Pokemon FireRed: Rocket Edition

Most Pokemon games ask you to stop Team Rocket. Pokemon FireRed: Rocket Edition hands you the uniform. Created by colonelsalt, it retells the Kanto story from the criminal side: you start deep in Kanto's underworld and work your way up an organisation that the rest of the region fears.

The story runs parallel to Red's journey and tries to explain what was happening behind it. Along the way it tackles questions the originals never answered, involving Giovanni, Lance, Professor Oak, a past conflict called the Great Pokemon War and the creation of Mewtwo. It is written as a darker, more grown-up take on Kanto without becoming a shock-value hack.

The signature mechanic fits the role perfectly: you can steal Pokemon from every single trainer in the game. Instead of relying only on wild encounters, building a team becomes a matter of choosing whose Pokemon you want. A morality system and branching side quests let you decide what kind of Rocket you are.

Under the hood, the hack modernises FireRed with Gen 6-style mechanics and presentation and an improved interface. It builds on community tools such as JPAN's hacked engine and MrDollSteak's Decap and Attack base. The final release is v1.0.2, updated in March 2021, and the creator has published all scripts, assembly, graphics and music on GitHub along with the original design documents.

• Play as a member of Team Rocket instead of Red
• Steal Pokemon from every trainer in the game
• A darker story explaining what happened behind Red's adventure
• Morality system with branching side quests
• Lance, Giovanni, Professor Oak and Mewtwo's origins woven into the plot
• Gen 6-style battle mechanics and presentation
• Improved interface and gameplay over vanilla FireRed
• Full source (scripts, ASM, graphics, music) published on GitHub

Rocket Edition is a story-first hack. Battles are balanced for a normal playthrough, and the ability to steal strong Pokemon from trainers gives you more ways to fix a weak team than a standard game does. The challenge is in decisions as much as in battles.

It is a top pick for players who have played FireRed many times and want a new perspective on the same region. In a community poll on r/PokemonROMhacks it beat the other well-known Team Rocket hack by a wide margin.

Do not expect a long post-game. Players note that there is little to do after the credits, so treat it as a strong single campaign rather than an endless sandbox.

• Steal aggressively early on — a couple of good stolen Pokemon make the first chapters much smoother.
• Think about your moral choices; side quests branch depending on how you act.
• Use mGBA or RetroArch with the mGBA core. Some players report crashes on My Boy.
• Save before battles with route trainers you have not fought; a player-reported freeze exists with one Route 8 biker near Saffron.
• Do not confuse it with 'Team Rocket Edition' by DragonsdenTV — a different Spanish-language hack.

Version 1.0.2 is labelled the final release. Earlier public builds went through several betas, with saves usually carrying over between them; the final versions focus on bug fixes and credits. The GitHub repository contains the complete project, so other hackers can study how the story flags and assembly routines work.