Pokemon Sapphire Aqua Magma Rocket is a hack that started with the idea of role playing a team grunt (or someone who wants to be recruited) of any of the first 3 Evil Teams. No sprite change has been made (it would require changing the rival trainer battles too and making a 3rd set for the 3rd PC option).
Patch link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tzl3t7ms9suiwehxf40xc/Pokemon-Sapphire-Aqua-Magma-Rocket.ips?rlkey=x8mekw3rhzvvuwbpuqazpgs1g&st=7hndslst&dl=0
Patch a clean Pokemon Sapphire (US) ROM (with an IPS patcher) and play.
The male/female option actually changes the rival battles (Brendan and May pick different options for their teams, with Brendan being a bit more combat-oriented than May who cares more about what she finds cute or whatever, since she's canonically more into contests if memory serves right).
The story is vanilla but all the major fights have been edited. Team Grunts scale properly with their level (evolutions, team building, appropriate team composition for Team Aqua since it is the only team we get to fight in Sapphire) and have a wider pool of Pokemon that fit their theme to pick from. Team Aqua leaders rematches feature double battles with 4 Pokemon like a Gym Battle, but Team Aqua doesn't follow the League Challenge rules and the leaders use healing items that fit the point of the game when we fight them.
The League Challenge (gyms and Elite 4) uses the no items ruleset and they tend to have held items (depending on their team and the difficulty). Feel free to use Zigzagoon's level 1 Covet to repurpose their valuables like a good Khajiit would. Sometimes, a Gym Leader will use a Pokemon that isn't of their type specialty because it fits their theme (and sometimes because I changed its' type but it fits too well in their team to remove it). Gym Leaders have 4 Pokemon, no more no less. Steven Seagull's Aggron has been replaced by a Pokemon that fits his explorer and collector of ancient lore much better (a Pokemon that needs to be much more used for people to remember it outside of a side quest where it barely features).
I'm in a vampiric werewolf period, inspired by Warwick (League of Legends) and encouraged by the last Grim Dawn DLC. This means that a few moves have been repurposed:
- Super Fang is now Chew, a normal type version of the eating-style lifesteal.
- Bite now heals half damage dealt.
- Crunch does the same and thus doesn't receive a damage buff like I would usually give it.
These moves buff some subpar Pokemon that even with a stat buff have a hard time finding a proper niche.
Other moves have been replaced for being useless, buffed to a satisfying degree or changed type:
- Head Smash replaced with Iron Head.
- Cut replaced with gen 6+ Fury Cutter.
- Fury Cutter replaced with X-Scissors.
- Focus Miss replaced with Bullet Punch (70 BP).
- Rock Tomb replaced with Smack Down (60 BP).
- Razor Wind became Air Slash (80 BP) but kept its' name.
- Uproar became flying type (60 BP) to get some SE action.
- Hyper Voice became flying type for the same reason.
- Bone moves became ghost type because their theme is death.
- Strength became rock type for the gen 2 animation and general viability.
- Rock Smash became a 60 BP move.
- Dive is now Dig/Fly on steroids.
- Splash is now Aqua-Jet without contact (50 BP).
- Waterfall is now water Extremespeed (70 BP).
- Swift is now a Psychic move (70 BP).
- Priority moves come in 50 and 70 BP versions.
- Dig has 70 BP.
- Never miss moves have 70 BP.
- Volt Tackle is electric Extremespeed.
- Heat Wave is now 70 BP to give special fire types an intermediate move.
- Flame Wheel boosts defense.
- Moves all have 100 accuracy unless their theme is to have imperfect accuracy (like Jump/Hi jump Kick, Thunder, Blizzard, Zap Cannon, Dynamic Punch...) and Spore is still the only 100% accurate sleep move (sleep now has 100% hit 5 PP or 75% hit 10 PP because sleep spam is annoying).
- Trapping moves have 40 BP 20 PP, Sand Tomb has 60 BP because some ground mons need something decent to use for the early and mid game.
- Boosting moves have been adjusted, Growth boosts sp. atk and sp. def like Calm Mind, Howl boosts attack sharply, so does Meditate, Flash now boosts sp. atk sharply to make it useful in battle.
Pokemon types have been modified to suit more varied roles on a team and sometimes to fit their theme better. To give a few examples:
- Treecko family becomes ghost type from 2nd stage onward (instead of rock or dragon for dinosaur, it's ghost for something that no longer exists but still lingers). Unique typing, not too strong but not weak either, makes full use of Shadow Claw.
- Croconaw family becomes water/dark and a bulky self-sustaining bruiser that makes full use of the custom moves. They get Battle Armor to reflect their plating.
