Pokemon Battle Theater ROM

Features

• 120 trainers across Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, Galar, Hisui + PWT + anime World Champion Ash
• 9 Legends Arceus trainers — Volo, Adaman, Irida, Ingo, Akari, Kamado, Zisu, Beni, Rei
• Tournament mode, 8 trainer single-elim brackets per region
• Best of N match format with adaptive picks between rounds
• VGC mode, forced doubles, Lv 50 cap, 4 pick of 6
• Team preview AI, scores each mon against the opponent’s whole roster and picks the optimal lineup (one of the coolest additions)
• Custom Trainer slots, full PKHeX style editor in-ROM (sprite / name / species / item / ability / EVs / IVs / moves / nature / gender / shiny) saved to your file
• Pilot Mode, control the player AI’s loaner team yourself
• Level cap (off / 50 / 75 / 100) for fair matchups
• Z-Moves / Mega / Dynamax / Gigantamax, AI bias tuned to fire signature attacks eagerly
• Custom Battle Theater background by LiYun
• Affection + Terastallization disabled for cleaner sim

Known Bugs

• Player trainer name sometimes renders with glitched / corrupted characters in battle dialogue.
• Trainer picker menu occasionally shows funky text on certain entries when scrolling. Closing and reopening the picker normalises it.

Changelog

V2.8.0

• Types are species data, so until now every team battled with modern typings — Cynthia’s Platinum Togekiss carried the Fairy typing it wouldn’t receive for another two generations. Now every Pokémon battles with the typing it actually had when its trainer’s game shipped.

  • Cynthia’s Platinum Togekiss is Normal/Flying — while her BDSP Togekiss stays Fairy/Flying. Dragon moves connect with the Sinnoh one and bounce off the modern one.
  • Wally’s Gardevoir is pure Psychic again; Bede’s stays Psychic/Fairy.
  • Sabrina’s GSC Mr. Mime has no Fairy; Lucian’s BDSP one does.
  • Magnemite and Magneton are pure Electric for Gen 1 teams — Steel didn’t exist yet.
  • Rotom’s appliance forms are Electric/Ghost for Gen 4 trainers, since they only gained their appliance types in Gen 5.

   

• All 25 historically retyped species are covered, verified against Bulbapedia rather than memory — including the asymmetries that are easy to get wrong: the Clefairy line, Togepi, Snubbull and Granbull went pure Fairy, while the Jigglypuff line kept Normal; Azurill is Normal/Fairy unlike Marill and Azumarill; Togekiss is Fairy/Flying with Fairy in the primary slot; and Gallade never gained Fairy at all despite the rest of its family doing so.

• A trainer’s era comes from the same classification the picker shows, so a team can never display one era and battle as another. Facility teams use their own eras too — the Hoenn Frontier Brains are Gen 3, the Sinnoh Brains Gen 4, the Battle Tree pools Gen 7 — and a team you borrow for a Frontier Challenge run carries its owner’s era into the facility.

  Note: the party and summary screens read types from species data, so they’ll still show modern typings. The change is in how battles actually play.

• Piloted teams could Dynamax anything — the fix that unlocked pilot-mode Dynamax back in v2.3.1 never checked the individual Pokémon. Piloted teams now follow the same rule the AI always did: only the Sword/Shield trainers on their canonical Dynamax and G-Max mons, Ash’s Gigantamax Gengar, and custom mons with the per-mon toggle switched on. That toggle was also being ignored in pilot mode, and now isn’t.

V2.7.1

• Every game-sourced trainer was cross-checked against Bulbapedia across two full passes — held items, movesets, abilities, natures, and EV/IV spreads — with each change independently re-verified before it landed.

  Items & movesets

  • ORAS Elite Four, Steven, May, Brendan — the invented type-boost items (Dragon Fang, Never-Melt Ice, Spell Tag…) are gone; canon is Mega Stones only.
  • B2W2 Challenge Mode Elite Four (Shauntal, Grimsley, Marshal, Caitlin) — real items, real movesets, and canon Lv 77-79.
  • BW Cheren ×3 and B2W2 Hugh ×3 — true post-game rematch movesets.
  • Legends: Arceus — that game has no held items, so all nine LA trainers drop theirs (Volo’s Origin Giratina keeps its Griseous Core for the Boss Battle).

   

• Abilities — 86 fixed
  Nearly all were hidden abilities or later-generation abilities the trainer’s era never had: Klinklang’s Plus, Musharna’s Forewarn, Conkeldurr’s Sheer Force, Alder’s Sap Sipper Bouffalant, Cyrus’s Early Bird Houndoom, and more.

• Natures & EVs
  Invented competitive spreads are gone from ~390 trainers. Only what canon actually documents remains: Crispin, Lacey and Drayton now carry their exact published Nature/EVs/IVs (0 Atk IVs on special attackers included), and Cynthia (BDSP), Cyrano, Ingo and Emmet keep theirs. Battle Tree and Frontier Brain pools are untouched — their spreads are canon facility data.

• Gengar remembers how to float
  Gengar had Levitate through Gen 6 and only gained Cursed Body in Gen 7. Built on modern species data, every classic Gengar was silently losing Levitate. Both are now ability slots, so Agatha, Morty, Silver, Fantina and Shauntal float again — while Plumeria, Allister, Raifort and Gwynn keep Cursed Body.

• In 1-vs-2 battles the player side was fielding only 3 Pokémon against the opponents’ 6. Fixed — you bring your full six.

V2.7.0

BOSS BATTLES

The games’ legendary multi-phase boss fights, run like a mini Elite Four gauntlet with NO HEALING between phases — HP, PP, status, and faints all carry forward. Send any trainer in, spectate or pilot, level caps optional:

• Greevil (XD) — first XD001, Shadow Lugia itself, alone. Survive that, and his six Shadow Pokémon (Zapdos, Moltres, Articuno and co.) hit you as an XD-style double battle with whatever team you have left.
• Ghetsis (B2W2) — the scripted Kyurem fight opens: Black Kyurem or White Kyurem, rolled once per run (Teravolt + Freeze Shock, or Turboblaze + Ice Burn). Then Ghetsis and the Hydreigon crew are waiting.
• Volo (Legends: Arceus) — the infamous finale: his six, then Giratina Altered Forme, then Giratina Origin Forme, back to back to back.
• Win it all and the full Hall of Fame ceremony plays for your battle-scarred survivors.

Shadow Lugia, for real

• XD001 battles with proper Shadow Lugia sprites — purple body, silver plates, red eyes, front animation, back sprite, and party icon — fighting under the name XD001 with all four of its Shadow moves. Base Lugia (and its shiny) are completely untouched. It even has a Cipher-flavored dex entry, and its shiny palette is a crimson nod to Hyper Mode.
• Shadow Lugia battle sprites + icon by lvalovenfs (DeviantArt).

Useful Links

Reddit

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