A new Pokemon release featuring Emerald‘s Hoenn Region has fans divided over whether it’s necessary. The Gen 3 Pokemon games remain some of the most beloved entries in the franchise, and many fans point to them as the pinnacle of what the series is capable of. However, not all fans consider Pokemon Emerald perfect, with one fan going out of their way to create a new version of the Hoenn Region that more accurately reflects its real-life counterpart.
It’s hardly fair to say that Pokemon Emerald is a controversial game, especially when it introduced the fan-favorite Battle Frontier to the post-game along with the ability to rematch trainers and Gym Leaders. With Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald leaked for Nintendo Switch, it’s likely Gen 3 oldheads will get to experience the Hoenn Region all over again very soon. In the meantime, players looking for a take on Hoenn that’s accurate to its real-life inspiration, a dedicated Pokemon fan has created the Pokemon Emerald Rotate ROM hack for fans to experience.
Pokemon Emerald Rotate Spins the Hoenn Region’s Map by 90 Degrees
Pokemon Emerald Rotate comes from modder HexManiacAdvance and features a new take on the Hoenn Region’s map that is, as the name implies, rotated by 90 degrees to the right. The justification for this change, according to the ROM hack’s creator, is that the original orientation of Hoenn’s map differs from the real-world Japanese region of Kyushu that it’s based on by a rotation of 90 degrees. To solve this issue, HexManiacAdvance simply rotated every part of Hoenn’s map by 90 degrees so that north is no longer to the left of the screen, but up, as they feel it should have been originally.
The existence of this ROM hack has Pokemon fans divided over whether it actually improves Pokemon Emerald. Twitter users responding to the announcement of Pokemon Emerald Rotate shared a mixture of confusion at the new perspective of the game’s map and enthusiasm for the creator’s commitment to solving a problem they didn’t know they had. So many Pokemon fans have already played through Emerald enough times to have the Hoenn Region memorized, so this release is sure to mess with many players’ heads.
As some Twitter users note, an infamous location like the Sky Pillar, which requires players to precisely navigate breakable tiles, will be much harder in this Pokemon ROM hack. Aside from rotating the map to accurately match Kyushu, Pokemon Emerald Rotate also adds certain Pokemon that aren’t available in the base game as rare spawns. Otherwise, everything else is true to the original, vanilla version of Pokemon Emerald.
An official, non-rotated version of Pokemon Emerald and the other Hoenn games could be hitting the Nintendo Switch soon. A recent post from the official Japanese Pokemon Twitter account showcased what appears to be the first look at Ruby and Sapphire running on the Switch. No release date for these games has officially been confirmed, but signs point towards Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald hitting the Switch in the very near future.
- Released
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May 1, 2005
- ESRB
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E For Everyone
- Multiplayer
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Local Multiplayer
