I’m back again with something big, it’s pokemon, too. I’ll go over the best parts of this and the biggest part. This is only the beginning.

Romhacking Facelift

So, if you remember, I talked about Crystal Clear a while ago. I’m back again, because it has had major changes since then and a revolutionary feature added. The facelift that this one brings is just amazing. I’ve been able to see the development of these features as it has gone on and the progress and effort is simply amazing. I’m going to save the big feature for later on, but it amazes me and shoots Heartgold and Soulsilver out of the water.

In various places you may notice that icons look different and some pokemon look a lot better in the overworld. This is a small part of the face lift that happened. The largest part is stalking you and the visual changes that you have in the party menu. ShockSlayer has taken pride in making things look good and especially with the textboxes in new features he adds. I can’t complain about the updates over the last little bit, they are a rather Macho bunch of feature.

The first thing of note in upates is the TM tutor, you can now teach you pokemon moves from generation I TMs, the tutor is in the Lavendar Tower radio station. There are an additional Macho set of music tracks, too. Oh, and it’s packed full of even more memes, too, I can’t divulge some, you’ll have to stop by my stream to see. There is even a handy SWORD that you can get, since my last article on this hack.

You will notice however, that a new Elite Four has taken over in the League. One such familiar face shows up there, too. There is a new story arc for one familiar character and a new overworld person added, too, he’s rather helpful in the right routes. The new area that got introduced is both a shortcut and a gold mine, it’s where you get the SWORD, too. There is also a way to get additional starters with the right codes, those are given out during special tournaments to participants, to get in on those codes, you can join the discord and participate in the next tournament. The starters can get rather excentric with the movesets.

Following Pokemon!

This is the big feature! You can now have your favorite pokemon follow you around in the overworld. This is a feature that has been requested many times and almost leaked, too. It’s pretty funny to see peopple ask for this and get shot down because it’s “too hard to implement and not possible.” It does take time to learn how to do it, but ShockSlayer did it best. There is a host of text that went into it, I formatted a good portion of it to fit in the pokecrystal system. The implementation was absolutely astonishing to watch in progress. I’ve seen countless pig footage to account for the work on this. The goal behind this feature was to make it better that other pokemon games that had it, I have to say it didn’t disappoint. Ive been able to test it for a while and it is rather priceless to have a Magikarp following you around everywhere.

The biggest thing about this is the fact that it is the first romhack, especially in generation II that has this. This is a feature many people are going to be fawning after for their own romhacks, be it yellow version remakes or any other host of hacks. We may even see it in Prism Version, if given half a chance. ShockSlayer hit the gold mine on this one.

Still Compatible?!?!

Now, if you recall (or reread) from my last article on this, this romhack has complete compatibility with the other games. It stays true to that, even when people in the youtube comments ask for pokemon from later generations. They missed the point honestly. Yes, it still works with stadium 2, that’s how we do the tournaments as mentioned earlier. Compatibility has been a big factor even between versions, so you saves are safe. There are new measures for making save transition easier, because the music engine got changed in this latest version.

Character Expansion Sidenote

There are also new playable characters in the update, including your’s truly. The pokecrystal character system had to be overhauled for this and it was kinda fun to watch bits a pieces of it happen. The way it was done, also makes adding more in very easy and modular, which is something I like in my programs. Also, some stuff like a surf sprite got stolen from Polished Crystal, I’ll have to do one on that once I finish it.

In the end, everyone knew this romhack could only get better. It is truly a testament to the Macho nature of this hack that it got the -stalker- follower pokemon. If you haven’t played it yet, please do, it’s been a joy to play and there are speedrunners picking it up, too. Also, keep in mind that this update hasn’t ben officially rolled out, too. So, a limited pool of people have been playing and teting this version. If you want to know more of see gameplay, you can check out pikasprey’s youtube for his playthrough or my twitch channel to see my streams.

Article by nephitejnf

Youtube

Twitch

DLive

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

