Pokemon ROM Hacks and Mystery

I like to play games for a number of reasons - to be challenged, to explore something unknown, to connect with other people, to find comfort in familiarity. Pokemon falls strictly in the last category. It is possibly the closest thing I have to rosary beads, more of a habit than anything. Something to remind me of my childhood, my adolescence, my first job.

Recently I have been playing Pokemon: Liquid Crystal, a remake of the Crystal version based on Fire Red. If that doesn't mean anything to you, no fears. It's basically a fan remake of an older game based on a newer engine. It's like rewriting Beowulf with modern English, or remaking Robocop with CGI except not awful.

So it's a remake, but it's also ROM hack made primarily by one person, frequently updated for the better part of 6 years. That means that there are some...new features. For instance, the day/night cycle from Crystal returns, but as far as I can tell it's only visual. It has no real effect on the game. There are also new weather cycles based on the season it is in real life, which basically amounts to getting pelted with hail occasionally. It's also a lot harder than the original since the trainers have much stronger Pokemon.

The weird thing to me about this is that I play Pokemon like someone reading In Watermelon Sugar for the hundredth time: I know what's coming up, and that is where I find pleasure. But now I'm coming across unfamiliar paragraphs, slight changes of wording, and entirely new chapters. I have a good idea of what's going to happen, but it's always tinged with a feeling of slight strangeness.

Even worse, I haven't actually played the original Crystal, only the slightly older and inferior Silver version. So I don't know what's new to Crystal and what's new to the ROM hack.

All in all though, I'm enjoying it immensely. It's a lot like playing Pokemon for the first time, helped especially by the lack of full documentation or walk-throughs for the hack. The frequent updates also mean that any documentation I do find is probably out of date. It's a unique experience and I'm happy to have it.