One of China's most popular ROM hacks, Pokémon Origins HeartGold now has an English translation. You might not have heard of it before if you're a Western Gamer, but Chinese gamers love it just as much as we bang on about Pokémon Unbound here at Retro Dodo. It's a DS ROM hack, and now thanks to a Reddit user called kakapipi, there's now a translation that helps us to know what's going on while playing.
The latest version of the game is made by a dev going by Alex, but the original creator was 雁南飞TB. Origin boasts a brand new story and has elements of the anime series, the Special Manga, and Pokémon Origins. You can play as a protagonist in the anime Ash style, Special Manga style, or Origins Red style, and there are three full playthroughs with post-game content for you to tackle.
All of the base stats and learnsets have been reworked, as well as making changes to the difficulty settings and adding quality-of-life changes. As I said, there's now a translation, but it's been done with AI, as well as using AI to create code to edit and analyse the original ROM hack. Kakapipi states that they can't speak Mandarin, but they've been manually testing
The project is still in the bug-testing phase, and Kakapipi has stated that they're looking for people to help test and report bugs. If you're keen to tackle the game and want help with future translations and making sure everything is running smoothly, then you can join the Pokémon Origin HeartGold Discord and help to get the game over the line!
Head to Kakapipi's post on Reddit to download the game!
