Pokemon Emerald Horizons is a GBA Rom Hack by BrandonXL based on Pokemon Emerald in English. And it is now available to download. It was last updated on July 25, 2023.
Download Pokemon Emerald Horizons GBA Rom Hack
| Creator | BrandonXL |
| Version | v1.0 |
| Hack of | Pokemon Emerald |
| Updated | July 25, 2023 |
Also, be sure to try out Pokemon Metal Red.
Introduction
If you don’t want me to pour my heart out to you, you can go to the Features section, followed by the Documentation and Patch section.
Pokémon has always been at the forefront of my hobbies. When I was younger, I loved creating teams for various Gym Managers, Elite Four members, and just about any trainer that could be described as a “boss fight”. I never really had the idea of making my own game until I played games like Pokemon Unbound (Skeli, Ghoul), Radical Red (Soupercell), and Inclement Emerald (Buffel Saft). These hacks are among the best Pokemon experiences for me. My fondness for these games stems from a few things in common: all games offer a wide variety of Pokémon to obtain, all games are based on a polished, modern combat engine, and – most importantly – they all offer a significant level of content Challenge, which also shows in their brilliant boss fights. The concept of “boss fights” has always appealed to me, and after playing these games I knew I wanted to make my own game as well. Given the massive amount of resources selflessly made available by this community (RHH, DizzyEgg, and PRET in particular), I set out to create a game that respects a few key principles:
- Difficult but fair. On a scale of 1-10, with Vanilla being a 1 and Radical Red being a 10, I would say this game is a 6.
- Alignment of the features with the modern parts of the series
- Simplification of the gaming experience
Regarding point three, while I enjoy competitive battles, I’ve never really enjoyed worrying about EV training, maxing out IVs, or catching a Pokemon with the optimal nature. Likewise, I doubt the average player would enjoy grinding relentlessly for experience.
The Pokémon Emerald Horizons was designed to allow the player to quickly achieve what they want to do from a team building standpoint, while being held accountable through an increased level of difficulty.
Although the game includes a significant number of new features, the main identity of the game is a difficulty hack.
To be honest, I wanted a Hoenn experience that I would be happy with. While the game mostly follows the vanilla Emerald storyline, there are also new trainers to fight and new things to do!
With that in mind, I’m proud to share my Emerald Horizons difficulty hack with the community.
Features
Many of the features below are either inherent in the RHH’s pokeemerald-expansion branch or possible due to the tireless work of the contributors in the Simple Modifications Directory (credited at the bottom of the post)!
The key features of Pokémon Emerald Horizons include:
- Difficulty Related: Set mode, level caps, and disabled combat pouch
- Most Gen 1-8 Pokémon are available, including Hisuian forms
- Modern combat engine, with fairy type, mega evolution, updated moves and physical/special split
- Loads of optional boss fights with 8 Kanto Gymleaders, 8 Johto Gymleaders and a few different bosses that reward valuable items
- Exp. All
- Mid/late game bosses and trainers scale with or relative to your strength, so grinding/overleveling is not an issue
- Updated motion animations, courtesy of Skeli and ghoulslash
- No EVs/IVs/natures going into the stats
- 75 TMs, about 50% vanilla TMs and 50% own TMs
- Ghoulslash’s DexNav (12 Unique Land/5 Unique Surf/5 Unique Fishing Encounters); hold A to crawl!
- PSF’s Quest Menu UI, with 30 side quests to complete
- Buffel’s Pokévial implementation
- Ghoul’s item description header
- Badge-based Poké Markets
- BW repel system
- Unlimited TMs/Forgotten HMs
- Nicknames and Move relearning in party screen
- decapitalization
- Slateport City Level Grinder for reaching the level cap fast
- Linking cord for most trading related developments
- Post-game boss rush mode
- 2.5x Lucky Egg
- Premier Ball Bonuses
- No poison damage in the overworld
Screenshots
Download
Before You Ask
- Hidden Abilities are obtained either via DexNav or using an Ability Patch, which comes after a certain amount of badges
- While you’ll see a Nature in the Summary Screen, I promise you it is not calculated into your overall stats!
- Some movesets have been adjusted accordingly. For example, Tyranitar can relearn Dragon Dance. This is to avoid the need to grind out egg moves.
- As a caveat to the above, it is important to note that not all egg moves were added to learnsets.
- Certain Pokémon received “buffs” or “nerfs” in their movesets/learnsets, but nothing major has been changed.
- If you don’t know how to evolve it, chances are you just need a Linking Cord.
- To Mega Evolve, hit the Start button before selecting a move.
- There is no way to turn off Exp. All, as this ensures your team scales in accordance with the game’s difficulty.
Upcoming Bug Fixes
- Previously, the “Change Moves” function did not account for expanded movesets, so moves learned at later levels couldn’t be remembered.
- Redoing Boss Rush after first completion will send you to a glitched map
- Z-Moves don’t work after using Mega Evo in battle
Credits
(If I missed anyone, please let me know immediately)!
PRET – pokeemerald
DizzyEgg – Battle Engine, Pokémon Expansion
RHH – pokeemerald-expansion
ghoulslash – DexNav, Item Description Headers, Move Animations, contributing to original Quest Menu
skeli – Move Animations, contributing to original Quest Menu
PSF – Quest Menu
TheXaman – Debug menu for incredibly fast testing
Lunos – Exp. All
PokemonCrazy – Type Effectiveness in Battle
Buffel Saft – Poké Vial
StargazaART – Title Screen! Seriously, check their Twitter! Fantastic work and person to work with.
Clara-Dragon – Original Ultra Wormhole Sprite
Christopher “Nova” Foss – Miror B. Midi Arrangement
Aveontrainer and BurstXShadowsX – Gen 2 Gym Leaders in FRLG style
Contributors of Simple Modifications Directory/pokeemerald Tutorials, including AsparagusEduardo, HunarPG, Lunos, Tyler Scarff, and more – Numerous QOL features
The kind RHH community – AsparagusEduardo, Salem, Lunos, DizzyEgg, SBird, Archie, MGriffin, shinydragonhunter, Grunt Lucas, and anyone else I’ve had to bother for help
