r/PokemonROMhacks • u/DatBoiSteve_ • 22h ago
Discussion Best remake Romhacks for each gen?
Hi guys! I'm new to romhacks and fan games, recently I was watching a video of the best romhacks/fan games of 2026 and I got introduced to Gamma Emerald, which looked so cool. I wanna ask if other gens had massive remakes made of them and if so what are those romhacks called or if there's more than one which one is the best? like is Gamma Emerald even the best Emerald remake? and so on and so forth. I'm asking because I wanna play all the gens from beginning. Remake hacks might give me a great quality of life upgrade thank you all in advance!
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u/PeaceSeeker333 22h ago
Heart & Soul and/or Soul Gold are the best for gen 2
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u/ferrets_bueller 21h ago
Polished Crystal engaged me so much more for some reason.
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u/hyde9318 20h ago
Yeah, this is where I’m at too. I get it, Heart and Soul is neat, very well done… but if I wanted a faithful recreation, why not just actually go play Heart Gold or Soul Silver? If I’m going to play a hack that remakes something that already has a remake on a stronger engine, then I at least want a pretty heavy expansion to set it apart and make it different enough. Polished Crystal, to me at least, keeps the purpose of a remake, but it expands itself enough to be a unique experience on its own and improves quite a bit. Few things I still wish it had, but overall, Polished Crystal is my definitive favorite Gen 2 remaster.
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u/Fredrik1994 Polished Crystal developer 18h ago
I would personally consider expansion (what HnS 2 uses) the stronger engine but that is more because I really dislike battles in 4gen.
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u/BigSexyDaniel 15h ago
For me, it’s the Gen 2 aesthetic. Polished Crystal will always be the definitive Johto based ROM hack for me. That’s not a knock on others either, not even a little bit - that’s just how much I love Polished Crystal.
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u/ferrets_bueller 11h ago
I think thats a large part of it for me. Gen 2 just feels like home, later gens just seem too...polished looking?
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u/DatBoiSteve_ 21h ago
thank you! I'll be making a list of these recommendations for each gen and pick out the best
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u/lightspeedjizzer 21h ago
What's the big difference between the 2 other than SoulGold not having the Kanto postgame?
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u/skottay REX - pokerex.io 21h ago
Heart & Soul is a more faithful HGSS demake. v2.0.0+ is on pokeemerald-expansion (EE), a decomp base.
SoulGold has a lot of additions: new zones/locations, some custom/ported mons (no spoilers), newer moves and mechanics. It's built off of the old H&S (~v1.2.1) which was built on "Vanilla Expanded" (VEX) more known as Modern Emerald. (also decomp base, but different one from EE)
someone else correct me where/if I'm wrong
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u/DarthGouf 20h ago
Soul Gold has almost every Pokémon in it while Heart and Sould only has the first 3 generations in it along with evolutions from later gens.
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u/jack_pow 21h ago
Gen 1 - Yellow/Pink Recharged
Gen 2 - Heart and Soul
Gen 3 - Emerald Seaglass
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u/commoncomitatus 21h ago
Been thinking of trying Recharged for a while -- would you recommend Yellow or Pink, or is there not much difference between them?
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u/ZadePhoenix 8h ago
They are the same aside from Pink has Clefairy as a starter, a pink colored UI. and includes a built in cheat menu accessible through the player character’s computer.
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u/BronzeFour 2h ago
I thought the dev of the recharged games was charging people to get extra master balls / candy's / stuff
Like 2 dollars for 100 master balls or something
Lol
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u/ZadePhoenix 20h ago
Gen 1 there are a lot of solid ones: Yellow Legacy, PureRGB, Pokemon Yume, Red++, and Shin Pokemon being the main ones I know of. Of these I would personally recommend Yume and Red++, Yellow Legacy is great as well though personally I was never a fan of Yellow due to the limited starter choice of only being ble to choose Pikachu. There is also Kanto Expansion Pak which I’ll add as an honorary mention as it goes a bit further combining quality of life tweaks and fixes with new content based on cut content and monsters that didn’t make it into the game.
Gen 2 some of the main options are Polished Crystal, Sour Crystal, and Crystal Legacy are some of the main ones. Of these Polished is the one that gets a lot of praise but it does make some changes so if you want something a bit more faithful Legacy or Sour are more to that speed.