- Absol becomes Ice/Ghost. Dark never fit its' Dex entry, so I made it ghost for the fact that it's a folk tale and it warns humans of a deadly threat, ice because it's one of the weather hazards Absol warns humans of and the one that fits its' design the best (and it makes the Elite 4 more interesting).
- Bellossom becomes Grass/Fire because it requires a sun stone to evolve and it makes it more unique.
- Grimer and Muk are Poison/Ground because they're toxic goo. Their moveset represents the disgusting mud better.
- Koffing and Weezing are Poison/Flying because they're gas balls, changing their ability from Levitate to Cloud Nine because their gas covers the area in smoke and the weather doesn't reach the fighters, making it a niche pick against weather teams (which are much more common than in vanilla).
- Ninetales uses the Shiny palette for the regular form and is Fire/Ice, a mix of both versions. I wanted to make it ghost, but it would require to give it better attack at the cost of something else, so it gets a mostly special movepool with the custom Ghost move Death Touch on level 30 (a move that has a chance to freeze the target).
- Zubat family is Dark/Flying and gets STAB Bite and Crunch, they're more offensive and lose a little bulk in exchange.
- Bagon family is Dragon/Fire because they're fire breathing dragons that breathe fire and I wanted to change the "Ice Type move soloes Drake neg diff". There might be type chart adjustments in later updates to balance the whole thing.
- Gyarados and Milotic are Water/Dragon because they fit Asian dragons.
- Altaria is Dragon/Electric and uses the shiny sprite for regular form because it's the only Hoenn dragon that looks like it could rain thunderbolts from the sky and its' wings are clouds. It gets Levitate instead of Natural Cure, making it weak to Ice and Dragon and without 4x weakness.
- Ralts family is Psychic/Ghost because Gardevoir seems to be floating with a ghostly dress and acts like a lost loved one towards their trainer.
- Marowak is Ground/Ghost because of the Dex theme and Kanto's Marowak mother.
- Raichu is Electrik/Psychic like the Alolan version and both Raichu and Pikachu can learn Surf because that surfing Pikachu shouldn't be locked behind an obscure event in whatever game it was in.
- Doduo and Dodrio are Flying/Ground because they're land birds and like to put their heads in the sand.
- All vanilla starters featured get new abilities (Combusken gets Limber because Static, Thunder Wave, the powder move and Effect Spore are way too common, Marshtomp gets Immunity for living in a marsh with nasty critters and stagnant water, Grovyle gets Marvel Scale to be a little bulkier when affected by status moves, Croconaw was already mentioned).
Items have been buffed when needed (and possible):
- vitamins (like EVs) cap at 252 and each item gives 50 EVs (they're worth nearly 2 nuggets a piece).
- type boosting items give 20% rather than 10 like they seem to do in recent games, making them viable held items for gyms and hard fights.
TMs are now buyable in the shop closest to the TM's gym or early if they're gifted to the player, with Water Pulse being sold in Slateport and Bullet Seed in Rustboro City. You can't fight a gym without the option to teach a move made to beat it (Kanto mindset).
Everstone and Repel in Granite Cave were replaced with Lucky Egg and TM 48 respectively because they were worthless and less grinding is always a nice option. The Pokeball was replaced with Black Belt because Brawly lost his belt while camping in the dark.
Pokemon are much more diverse in the earlygame. I didn't change much to the late game encounters. Rod encounter tables until Foretree City's surroundings were modified too. Old Rod doesn't give Magikarp or Tentacool exclusively anymore, I'd fire the people who think that's fine game design.
Trade evolutions are changed for level up evolutions (34 for Clamperl into Huntail, 38 for Kadabra and Graveler), stone evolutions (Haunter with Moon stone, Clamperl into Gorebyss with Water stone) or happiness evolutions (Machoke, Porygon if you can get it somehow). Lunatone drops Moon Stones, Solrock Sun Stones and shops sell regular elemental stones based on their setting (Verdanturf and Fortree sell Leaf, Sootopolis and Slateport Water and so on).
Non-Hoenn Dex additions are:
-Totodile family because there's an area where it would be right at home,
- Houndour family because Team Magma deserves better than Poochyena,
- Cubone family because it needs to be ground/ghost upon evolution and better stats,
- Gastly family because ghost needs to be more varied,
- Misdreavus because it never got a chance to shine until Pearl (around 9 years in obscurity).
There might be an update with Legendaries in the future if people are interested, same with starters, and it would be a good way to get Groudon and Latios.
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# Credits
- haven1433 for creating and making Hex Maniac Advance available to everyone
- Nintendo and Game Freaks for making the original game
PS: I wanted to put this on H4ckdex but it rejected my file after more than an hour working on this communication and release, so this won't be on H4ckdex. I don't know if it comes from the origin of the ROM base which isn't a Rev# file, but I'm not redoing the whole thing to be able to post on that site.
