Pokemon Throwback
Remake by: RichterSnipes.
Remake from: Pokemon Fire Red
Description:
Storyline:
There are tons of hacks out there that completely change up the Pokémon experience to make something new. But what if you just wanted something that attempts to improve upon the great game that is already there? Pokémon Throwback is my attempt at doing just that. This hack incorporates new features and fixes into the 1st Gen remakes to try and create the most robust version of the original Kanto story available while remaining true to the GBA games at its core.
Features:
Throwback contains a variety of patches that you can use at your own leisure: pick one or more things, or put the whole thing into the game.
Throwback in its current form fully supports Pokémon FireRed Version (BPRE v1.0). I provide legacy support for Pokémon LeafGreen Version (BPGE v1.0). Sometime in the future I may provide full support to it. The main portion of the OP will cover FireRed support.
Offering both new and old versions of tracks for a game is never a bad thing, as both have their own charm. This patch introduces tunes that represent what Pokémon Red/Green/Blue/Yellow had to offer. They're based right off of the code from the original ROMs, giving highly accurate results. They play off of the native PSG sound chip in the Game Boy Advance instead of DirectSound (save for one exception) to ensure minimal loss of sound quality.
To play the classic music, check your Key Items Pocket at the start of the game and you'll see a new item there: the GB Sounds! With it you can choose which music you want to listen to throughout the game. The game saves which bank is in use, so saving with the 8-bit music on will allow you to keep them on when booting the game up. You'll also be able to play the music in stereo if you wish. Gen I tunes use basic custom panning based on what I felt was most conventional, while Gen II tunes retain their original panning. Keep in mind that Gen I music was originally meant to be heard in mono.
Things to consider if you think something's off with any part of the sound:
Any quirk in an emulator's PSG sound chip implementation will cause some things to not sound quite right.
The volume of the tracks is rather loud. It is the same level as it was in the original games. Lowering it would ruin the fade outs of songs, making them reach zero volume (or velocity, both are impacted similarly) earlier than they should.
"Jigglypuff's Song" is played back through DirectSound, not through the PSG chip. This is because duty shifting is a custom feature of the Gen I/II music engine, not a native part of the Game Boy's standard music library.
The Game Freak logo sound heard in Throwback is from the Japanese releases of Red and Green. The later version heard in Japanese Blue, international Red and Blue, and Yellow uses duty shifting and is thus also impossible to recreate natively.
Pitch bending doesn't play accurately in my experience. I can't say whether this is an emulation issue or a GBA issue.
Modulation may not sound entirely correct. This is due to a variety of reasons, including lack of documentation, emulation inaccuracies, and even possible discrepancies between the GBA's legacy PSG chip support versus the Game Boy's PSG support. There appears to be more that I don't know about it, but it seems that no one around knows anything about it, either.
If you want to best experience the GB Sounds music on PC, I suggest you play Throwback using VBA-M. Although mGBA has by and large surpassed VBA-M in terms of accuracy, its PSG sound emulation is still lacking. Sounds aren't even as crisp as they were on original hardware. I'll see about contacting endrift regarding this issue.
Stuffing 300+ Pokémon into a game the size of FR/LG can make things feel claustrophobic. What I offer is an alternative that puts in all the Pokémon fitting for this game: the first two generations. They're all soundly located and dispersed throughout the game with no awkward confrontations in strange routes. I've also added some new events for the one-off Pokémon such as starters and legendaries. They're subtle and low-key enough to not feel too distracting or unfitting from the official game. Trade-evolved Pokémon still evolve through trade to keep with series canon, but you can also simulate trade through using Bill's Teleporter at the Sea Cottage. Check the included event guide for more information!
If you wish to get Pokémon only distributed through Nintendo events such as Mew, Celebi, Surfing Pikachu, and others, please read below in the "Event Giveaway" section.
There are no Hoenn Pokémon in this hack. They really don't exist in the standard FR/LG game, and including them would make all areas too congested. If you want to play with Hoenn Pokémon, I suggest you play either Emerald or Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, maybe even both. They're good games, too!
Using this patch, or playing with the complete hack, will give you a version-less (even though it requires a specific ROM) title screen. "But Richter, why call it just 'Pokémon'?" you may ask. Well, if you think about it, the name makes sense. What's the name of the original Final Fantasy? Final Fantasy, of course. As a remake of the original experience that took the world by storm, it holds the name strongly.
One of the presentation changes of FireRed and LeafGreen was new clothing styles for the main characters (the player and the rival). With this hack, I try to replicate the looks of their original looks with reasonable results. Almost all relevant sprites, including the overworld sprites, battle sprites, and opening and credits sprites, have been changed to do so. Now you can roll with the fresh versions of these dudes! Quit trippin' on today's junk and start chillin' in the old days to the max!
Higher Quality Cries
Have you ever felt that the quality of Pokémon cries in Generations III through V was lacking? Well, don't feel that way as much now! This patch will increase the clarity of the cries of all Kanto and Johto Pokémon over what was previously available. The cries were taken from clean recordings from Pokémon Crystal and downsampled to 13379Hz for insertion into the game. Why 13379Hz, besides the l33t honorifics? That's because the sound engine used by the GBA Pokémon games—and the vast majority of GBA games—plays back samples at 13379Hz, regardless of their size in the ROM. Yes, it's ridiculously low. There's a reason why the Game Boy Advance isn't looked back upon fondly when it comes to the sound department.