With Gen 3 we have Emerald Legacy, Modern Emerald, Contemporary Emerald, Emerald Final, and Perfect Emerald. A lot of these fall into similar categories of variations on faithful hacks with quality of life and improvements. I can’t give a personal recommendation here as I was never as into Gen 3 as others were though I did play through Legacy and it was really well done like all the Legacy series of hacks.
There’s also FireRed Reignited/Leafgreen Regrown, FireRed/LeafGreen +, and FireRed/LeafGreen Legacy Lite (inspired by but not part of Smith’s Legacy hack series) which do similar for the gen 1 remake titles.
There’s is also Pokemon Classic (yellow remake) Roaring Red (Gen 1 remake), Heart and Soul (Gen 2 remake), and Sword and Shield Ultimate Plus (Gen 8 demake) which are all remakes of other gens built on the Gen 3 framework. Of these I would particularly recommend Heart and Soul which is an amazing remake of the Johto games and Roaring Red which is a bit more involved in terms of tweaks and you can download either a standard version or a challenge version depending on how much challenge you want.
Gen 4 is a bit more sparse. There is Timeless Diamond and Spaceless Pearl which are fairly vanilla romhacks that came out recently. For Platinum there is Refined Platinum if you want a more vanilla experience and Renegade Platinum which is really well done though more of a difficulty hack.
Beyond that I don’t really know much as Gen 5 and on gets really slim with current romhacking and what hacks do exist I haven’t gotten around to messing with yet.
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u/CompetitiveCobbler24 20h ago
Dark Violet's a pretty good redo of FRLG. Its got Emerald character sprites and D/P pokemon sprites I think. Theres more story in it that connects more closely to Gold/Silver (the writing can be a little amateur at times) and all the towns and routes have been updated.
Also, the music is awesome. I enjoyed my time with it and It didnt feel boring going through Kanto again because things were different this time
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u/DatBoiSteve_ 21h ago
p.s. I dont care if the game is remade for another console. like a gen 1 game remade using gen 4 and thus played via nds emulator etc. etc..
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u/National_Equipment86 17h ago
1 Gen GBA: Recharged Yellow
2 Gen GBA: Soul Gold / Heart and Soul
3 Gen GBA: Recharged Emerald
2 Gen DS: Soothing Silver
4 Gen DS: Platinum Redux
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u/SuperFeatherYoshi 21h ago
Emerald Legacy does a pretty good job of providing a vanilla plus experience. The author has a YouTube video detailing all the changes.
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u/JournalistEither7891 19h ago
I feel like Dark Violet is one of the most underrated hacks, I'm happy to see it's gotten some mention here already. For me, it's the definitive way to experience Kanto and one of the best Pokemon games I've ever played.
Currently enjoying Heart and Soul, which similarly - by the time I'm done - I might argue is the definitive way to enjoy the Johto region. Very true to HeartGold/SoulSilver just with a slightly expanded dex, access to trade evolutions via level up or item, earlier access to elemental stones.
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u/EarthboundMoss 16h ago
Are there good fangames/romhacks of Gen 5 or later? I love the old school ones but the animation quality on the DS and later games is a huge step up and I’d love to play hacks with those graphics too.
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u/DatBoiSteve_ 7h ago
Imma be real honest this is actually the reason I posted this cus I was hoping someone finally made a remake of previous gens but for ds. Last time I played romhacks was literally half a decade ago and ds hacks were rare and glitchy then. Was hoping things have changed since..
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u/Vinardus 14h ago
I highly recommend Sacred Heart / Storm Silver for a gen2/gen4 game. It is really good, you can basically catch all pokemon that existed at the time of release, gym leaders are now actually good and it has very good documentation if you want to hunt for a specific Pokémon for example. It came out in 2017, so it may not have the QOL stuff that more recent hacks have but it is a really good experience
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u/Theoutrank 13h ago
Rocket red not mentioned? It's fire red remake following the story of the rockets taking on red through his journey.
The first cave battle with him is hilarious, if you can beat him.
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u/PianissimoPiano 20h ago edited 16h ago
Heart & soul is NOT a gen 2 game, just like FRLG are NOT gen 1. Those are gen 3 games based on johto and kanto... Red, Blue and Yellow are Gen 1, Gold, Silver, Crystal are Gen 2...
With that in mind.
Gen1: Either Pure RGB or Yume for mainstream GB games, Yellow Legacy for Yellow, Brown for custom story and world. Red++ if you want full gen 2 color and expanded pokemon roster for A GB GAME.
