Pokemon The Pit

Pokemon The Pit strips Pokemon down to its battles and builds a roguelite around them. Instead of a region, gyms and a story, you get a tower of 100 floors filled with trainers. The idea comes straight from the Pit of 100 Trials, the optional dungeon in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and the hack was made by Team Aqua Leader Archie on the Emerald decompilation.

Every run starts with three random Pokemon. Each floor contains trainers with random teams, and their levels rise with the floor number, from level 1 at the bottom to level 100 at the top. Early floors hold a single opponent; by the end, four trainers wait on every floor. Clearing a floor rewards you with one to three random items, so your bag grows as unpredictably as your team.

The rhythm of the climb is fixed even though the battles are not. Every fifth floor is a rest stop with healing and a shop, a move tutor appears every ten floors, and every 25th floor brings a tougher boss battle that can earn you a new party member. Beat the trainer on floor 100 and you can keep going to see how far your team really holds up.

The hack comes in three builds — Pokemon up to Gen 3, up to Gen 5, or all generations — and the version listed as current is v2.4.2 from May 2025. Because it is all battles, a run fits into an evening, which makes it a natural companion to longer hacks.

• 100-floor trainer gauntlet inspired by Paper Mario's Pit of 100 Trials
• Start each run with three random Pokemon
• Trainer levels scale from 1 to 100 with the floor number
• Heal and shop floor every 5 floors, move tutor every 10
• Boss battle every 25 floors with a chance to add a party member
• One to three random item drops per cleared floor
• Singles and Doubles modes, plus an Extra Random mode for moves, abilities and learnsets
• RACE and IRONMON presets and a Custom mode with BST limits and a 75-floor option
• Three builds: Gen 1-3, Gen 1-5 or all generations
• Endless climbing after floor 100

The Gen 3 build keeps the Pokemon pool small and familiar, which makes it the best first run. The Gen 5 and all-generation builds widen the pool dramatically, so both your rolls and the opponents' become far less predictable.

Within each build, you choose between Singles and Doubles. Extra Random mode goes further and shuffles moves, abilities and learnsets, while the RACE and IRONMON presets (selectable from the Custom menu) set up rules popular with speedrunners and challenge streamers. Custom mode also lets you cap base stat totals, ban the bag during battle or shorten the climb to 75 floors.

• Spend early shop money on healing items — running out mid-floor ends more runs than bad matchups.
• Plan around the move tutor every ten floors to patch coverage holes.
• Take the boss reward Pokemon even if it seems weak; options matter more as trainer counts grow.
• Play on mGBA (PC) or PizzaBoy, Lemuroid or RetroArch's mGBA core (Android). The creator advises against VBA and My Boy.