Pokemon Scramble (GB)

Pokemon Scramble GB ROM

Download: Mediafire

Hack Name: Pokemon Scramble
Hack Original: Pokemon Red
Status: Completed
Language: English

Story

Pokemon Scramble is a Balance/Difficulty hack that focuses on making battles more varied in sometimes surprising ways. Sometimes it feels like things have been kind of "scrambled". Other times you will just scramble to survive. Also collecting pokemon is way easier in this version (and obviously all 151 can be found).

This hack started with an insane question: is it possible to balance out this incredibly unbalanced game without adding types and without changing the way the types worked? What would happen to the gameplay if all fully evolved pokemon were as good as each other?

Then to spice things up, an exponential difficulty curve added.

List of Features

The starting screen is pretty much the same, except Parasect appears first with Red. If you see Parasect, you patched successfully.-Many pokemon have different types to reduce the number of pokemon sharing the same type combination. The choices for types are mostly sensible but sometimes weird.
Since the hack has the same problem as the original game with Super Effective and Not Very Effective messages lying, I have provided a handy guide with all type combinations for the player.
Stat Totals have been recalculated from absolute scratch (total disregard from the original stats). The formula takes into account how well the type combination of the pokemon fares defensively and how good is the moveset of the pokemon. Also having high Specials generally reduces the stat total that the pokemon can have (basically it's counted twice as Special Attack and Special Defense). The result is a Parasect with the best stats in the game and an Alakazam with the worst stats in the game, and they both end up being pretty good in battle. Mewtwo and Mew are the only exception and are not balanced.
Many pokemon have additional new starting moves added, which can be found on the handy guide as well.
Moves have also been changed types to ensure pokemon had access to more types. There are more fighting, bug, ghost, dragon, and attacking poison moves for example. Non-attacking moves are all typeless (this way the AI uses them slightly better).
Similarly to stat totals, the power of moves has also been recalculated from scratch. High PP moves are slightly less powerful than low PP moves, however, in this hack high PP moves are still viable end-game options. This also means that battles in the first part of the game are way more Rocket-Tag gameplay, with the ups and downs of it. Non-attacking moves are still as unbalanced between each other as before, with fewer changes, except for some general fixes (Focus Energy raises attack, there are no moves that lower or raise accuracy). Some non-attacking moves are now attacking moves. HMs are all pretty good moves so that having an "HM slave" becomes less necessary.
The hack comes with a handy guide of what every single move does.
Almost any pokemon can be acquired by the time the player reaches Pokemon Tower and almost any pokemon appears in the wild in one way or another.
A little less repetition of the same pokemon appearing constantly when going through grass or dungeons. All places have at least 4 pokemon that appear at varying degrees of rarity.
The guide also lists where to catch most pokemon from Pallet Town to Pokemon Tower, making it easier to plan early on a specific team to beat the game.
In-game trades have all been changed. Game Corner Prizes as well. Trade-evolutions are in-game trades, but non-evolved versions of these pokemon are also equally viable to use compared to their evolutions.
Enemy trainers have their levels raised exponentially. Starting with almost no change at the very start of the game and then growing higher after each battle. By the time the player reaches Indigo League, all their pokemon are level 100. Please note you can beat the pokemon league with a team with an average level of 55-60. There is no need to grind if you plan properly. The lower the level of your team after finishing the league, the more proud you can feel of yourself.
Enemy trainers have different pokemon, they start having fully evolved pokemon earlier and they have a generally higher variation of pokemon. Pokemon appear as enemies from trainers a similar amount of times between each other. Even legendary birds pop up surprisingly often for what one would expect.