GBA Pokémon Hacks

These Pokémon hacks are fanmade rom hacks of official Pokémon games for the GBA whose roms were stolen then sold on bootleg cartridges without the knowledge of their creators.

Quartz[]

A hack of Pokémon Ruby which replaces all Pokémon with original ones and takes place in Corna, a heavily-edited Hoenn. The game has a great number of spelling and grammatical errors, which result from the hack being translated from Spanish to English, as well as profanity and adult themes.

While the best-known bootleg cartridge as played on the actual GBA contains serious glitches and errors, the current patch file release works well with VBA when the patch is applied to a clean Ruby ROM. The bootleg version has a Gyarados on the boxart, the artwork being stolen from one of the packs of the Pokémon Trading Card Game expansion "EX Holon Phantoms".

Naranja[]

A Spanish hack and bootleg of Pokémon Ruby centered around Celebi in which the player plays as either Ash or Misty and travels around the Orange Archipelago ("Naranja" meaning "Orange" in Spanish).

ChaosBlack[]

A hack of Pokémon FireRed which contains many new Pokémon, as well as "glitched" ones such as the infamous MissingNo from the first generation.

The description on the back of some bootleg boxes contains typos or poor English and punctuation, as is common with bootleg games. The front cover features a recolored version of Chaos' artwork from the Sonic game, Sonic Battle.

Frigo Returns[]

5CHShkYOCQaOGLu — Box Art for *Pokémon Frigo Returns*.

A hack of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire which has many different versions, some with a lighter palette and some with text differences. The original ROM has a text box at the beginning of the game saying "This game has been hacked by: The Phantom of Poké4Yu Inc." that was removed from most cartridge versions, said cartridge versions also having the light palette.

A possible publisher could have the initials "VC" due to some of the cartridges having a sticker over the screw with the letters VC. The front cover features an image of Michael, the protagonist from Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, as well as the Pokémon Lucario from the fourth generation of Pokémon games.

Perla[]

A hack of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire which was probably made by an unknown Spanish, American or Italian developer (according to the title or to the ESRB rating) named EMU LG. Despite the fact that this game is dated 2005, as seen on the title screen, it was probably made after 2006 considering that the game has many elements from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. The boxart uses a stolen image of Lucario from the Japanese poster for Pokémon The Movie: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew. Unevolved starter Pokémon (Treecko, Torchic, and Mudkip) have their names and front sprites changed to completely original ones (Uzukara, Volcak, and Wachic), but back sprites remain unchanged. Some other Pokémon are shuffled around and/or replaced with either preexisting Generation IV ones or original ones, like Chiisume (original) replacing Zigzagoon.

Crystal Shards[]

This hack of Pokémon Emerald is a reimagination Pokémon Crystal as a Game Boy Advance title that was released in 2009 by Kike-Scott^[1] (credited as MikaMan on the title screen), though it had been in development since at least 2007^[2]. New versions and updates have continuously been released over time. The game takes place in Johto and also includes Kanto while the plot has been changed to follow the story of Pokémon Crystal as closely as possible. The game was stolen and sold on Game Boy Advance cartridges at least in southeast Asian markets.^[3]

Shiny Gold[]

A hack of Pokémon FireRed which is a remake of Pokémon Gold released in 2006-2007 by Argentinian developer ZEL. The boxart uses a stolen image of the light spirit Aska from Tales of Symphonia, but with one of his heads removed.

Blue Sea[]

A hack of Pokémon FireRed released in 2007 by Mexican developer Neos. The game takes place in a heavily-edited Kanto where Silver replaces Gary and where Mareep, Spheal, and Trapinch are the starters. The boxart uses a stolen image of Blastoise from the Pokémon Trading Card Game.

Arcoiris[]

A hack of Pokémon Ruby released in 2005-2006 by Spanish developer SHN. The game takes place in a heavily-edited Orange Islands from Pokémon Naranja where Ash replaced Brendan and Misty replaced May. The boxart uses a stolen image of Shadow Lugia from the Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness.

DarkCry[]

Pokémon DarkCry is a Pokémon Fire Red hack from 2008 trying to emulate the Sinnoh region on GBA hardware.^[4] The game contains many generation 4 Pokémon in addition to the ones present in generation 3 and the starters have been replaced with the Sinnoh starters. There's bugs concerning the types of some of the Sinnoh Pokémon, most notably with the staters.

Lugia's Ocean[]

This is a hack of Pokémon FireRed released in 2008 by an unknown pirate developer. It was only obtainable in cartridge form on various internet marketplaces until it was dumped and the ROM uploaded to the internet in 2020 by Pokemoner.^[5] The game was originally only released in Spanish though it has since been translated into English following the dump of the ROM.

The gameplay is relatively basic though the hacker did make stark changes to the story and altered the path of the player through the game. The player can choose between Nidorina, Growlithe and Bagon as his starter, to join him on his quest to save his sister. The hack contains a multitude of bugs such as the music not playing in certain battles and the peculiar map and story design can lead to soft locks at numerous places.

The boxart uses an image of Lugia on a generic holographic background while the Game Boy Advance branding now says " GAME FOR ADVANCE", probably in an attempt to avoid copyright claims (though it's questionable why the pirates even bothered, considering the many other infringments they had been committing already).