FYI, this is a HUGE patch. Literally. It uses the entirety of the free space from 0xA7EFD4 to 0xCFFFFF. Since I'm not using compression, these WAV files take up twice the amount of space that they would if they were compressed. They sound better as a result, though.
Extras
Did you ever wish that Game Freak made a few things more user-friendly or convenient in the games? Or do you just want to enjoy a few of the spoils brought about from later generations? This patch attempts to satisfy that craving of yours. With a varying array of fixes available, there's certainly something here to please you.
All unneccesary tutorials have been removed. These include the intro screens, little girl, help sign in your room, Teachy TV, and Oak's advice during your fist battle.
TMs are infinitely reusable. Item behavior, affected text, and a few TM locations have been changed to accommodate for this.
All Move Tutors will teach your Pokémon their moves an unlimited number of times.
You now start the game with the Running Shoes.
You can now run indoors, just as you can in later games.
Cut down a tree once and it will be gone for the rest of the game.
Stats affected by a Pokémon's specific nature are now color-coded in their Pokémon Info screen.
Collecting items from the ground or from certain people now plays the proper fanfare instead of the Level Up tune.
The Pokédex species glitch, roaming legendary IV glitch, and Nugget Bridge bug are now fixed.
You can use repels consecutivley as they run out, just like with the current games.
Poison no longer affects your Pokémon in the overworld, just like in the most recent games. Related text has been modified.
Wild Pokémon have had their held items tables changed to give players chances at obtaining items they may hold in later games.
The Scope Lens, BrightPowder, Mental Herb, White Herb, and Light Ball items are now obtainable.
All missing flutes are now obtainable.
All sensible missing Poké Ball and Mail types are now obtainable at various vendors.
You now turn to face trainers when they engage you in battle.
The Gamer trainer type has been reverted to Gambler, with all accompanying text changed.
Various graphical anomalies have been fixed.
The deeper areas in Mt. Moon have been touched up.
Giovanni's last Pokémon during the final Gym Leader Battle has been promoted back to a Rhydon.
The Elite Four and Pokémon Champion have had their 1st playthrough teams' levels increased by 2 to reflect their original Red/Green/Blue iterations.
Your character will now black out instead of white out.
The Pokémon League lobby music is now the Pokémon League theme.
Two charactes have been renamed to their canonical U.S. names; Green and Charine are now Blue and Janine, respectively.
The Game Freak opening now displays the word "Presents" as it should.
The Jigglypuff in Pewter City's Pokémon Center spins just like it did in the Gen. I games.
The space shuttle in the Pewter Museum of Science is once again identified as the Columbia. This was censored in FireRed/LeafGreen due to the shuttle's re-entry disaster on February 1, 2003.
The game's default text speed on starting a new game is now "Fast".
The game engine has been optimized to run better on very low-end emulation setups and to increase the maximum fast-forwarding speed in emulators.
For practicality's sake, these are all part of one patch. I have individual patches for each part, but I don't include them in the download due to it being excessive. No need to confuse people any more than possible. If you really need a more fine-tuned version of Throwback, PM me and I'll hook you up with your own curated verison.
Event Giveaway
Did you miss your chance to get your Mystery Mew back in 2006? What about getting a Celebi? Or a Pokémon with moves it couldn't otherwise know how to use? If so, this is for you.
This Event Giveaway isn't a patch file. It's a save file meant to be used with a vanilla FireRed/LeafGreen ROM. This makes it so the Event Giveaway isn't strictly part of Throwback. Feel free to trade in the Pokémon to any Gen III game you want. Including event-only Pokémon, Egg Pokémon with special moves, special Pikachu, and even never-officially-released Pokémon from the Pokémon Colosseum bonus disc, there's bound to be something you'll want. Each event-only Pokémon's data value in the save have been specially set to represent what the offically-distributed versions of them would be. They're about as close to tournament-legal as I could set them. If you end up importing one of these guys into the later games in the series, you can battle online with them with confidence.
Make sure to read the included documentation for the Event Giveaway save file before trying to use it.
Decapitalization
This thing does just what you'd expect: It decapitalizes all the text in the game. Yeah, I know that there are many other people releasing decap patches and decap tools for others to use. Why make my own when others have their own all ready to use? For one simple reason: As far as I know, mine's the only one that decapitalizes using the official games' standards. Menu items and certain page headers are still capitalized, even in the most recent games. Trust me, I didn't "forget" about them.
Previously just a single catch-all patch for the vanilla game, the Decapitalization portion of the hack now extends across all patches. Apply the ones you need. If you're a little confused, read just below the download link for information on how to use them.
Known Longtime Issues
GB Sounds
Upon beating the Pokémon Champion in the final battle, the victory theme will restart rather than continue playing past the battle screen. This is because the game is hardcoded to only allow one predefined song to play seamlessly between battle and the overworld. There's nothing I myself can do about this, as it requires advanced ASM knowledge to fix.
Screenshot:
Download:
Download Pokemon Throwback v161216
