As you know, we love covering Pokémon ROM hacks; we've been doing it for years now, so seeing new ideas and creatives come to the field with unique additions is what makes my job so enjoyable. One new ROM hack that I want to share with you today is called Pokémon Emerald Arena, and it has added real-time battles to the game, which gives the repetitive task of fighting and catching Pokémon a refreshing approach.
I had to download it for myself to give it a go, and it indeed works wonders, offering a fast-paced battle sequence that requires your focus and intellect to move around the battlefield and attack your targets as smartly as you can. As of now, I believe the real-time battling is exclusive to wild-Pokémon and not trainer/gym battles.
It has been developed by GBurgardt and was officially released on the 11th September. This ROM hack offers the ability to use 12 animated Pokémon in the "Arena", which is the environment which offers you real-time battles; if it's not one of the 12 Pokémon, it will result in the "normal" Pokémon battling sequence. So, in a way, the game forces you to use certain Pokémon if you want a complete real-time battle experience, but no doubt the developer will work on more updates in the future that add to these 12. The Pokémon that offer real-time battling are: Charizard, Blastoise, Eevee, Dragonite, Scizor, Blaziken, Treecko, Poochyena, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Grovyle and Sceptile.
- 10 move profiles: Pound, Tackle, Quick Attack, Leer, Absorb, Water Gun, Wing Attack, Slam, Peck and Scratch.
- Breakable rocks, wood, foliage, crystals and explosive pods.
- Enemies that navigate obstacles, aim and dodge, with level-based reactions.
- Native HP, PP, experience, leveling and saves. Classic battles remain available.
There's also the fact that the "Arena" has breakable objects such as wood, rocks, boxes, crystals and even explosive pods that can deal extra damage, allowing you to use A to attack and B to dodge. There's still a lot of work to go into this, alongside adding more move sequences and more available Pokémon, etc., but it's a new, fun way to explore the original game. I dig it. It can be downloaded via GBurgardy's official GitHub page. You'll need your own Pokémon Emerald ROM to patch this hack.
We asked the developer what level of AI was used to create this, and unfortunately it seems like a lot of AI has been used to develop this game: "I used AI quite a lot to help with the code. Basically, it’s built on Pret’s Emerald decompilation in C, so the new battles run directly inside the GBA ROM, keeping the original damage, XP and saves. AI also helped with the backgrounds and objects; the Pokémon sprites come from PMD resources", states German Burgardt. I don't have a problem with AI-assisted coding, but using AI to develop images and objects is technically theft, so it's disappointing to see the shortcuts made here from the developer and is yet another ROM hack to add to the long list of "vibe-coded" projects that litter our feeds recently. It's a cool idea; I just wish German put some passion into it and didn't use Gen AI.
