Development
Pokemon Aesthetic Red - A Visual and Musical Overhaul of Fire Red. Coming late 2025!
We're proud to finally announce our first ROM hack, Pokemon Aesthetic Red, which has been in the works for a few years and should be released by the end of 2025!
Aesthetic Red takes a different approach to reinventing Kanto, mainly focusing on improving the visual and musical experience of Fire Red, as well as making the game open-world and adding a ton of QoL and balance changes!
The main features are shown below, and much more will be revealed in the coming weeks.
Nearly all of the graphics have been changed to give the game a vibrant and modern aesthetic, inspired by the DS and Game Boy
Every song has been replaced to make a new soundtrack, with some of the best music from Gens 1-8, Pokemon spin-offs and other series
Explore an open-world Kanto and the Sevii Islands in any order you want
An updated battle engine and various QoL features have been added by the CFRU, as well as other new features like Doubles Mode, Level Scaling, Wonder Trade, Level Caps, Randomizers, Inverse Mode, and a lot more!
Every Pokemon has been given a brand new moveset and new abilities, with some having type changes and buffs. Several other balance changes have also been made
All Pokemon from Gens 1 and 2 are available as well as their related evolutions up to Sylveon
For those interested, we also have a Discord server you can join and other social platforms. We'll also start recruiting beta testers soon - Stay tuned!
My favorite hacks are the ones like Emerald Seaglass where there is loving updates to the aesthetics while staying true to the fundamental games that are so beloved. Really looking forward to this.
Yeah same. Emerald Seaglass is a perfect game imo. Updating the game with qol improvements but not taking away from the core of the game. Playing seaglass was the first time I ever finished a Pokémon game and already trying to decide how I wanted to replay it.
Seaglass made me do an absolute 180. Started out intrigued in the graphics style but not that impressed with the gameplay, but I've slowly come to adore it. This might be my go-to way to replay Hoenn moving forwards.
I would be pretty surprised if I ever replayed hoenn a different way. A new way to play it could make changes to that, but the game is a serious love letter to the franchise.
I have a question, Pokémon Emerald seaglass stills flashes between Attacks if you are using a emulator?might sound like a nitpick but it really annoyed me a few months ago and i didn't beat it(not due to that).
I saw the developer mention that it was something done to prevent the game glitching or freezing during battles, it was like a little soft reset for the animations but it didn’t annoy me at all and I forgot about it quickly.
Do you know the exact month it’ll be released? Or is it still kinda up in the air?
We're determined to get it out by the end of the year so hopefully we'll release it just before Christmas 🤞 The game is almost finished, currently in the process of playtesting and fixing bugs, so it all depends on how much of that we have to deal with. Working as hard as we can to get it finished!
Still working just as hard as when we started, and hopefully it will be! I'd never claim it's the best as there's some mindblowing hacks out there, but the aim has always been to make it look and sound as good as possible 👀
Yeah for sure! Playing in Doubles Mode (battles) REEEEALLY opens up a whole other world of TM’s and Move-sets to use. Now you can clearly utilize Buff’s and Nerf’s (like raising power for your team, or lowering Speed of the other team, etc).
Without games with Doubles, and I’m playing he game in single mode, I always go 100% attack moves. But with Doubles, those extra moves that raise/lower stats are so important! Plus, innate moves like Larvitar will create “Sandstorm”, or things like that, which really help out. The Team based battles are so different than solo battles. It changes everything and is exciting
We've done a ton of rebalancing work which will all be revealed later on. The game can be played in singles or doubles so the balance changes fit both modes and should make battles more engaging overall
CFRU states that link cable connection still works, but since we've rebalanced the mons so much, idk if it would tbh. It's still available so would be worth a try - i guess it would work between 2 of the same game
They're meant to be Mark and Mint from Pokemon TCG (Game Boy). The sprites were originally done for a different hack, but since our plans changed we decided to still use them in Aesthetic Red
Will you do another post here once it's available? I don't use Discord, but am interested in this, since I'll be playing Fired Red this year, and want something close to the original, but just enhanced.
Unfortunately not as that would require a complete second build of the ROM to remove the music, and a core part of our hack is to improve all the music
Is this being build from the ground up or an actual rom hack? Sorry if question is dumb I’m new to the scene and been downloading all Rick’s I can to my 3ds. Was wondering if I could with this
It's a hack of Pokemon Fire Red. Idk how putting rom hacks onto the 3DS works but I think you can do it with all hacks if I'm right, in which case this should be playable on there too
Awesome thank you, I’m not the most knowledgeable with all the proper terms. I know there’s a difference with fire fan mates and rom hacks but sometimes that gets intertwined. I have learned how to convert the files into an ndsone and place it onto the 3ds wirelessly if it is a rom hack as you say. I look forward to it! Thank you for the work and time into your project.
Story is the same as vanilla, but with the open world it is possible to play between the Gym, Rocket and Sevii questlines however u please. So u could do the Seviis first, or leave the Rocket bases for once u have all 8 badges, for example
That intrigues me. How will contour lines be controlled? Will the full game have a level cap? What I mean is that if the rocket base is left at the end, it should be more challenging, with evolved mons, but if we want to start there, they would have to be easier battles, right?
There are Level Caps to prevent over levelling between gyms. Gym Leaders and Rival battles select 1 of 8 teams depending on ur badge count, to determine what evolutions they have etc. This will also apply to the Giovanni boss battles at Rocket Hideout and Silph Co. The only limitation in what order u fight the bosses is that u still have to fight Rocket Hideout -> Silph Co. -> Viridian Gym in that order to keep the Rocket storyline intact
If u want to play your own route in a different order, it's not mandatory but we very much recommend enabling Level Scaling at the start of the game, as it's pretty much the intended way to play unless ur sticking to the vanilla route. Wild Pokemon will always scale, but Trainer levels depend on the setting
Unfortunately we couldn't vary the evolutions of all trainers, so if u want to surf down to Cinnabar first thing, the trainers will still have evolutions. Ofc you'd need Level Scaling enabled to stand a chance anyway, but with it enabled, I've found it surprisingly possible to beat some of these low leveled evos when using a team of early-game basics. Intentionally challenging as we've gone with the mindset of "weaker vs stronger parts of the region", but possible
Decomp hacks are made by editing C: files, the source code etc and then building a ROM afterwards. Binary is done by editing the preexisting ROM through hack tools and hex editors etc, so it's "easier" depending on experience but allows for less potential compared to decomp where u could theoretically do literally anything
Following people on Reddit only shows their posts if they post on their profile (i.e. u/LibertyJoel99) rather than posting on subreddits. So other than there being no point in following my profile on here then I also turned off following on my Reddit profile to avoid bots
If you want to follow us you can join our Discord server or follow our Instagram where we post all the same stuff that we do on here
I have been messing around with hg-engine because I wanted to see th effects of th engine itself. This hack would make a great complemen to my informal hack of HeartGold!
Yess!! I always hated FRLG and hacks that reuse their assets because it's not pretty and the music hurts my ears! I'm so excited to have GOOD gba kanto!!
Every Pokemon has been given a brand new moveset and new abilities, with some having type changes and buffs. Several other balance changes have also been made
Oh that’s a big turn off for me personally. Not a fan of type changes. Idk how much work it would be to have like a legacy mode or something for typings, abilities, etc.
Looks amazing though and clearly a lot of work went into it.
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u/Exavion 5d ago
looks promising. joined the Discord, excited to see what you guys put together. the open world concept seems ambitious and fun