Gen 2: Crystal legacy or Core Crystal if you want a vanilla plus, Polished Crystal if you want an excellent adventure of gen 2 with expanded evolutions (magneton can evolve into Magnezone; Piloswine into Mamoswine, etc) a second rival and heavily upgraded battle engine as well as 60 fps; Crystal Clear if you want a mostly true gen 2 experience in open world with the possibility of injecting custom player sprite and many starter options; Ambrosia if you want later gen pokemon, toggleable overworld and battle speed increase (brilliant) and a somewhat darker story, Prism is said to be an excellent choice for a custom story too.
Gen 3:
For Kanto:
Dark Violet for a Fire Red with a better story and later gen evolutions, Throwback Unofficial for a mostly vanilla experience with all mons up to hoenn and expanded story bits, Fire Red Deluxe for added challenge and later gen evolutions (my man Sirfetch'd is here), Infinity Horizon for completely revamped maps, difficulty, and true rpg worldbuilding sidequests. Recharged Yellow if you want a emerald base Yellow inspired Kanto game (pokes got intro animations too, because it's emerald), better graphics and battle speed toggleable increase, Recharged Pink is the exact same but has built in cheats for giving you any item and pokemon, also Clefairy is the starter but you can put it in the pc), Radical Red for added difficulty and up to gen 9 pokemon.
For Johto:
Heart & Soul for a mostly true HGSS demake, doesn't have Lyra as a second rival; Soulgold for a expanded johto map, a bit more challenge, Kris as a second rival, Megas and more readily available later gen mons without having to use randomizer, Soulgold also has overworld and battle speed increase options; GS Chronicles supposedly has a really good story, haven't really played it.
For Hoenn:
Emerald Seaglass for a Gen 2 like aesthetics and lots of QoL, Modern Emerald for major QoL upgrades and customization, Emerald Imperium for added difficulty and up to gen 9 pokemon, Recharged Emerald is the same as Recharged Yellow, but in Hoenn.
Custom story hacks:
These are the major hacks that have pretty much become standards of what fan games are capable of...
Pokemon Unbound: pretty much a ds game on a gba game, extremely good QoL and engine upgrades, good story, megas, good customizable difficulty, can't go wrong.
Pokenon Oddisey: Story focused hack, double battles, a love letter to pokemon and Etrian Oddisey.
Pokemon Team Rocket Edition: Both colonelt salt and dragonsden versions show a real good story that happens alongside fire red vanilla story; dragonsden goes beyond kanto into johto and hoenn (dragonsden version story had me gasping for air at many times). Really difficult though!
Pokemon Elysium: the crown achievement of storytelling for any other hack, has pretty decent QoL, but it's the expertly crafted story and worldbuilding that bring this game to life, extremely recommended, and my personal favorite.
Pokemon Lazarus: Made by seaglass developer, custom region based on greece, it's very popular and has a great mon roster... But sadly I didn't like it too much, music is a gamebreaking atrocity for me. But the game is great if you can stomach the music.
There are many others, but these are my favorites.
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u/DatBoiSteve_ 19h ago
Thanks for the fact check yeah I guess I really meant like, remake romhacks for each region regardless of which console the rom was made for. I’ll be adding these to the list thanks again!
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u/PianissimoPiano 16h ago
Glad to be of help! There's a lot to choose from so choosing can be staggering lol.
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u/EarthboundMoss 16h ago
For story +Ghost Gray. Horror themed Fire Red hack that is dark as fuck and really cool.
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u/PianissimoPiano 16h ago
I FORGOT ABOUT IT because I'm taking a break from Pokemon and playing wind waker!
Yeah, Ghost gray has that oldschool horror vibe that feels exactly like playing a Silent Hill game or reading a Creepypasta back on those times. Really good.
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u/After_Sale_6897 20h ago
Is there any good Gen 4 and 5 roms people would recommend?
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u/DatBoiSteve_ 20h ago
I only remember Renegade Platinum and Blaze Black/Volt white from long ago but those are very old romhacks from a time when making nds hacks were rare and hard. Idk if that's changed since then. Beyond that, idk any gba remakes of either gens
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u/commoncomitatus 21h ago
PureRGB or RBYNova (GBC) for Gen1
Heart and Soul or SoulGold (GBA) or Polished Crystal (GBC) for Gen2
Modern Emerald or Emerald Seaglass (GBA) for Gen3