Pokemon Genome ROM

Pokemon Genome is a GBC ROM Hack by BlueMagma212 based on Pokemon Gold in English. It was last updated on October 21, 2026.

Description

So far, there are no story changes and no graphics changes, I was mainly interested in changing the progression mechanics. I’m contemplating the idea of creating a dedicated story (I have a few ideas), and maybe changing the graphics a little, but at the moment nothing is done on that front.

Features

All Pokemon are the same level

• There are no levels anymore, experience instead goes toward the trainer
• Pokemon still gain StatExp, which serves as a way to train your Pokemon’s stats
• Evolution happens on a StatExp threshold
• Trade evolution doesn’t require trading (always hated that)

Adjusted Pokemon

• I randomized the three offered starters, which are taken from the pool of all the three-stage pokemon lines at random (yes you could be unlucky and have a Caterpie offered to you as a starter, but you should take it, it could be fun :-D).
• I randomized the encounter tables, area are grouped in pair (a zone) and each pair has a per-game random encounter table
• All Pokemon can be obtained but many are only found in a single zone, such that all zones must be explored to complete the Pokédex
• Legendaries stay rare and are spread throughout the world, but are not unique, so you can get a male and a female (see the breeding section)

Pokemon

• As you encounter pokemon in the wild, you gradually fill your map (in the Pokégear) with the pokemon available at each location
• As you battle with a pokemon you gain knowledge about that line of pokemon (the pokemon and its evolution), this is how you unlock moves that you can teach that pokemon
• Once a move is unlocked you can teach it to all pokemon of that line
• All know moves stays available at all time, so you can adapt your strategy at any time
• Wild pokemon sometimes know “unusual moves”, if captured that moves gets unlocked for the line
• If you manage to unlock all move for a line, that line is “Mastered”, the Pokédex has a tracker for all the Mastered line (there are 129 of them), this create a fun (I think) endgame challenge on top of “catch them all”.
• All pokemon have a gender (yes even those), with an even 50/50 spread
• Pokemon are not part of “egg groups” anymore, now to get an egg you need a male and a female of the same line, you cannot breed with Ditto anymore (except two ditto can breed with each other to produce a baby ditto)
• All DV comes from the parent, with a mutation on all value individually (from -1 to +2) meaning you can breed a 15 everywhere pokemon if you are patient enough

The Pokédex has some new features

• A tracker for mastery
• An unlocked move tracker which also track unusual moves
• A star appears next to a mastered Pokemon instead of the Poké Ball

Quality of life

• Base stats, DV, and StatExp are visible in the pokemon page in a new 4th tab
• To address the other changes some items effect have been modified to be useful
• If you are in an area with an easy access to a Poké Center, your team is automatically healed at the end of all battle (caves and the Elite Four are obviously excluded from this along with other similar area). This avoid the tedious back and forth walk to the Poké Center and the waiting while the team is healed.
• TMs are infinitely usable (you can use it more than once)
• Once an HM is available (and you have the appropriate badge), you can use a pokemon of your team to use the HM without teaching it as long as it can learn it. -> No more HM slaves

Gym leaders

• All the gym leaders have been buffed with better pokemon, moves, and statExp to make gyms more challenging

Changelog

V0.2

• A lot of trainers got rebalanced to be stronger (game tend to become really easy once you have a strong third-stage pokemon around the second gym). I think I’ll keep increasing the difficulty as I reach those different areas in playtests and see how difficult or easy it really is
• A lot of trainers have evolved or new pokemon in order to make most pokemon lines appear at least a couple time in trainer battle and reduce the overwhelming presence of rattata in trainer battle (and other overused pokemon)
• A lot of trainers have new pokemon move to include “unusual moves” more often. Those trainers once defeated can teach you those unusual move so that the player can teach them to its pokemon of that line. This create a second way to unlock unusual moves (on top of catching)
• I noticed that starter and encounter pool randomization was often offering the same combination of pokemon, it was a bug in my randomization algorithm (only ~100 possible starter triplet were possible, instead of the ~2000 that should be possible), this is now hopefully fixed and more variety make the experience as unique as possible for each player.
• I made it more likely to encounter a wild pokemon with an unusual move down from 1/16 to 1/8, to make it more interesting and easier to unlock those and reach mastery
• Rarest encounter in each area was increased from 0.5% to 1%, in playtest I almost never encountered any which was a little sad
• I also adjusted some dialog regarding TM and HM to make it aligned with the changes made in the romhack and not “falsely” claim you can only use TM once for example
• Also fixed a few bugs as I encountered them and tweaked some other dialog

Useful Links

Pokecommunity