of the GBA title Pokémon: LeafGreen, follows that structure for the most part. Pokémon games have followed a fairly rigid formula since the series' inception: You get a starter, collect and level Pokémon, face off against your rival, beat the region's eight gym leaders, then conquer the Elite Four. This list is far from comprehensive, of course make sure to sound off below on any notable fan-made games not mentioned. Over the past month, I've gone down the ROM hack rabbit hole, playing over a dozen fan-made titles in order to curate a list of some of the most fascinating Pokémon games I've ever played - official or otherwise. Some don't even attempt authenticity, favoring puerile humor, violence or frequent nudity instead. Some are exceptional recreations of a true, full Pokémon experience. Some are loaded onto actual Game Boy Advance cartridges, and bootlegged to unwitting consumers. Dozens, if not hundreds, of these games can be found online for free.

Since the early 2000s, fans with the knowhow, software and artistic ability to do so have been creating unofficial Pokémon games in the form of ROM hacks. To even attempt high-level competitive play requires hundreds of hours of breeding, battling and pure, dumb luck.ĭespite the truly gargantuan amount of time demanded by the core series, there are fans who demand more - and fans who create more.

To fully complete a PokeDex in Pokémon X and Y, you have to collect over 700 discrete monsters, either through catching, trading, evolving, transferring from previous installments or obtaining from timed Wi-Fi or real-world events. That tenacity is built into the franchise's very nature. The Pokémon-playing community has proven to be one of the most industrious groups of fans this industry has ever seen. Not only have you not caught them all - you haven't even played them all.

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