Pokemon Carmine Red ROM

Pokemon Carmine Red is a Game Boy ROM Hack by Wrulfy based on Pokemon Red. It was last updated on February 04, 2024.

Description

Carmine Red is a personal project of a Gen 1 romhack, based on the disassembly rather than a binary hack, as was common many years ago. Based on an idea I had for a romhack more than a decade ago that never got off the ground due to binary tool limitations and my decision to stop working on it.

My main idea is to improve on a lot of what Gen 1 had to offer while keeping the original games’ messiness. The name Carmine comes from a bug that is used to extract a dark red dye, which is why Parasect is the Hack’s mascot and bugs are the most frequent recipients of buffs.

Story

The plot of the game hasn’t changed all that much since the original. However, it can be viewed as an alternate reality of Kanto, with some elements set in the future in comparison to the original, while everything else takes place in the same timeframe. The main distinction is that there is an epilogue with Team Rocket’s arc near the end of the game.

Features

• Massive Improve of learnsets
• New typings for several Pokémon
• Modified type chart
• Modified Base Stats for a lot of Pokémon
• Mofidied wild encounters across all of the game
• Modified a lot of moves, repurposing a lot of bad moves
• SGB support to make the game playable with custom color palettes
• All Pokemon are available, including Mew
• Improved maps and modified dungeons, and even new areas
• Improved map Tileset
• More inventory space
• HMs are deletable on the go
• Improved trainer and Boss battles
• A bit more difficult than the original, but nothing crazy. I would compare it to vanilla B2W2 Challenge mode.
• Runnin functionality has been added, and biking and surfind is now faster
• Gym Leader rematches have been added.
• And more!

Mechanics

Most of the original game’s mechanics have been retained, but the following are worth considering:

• A handful of move effects are gone unused due to the moves that used them having completely changed, and a couple of unused effects are now used by other moves.
• Some Items have gone through rebalancing. For example, hyper potions have been nerfed, and the Great Ball no longer works like in vanilla but is just a step in between the regular pokeballs and ultra balls. SafariBalls have that buff now.
• HM Moves can be deleted on the go. However, the game will warn you when doing so, as you can potentially softlock youself in some areas. Several NPCs will remind you to carry the HMs with you at all times.
• The Inventory of the Bag and the PC have been increased by 10 items each. Now you can carry 30 items with you, and store 60 in the PC.
• The trainer AI is mostly the same, but trainers that like to use boosting moves on the second turn, now do on the first turn. Some special trainers will use X items that they dont use in vanilla.
• The old and good rod now has more stuff to catch when compared to the pitiful behavior of the base game
• Sleep should last from 0-3 turns
• Experience doesn’t get halved between participants, all get the full experience. This makes the Exp. All really powerful, like Exp share in gen6+

Known Bugs

• The new item DIRE GUARD is still widely untested and is in the game mostly as a novelty. Use at your own caution.
• Using Surf in front of an NPC that’s in the water lets you get inside it. I haven’t seen any unprecedented behavior, but I’m listing it anyway
• Prof. Oak doesn’t appear in the champion’s room when doing E4 rematches till the end of the fight, only the first time. I couldn’t get around it, but the whole dialogue of the E4 and champion only makes sense in the context of the first round, so I didn’t bother about it
• Since I couldn’t make you can’t store HMs in the PC and delete HM moves on the go, you can potentially get stuck somewhere if you’re purposely careless. If you always carry them with you, you will be fine.
• Pretty much all bugs present in Gen 1 can happen here as well. Missignos might be completely different, though.

Changelog

V1.1

• Added Gym leader rematches (Special thanks to PlagueVonKarma!)
• Increased the levels of the Elite 4 to widen the gap between the last gym
• Added running shoes functionality, and increased the speed of surf and bike
• Increased the speed of spinner tiles (Special thanks to JojoBear13!)
• Minor learnset changes (golduck gets mirror move instead of roar, beedril and kingler get sharpen and slam respectively instead of swords dance by lv up, arbok/ekans get some of their STAB earlier)
• Minor stat rebalancing of some unevolved (slighlty altered the stats of the nidos) and fearow (traded speed for attack)
• EXP. ALL texts are now much faster, making using it less painfully slow. this affects traded mons as well.
• Changed Jynx’s sprite for the 97 spaceworld demo because is just that good.
• Revamped the text speeds, Fast gets replaced with “super” which is instant text, the mid speed gets replaced with fast speed, labeled normal, and slow is slightly less slow.
• Minor trainer party adjustments
• Revised dungeon map battle transitions
• Revised dungeon borders
• Slightly altered some dungeon maps with the new borders in mind
• Slightly better AI for Erika and Sabrina
• Lance now uses max potions instead
• Minor dialog adjustments to hint the rematches and the running function
• Fixed the withdraw animation
• Minor gate tileset improvements
• Minor shop rebalancing
• Increased the obedience levels assigned to badges and pre-badge
• Moved around some of the in-game trades to make some of them avaiable earlier
• Few altered and extra dialogues
• Increased a bit the levels of the last dungeons’ wilds post 8th gym, since the curve falls a bit there.
• Golduck is now part ghost type
• Psyduck and golduck have now slightly less attack but a bit more special
• They also have a different lvup learnset
• Couple of lvup learnset changes (vileplume gets recover earlier and toxic last, instead of sludge, and dewgong gets triatack instead of double edge)
• Fixed giovanni’s dugtrio bad moveset
• Added a pond next to the mtmoon pokecenter
• Swapped the water and rod encounters of routes 4 and 24
• Fixed rhyhorn learning cut but rhydon not (now is the opposite)
• Cloyster should learn pin missile at lv25, not lv26