Pokemon TCG - The HP Experiment is a Game Boy Color ROM Hack by bcrobert of Pokemon Trading Card Game in English. This hack is essentially a thought experiment. How much would the viability of cards in the Base-Fossil format be affected if all of the HP values were based on the evolutionary stage of the Pokemon? This is NOT a balance hack.
You can download the Pokemon TCG - The HP Experiment rom from this page and to play the game you need to download the Visualboy Advance Emulator here.
Download the official Pokemon TCG – The HP Experiment ROM in the (USA) version for the Game Boy Advance handheld consoles. To fully utilize a GB ROM game, use our Cheats, Rom Hacks and GBA Roms sections. You can open the Pokemon TCG – The HP Experiment ROM or GBC file by Installing VisualBoyAdvance on Windows, MAC, Linux, Android or IOS/iphone.
Pokemon TCG – The HP Experiment is a Game Boy Color ROM Hack by bcrobert of Pokemon Trading Card Game in English. It was last updated on January 11, 2025.
This hack is essentially a thought experiment. How much would the viability of cards in the Base-Fossil format be affected if all of the HP values were based on the evolutionary stage of the Pokemon? This is NOT a balance patch. Some cards were clearly balanced around having unusually high or low HP. Some cards will end up WAY stronger or weaker than they should be. But I want to see if there are any unintended consequences that I can only find by diving in.
Additionally, all retreat costs of EVERY Pokemon have been set to 1. The idea is to see which Pokemon rise to the top when you reduce everything to just their attacks and typing, and which cards still stand out as especially bad. There are also a few very minor changes. Goldeen and Seaking have stronger attacks, but this was just a quick and dirty way to make the tutorial go by faster. (I know that the code to make it skippable is public knowledge, but I was only planning on spending an hour on this project since it’s mainly for educational purposes.)
Again, if you’re looking for a balanced gameplay experience, this is almost certainly not that. But if you want to use a 60 HP Magikarp for some reason, then this is the hack for you. I did consider not even releasing this patch to the public, but what if other players are wondering the same things I am? I decided to have all cards be available to the player from the start of the game to speed up testing, since this is more about experimentation than having a smooth difficulty curve.