An unofficial fan hack of Pokémon Red that turns every battle into a 3‑vs‑3 tactics fight on a 10×5 field: you walk, aim and position, and your moves have range, areas and knockback. Smart opponents, team moves, hazards, gym leader rematches and a post-game title defense are in too.
We distribute a patch file, not the game.
We can't give you the ROM. Pokémon Red is copyrighted by Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures, and sharing the game file isn't allowed. What we hand out is a .bps patch: a list of differences that turns your own copy of Pokémon Red into this hack. The patch contains our changes only and is useless without the original game.
To play, you need your own dump of the cartridge you own. Please don't ask for ROMs or links to them here.
pokered_tactics.bps (the patch, 194 KB) and a short READ_ME_FIRST.txt listing the checksums below.
Pokémon Red, English (USA/Europe), the original 1998 Game Boy release. Other languages, Blue, Yellow and Virtual Console re-releases won't match.
Save files from the original game, or from earlier builds of this hack, aren't supported.
Patching your own copy is generally fine: the patch only changes a file you already have. Laws on making backups of your own games differ between countries, so check what applies where you live. (This page isn't legal advice.)
Read the ROM from a Pokémon Red cartridge you own, using a cartridge reader/dumper such as a GBxCart RW or an Epilogue GB Operator. The dump should be a 1 MB .gb file.
Patches only work on the exact file they were made for. Your dump should match:
Open a BPS patcher, choose your ROM as the source and pokered_tactics.bps as the patch, and save the output as pokered_tactics.gbc.
If you're asked, the patched file should have CRC32 E333B5A2. A BPS patcher refuses a wrong base ROM rather than producing a broken game.
Any accurate Game Boy / Game Boy Color emulator works: mGBA, SameBoy, Gambatte, BGB, or RetroArch with one of those cores. On phones, Delta (iOS) and Pizza Boy or Lemuroid (Android). You can also flash it to a Game Boy flash cart to play on real hardware.
The world, story, catching and levelling are Pokémon Red as you know it. Battles are the big change: each one is fought on a grid with up to three Pokémon a side.
Every Pokémon on the field takes one turn per round, fastest first. On its turn it walks, then acts. Obstacles block both walking and shots. Each gym, Elite Four room and dungeon has its own arena; routes and caves roll random obstacle layouts.
Base Speed decides how far a Pokémon walks, from 2 tiles up to 5. Winged Pokémon get +1, Agility adds up to +3, and in surfing battles Water types gain a tile while land-bound Pokémon lose one.
Every move has a range. Some are lines, cones, bursts or splash areas, dashes leap next to their target, and Strength or Hydro Pump push foes back. Most ranged shots need line of sight. Mind, sound and lobbed moves don't.
The original damage formula, type chart, STAB, accuracy and critical hits all still apply. Status conditions work as before. Stat boosts now wear off a stage at a time, so you can't stack Swords Dance forever.
About 35 team moves from later generations, such as Follow Me, Helping Hand, Heal Pulse, Tailwind, Trick Room, Wide Guard, Spikes, Stealth Rock and Aqua Ring. Reflect, Light Screen and Smokescreen create zones on the field.
Trainers come in three AI tiers. Smarter ones focus fire, stay out of your reach, hold back instead of charging in alone, and rush to help a teammate you're picking on. Their IVs rise with their tier, and their EVs with your badge count.
| Base Speed | Tiles |
|---|---|
| 40 or less | 2 (1 for Metapod, Kakuna, Slowpoke, Geodude, Grimer) |
| 41–60 | 2 |
| 61–80 | 3 |
| 81–100 | 4 |
| 101+ | 5 |
Everything in the current build, straight from the game's data.
Common questions, plus what isn't finished yet.
No. Sharing the ROM, patched or not, means sharing Nintendo's copyrighted game. Only the patch is distributed.
Check your file with the checker above. Common causes: a Blue or Yellow ROM, a non-English version, a Virtual Console (3DS) extract, or a file that's still zipped.
It's a standard 1 MB MBC3 Game Boy ROM, so it should run from a flash cart. Development and testing were done in emulators.
Link battles still use the original engine and haven't been converted yet.
Mimic, Conversion and Bide do nothing yet. The Old Man's tutorial and the unseen Pokémon Tower ghosts use the old battle engine. Six Pokémon in one row can make sprites flicker (a Game Boy limit). The first time a species shows in the info panel, its sprite takes about a second to load.