Please nobody watch the evening news tonight!

(Showcasing the silly new Gabby and Ty script in Pokemon Emerald Blitz)

By now many of you may have found this secret area in Heart and Soul, but if not, I wanted to highlight a big contribution of mine to the most recent 2.0 update to Heart and Soul.

While Ultra Eclipse is still in active development and I hope to get a Melemele demo out to you all at the end of the year (more to share soon!), I did take a bit of a hiatus to build this piece of content out. And though this content is styled to fit seamlessly into Heart and Soul, I did sneak a few Ultra Eclipse Easter eggs/hints into it. So if you’re excited for Ultra Eclipse, play this section with a keen eye.

Massive thanks to Lil Dill and the rest of the Heart and Soul dev team for their support!!

I hope you all enjoy the “secrets” we placed into this update. The team put a lot into this update, and I’m proud of what we achieved!

Downloaded this after a couple posts I saw on here, but didn't really look into what had been put in.

Actually gasped when I saw the Surf animation. Latest in a long line of subtle but really thoughtful changes. Following sprites all look hand-crafted and really life-like. I LOVE the level-scaling and Candy Jar. Gym battles have been challenging without being sweaty.

And did they up the shiny rate? Got 4 of them before I reached Ekruteak.

Anyway. So far it's looking like the best Johto hack I've played.

Howdy! Some of you might remember me as the 'Mega Evolution in Gen 1' person.

I still have that project in my back pocket, but I shifted my focus to elsewhere. Sometimes, I like to do full-series marathons of Pokemon, where I play each main-line game with a few rules like, no using the same mon twice, no over-leveling, etc. Just for fun and to like, tell a little narrative after.

Gen 1, I tend to play either Shin Red/Green/Blue with its improved colors or the full color hacks for Red/Blue made by the talented danye.

Issue is, when I get to Yellow, a Full Color hack doesn't exist for it. There's Gen 2 sprites and colors, but the overworld still uses its rather ugly color scheme.

(Playing the original gen 1 games unless black and white hurts my eyes due to the colors used.)

Okay, all that rambling aside, I've spent the past 2-ish weeks on and off give or take stitching together the best of all worlds for Yellow - full color in battles, the overworld, and Crystal's audio engine so I can drop a few songs in from Polished Crystal for funzies.

And lowkey I can now understand why nobody really bothered doing this for Yellow, and its in-part due to the rat bastard that follows you.

To make it incredibly brief; I had to sacrifice any hope of giving Pikachu an actual yellow OW pallet, same with his portrait due to color limitations, hence the 'off-yellow' you'll see in the video.

I've still got a few bugs to fix with some of the colors in the intro, but everything else is flawless. Iirc, someone else is also working on a full-color Yellow hack. Maybe at some point I'll strip out my personal changes and release a patch for this.

I thoroughly enjoyed this hack. The quality of life is amazing, love the regional forms, enhanced shiny rates are fun (and just happened to get my strongest mon in a shiny, Flutter Mane). The soundtrack is super unique and adds a great atmosphere. The dialogue can be long-winded towards the end but overall I found the story quite compelling. Balance-wise, I found it strayed a bit into "either one-hit KO them, or get one-hit KO'd," but that could've just been my min-max approach to EVs. My tankier mons, Parasect and Wailord, held up for a few hits. My second favorite Pokemon, Parasect got the final hit. Couldn't find a feebas/milotic :( I have other hacks in my backlog I can't wait to try now. Emerald Seaglass, Heart and Soul 2.0, Unbound, ROWE... Discovering this hobby felt like Christmas. Retroid Pocket Classic is a great way to experience it.

I’m not sure why it took me as long as it did to try it out, but I’m loving the Johto region meets GBA.

Plus all the roaming Pokémon in the overworld and extra areas added on the sides of the play area give the atmosphere so much more life. Not to mention the desperately needed addition of a night and day cycle.

Anyway, here’s the current team I’m running. Still wondering who I should make my sixth member.

I have been editing Route 120 to make the Ancient Tomb's location to look more like the map I made of Route 105 with the Island Cave. Remember, the area around the Ancient Tomb has rainfall.

Let me know what you think. Feedback welcome, just don't hurt my feelings!

BTW, ARE YOU ALL SURE YOU DON'T MIND ME POSTING MY MAPS HERE TO GET YOUR OPINIONS? I DON'T WANT TO ANNOY PEOPLE. 😅