Pokemon Roaming Red: Let's Go Anywhere We Want!

Oh man, I love this game.



I mean, it's a little old, and lacks a lot of quality-of-life features like an item sort button. But so does every Pokemon game before, what? Generation 5?



Look at that Nidoran and Gengar go at it! Man, that is a high-quality back sprite on that Gengar. Too bad they did that whole double-pixel-scale thing in this game.



Awwwww yeah, that's the good stuff. Our buddy Red, posing with his Charmander.



Just gonna set some options here... Let's set Text Speed to FST, I guess. Don't remember the "INS" option, though...

Okay, just let me start up a new game, and...



uh
what

Oh yeah, this isn't Pokemon Red! This is...


Pokemon Roaming Red is a romhack of Pokemon Red made by TSK. You can get it over here https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=403522 if you want to play along! For posterity's sake, I'll be playing version Beta 3.0.

To quote the romhacker, Pokemon Roaming Red is "An experiment in level scalability and free progression in Pokemon." In other words, it's an open-world hack of Pokemon Red, where Pokemon encountered in the wild and in the possession of trainers scale to your level! Pokemon will scale to the strongest Pokemon in your party, so it's to your benefit to keep your party balanced most of the time. It also means you can manipulate Pokemon levels more or less at-will, which can lead to some shenanigans we surely won't be getting up to. Probably.

As you can see, Roaming Red also has a built-in randomizer menu that greets you at the start of a new game! The ranomizer is pretty simple, but I can explain what I've noticed. It looks like every encounter slot in a location is randomized, so areas tend to have waaaaaaaaaay more Pokemon then they did before. Pokemon games tend to have encounter lists full of duplicates, presumably so that the appearance rate for individual Pokemon can be fine-tuned. Randomized Pokemon are supposed to scale their evolution stage, too, but for some reason third-stage Pokemon show up anywhere their first stages show up. It's probably a bug, but I like what it does to accidentally construct a fake ecology. Randomized items does not randomize the location of Key Items, thankfully. I don't know about you, but I don't find the prospect of looking for the key to Blaine's Gym for a day a fun time. I haven't used the other options, though I do know that if you randomize level-up movesets, every Pokemon is set to compatible with every HM as a safety net.

For the most part, Roaming Red uses Generation 1 mechanics, but Pokemon movesets have been tweaked to make more Pokemon viable.

Here's the settings we'll be playing with:



We join our hero, ???, on a shopping trip to Celadon City. Looks like they're going to buy a soda.




??? "That doesn't seem quite right..."



??? "That's wrong, too."



??? "Nope."



??? "Okay, this vending machine is clearly broken. Hey buddy, you know who I can talk to about this vending machine?"



* "My sister is a trainer, believe it or not. But, she's so immature, she drives me nuts!"

??? "First: I don't know your sister, so. Second: That's not even a little bit what I asked."

* "My sister is a trainer, believe it or not. But, she's so immature, she drives me nuts!"

??? "Sure, buddy. You know what, I just need to get some fresh air. Maybe take a walk outside the city. I haven't gotten that Pokemon from Professor Oak yet, so I guess I'll need to ask Shady Greg if I can borrow one from him."

* "My sister is a traine-"



??? "Ah, it's a beautiful day in Celadon City. Let's see, where was Shady Greg's apartment again?"



??? "Oh yeah, down this alley..."



??? "Through the woods..."



??? "In the maintenance entrance of this apartment building..."



??? "And up three flights of stairs."



Shady Greg "I know everything about the world of POKEMON in your GAME BOY!"

??? "Greg, I don't have a game boy. Listen, can I borrow a Pokemon?"

Shady Greg "Get together with your friends and trade POKEMON!"

??? "I'll, uh, I'll take that as a yes."



Shady Greg "Do you want to give a nickname to OMANYTE?"

??? "Sure? I guess?"



??? "This seems about right. I better take this guy to the Pokemon Center. You know, just in case."



??? "Just gonna withdraw this Potion..."



Nurse Joy "Welcome to our POKEMON CENTER! We heal your POKEMON back to perfect health! Shall we heal your POKEMON?"

??? "Yes, please. Just... stop yelling. Why is everyone always yelling in this town?"

Nurse Joy "Thank you! Your POKEMON are fighting fit! We hope to see you again!"

??? "I'm not sure why I bothered asking. I'm just gonna... double-check this Omanyte, if you don't mind."




??? "Whoa, he's a tanky little guy."

??? "Ah, some fresh air. I wonder what kind of Pokemon are around? Guess I can start taking notes like the Professor wanted... I'm East of Celadon City, so this should be Route 7."



??? "Not much of a route, if you ask me, but grass is grass."



??? "Nope. Writing that down, right now. Route 7: Wild nopes."



??? "Aw, look at this cute little guy. This one probably won't try to eat me. Shady O, let's leave 'em alone. Let 'em get back to his Caterpie business."



??? "OH HOLY ARCEUS WHY???"



??? "Shady O, let's mosey!"



??? "This is not what I needed today."



??? "Phew. Let's uh, let's check out Route 16, why not?"



??? "Is that... Is that a Snorlax?"



??? "Well, I guess that means we can check Route 16 off the list. Let's get you back to your owner, Shady O."



??? "Howdy, Shady Greg, I brought your Omanyte back! I definitely didn't do anything reckless and everything is fine, bye!"



??? "Oh, looks like I've got an email from Professor Oak!"



??? "Is this a video file? Man, Oak sure goes all out with the presentation. Blah blah blah, I'm just gonna skim through it."



Professor Oak "First, what is your name?"

??? "Is he serious with this? He doesn't remember that my name is... Hold on, what is my name?"



Professor Oak "Now... Which town were you from again?"

??? "Oooooh, it's probably an identity check thing. Got it."



??? "Pallet Town? Mom lives there, but I live in... Oh boy, can't remember that, either. It's almost like I'm waiting for some other-worldly forum goers to decide for me."



Professor Oak "My aide already sent you your starter POKEMON. Which one did you choose?"

??? "More security stuff..."





??? "Hang on, is this a list of every non-evolved Pokemon in Kanto? It's gonna take forever to scroll through all this. Which one did I choose, again...?"

DECISION POINT

Hi again, Talking Time! Our hero, ???, has amnesia or something! We should help them out!

What's our hero's name? Also, are they a he? We're locked into the original Pokemon Red "boy" sprite, but they can be whatever gender we say they are. This is 2018, we have that power!

Where do they live? This can be any town or city in the game, though I'm ruling that they don't live in Pallet Town, just so we can show off more of Roaming Red's flexibility.

What's our hero's starter Pokemon? As ??? mentioned earlier, Professor Oak has every single non-evolved, non-legendary Pokemon available as a starter! They'll be level 10, with whatever moves are appropriate for their Generation 1 Level 10 moveset + whatever the hack has added for viability. Theoretically that means every Pokemon is viable! Functionally, not every Pokemon is viable! But this is a Let's Play, so we don't care whether this choice is a good one. We only care that this choice is a choice.

Further posts may slide away from the narrative angle, and towards a field / battle report format. Just didn't have much else I could do with this update since I'm waiting on your input!

???'s Field Notes
Route 7 Encounters

• Gastly
• Caterpie
• Nidoran M
• Nidoking

and probably some more!

Route 16 Encounters
NONE! 'cause there's a tree and a Snorlax in the way!


Spoiler Rules
Talk about what you want! Pokemon Red is an old game! If you play along with the same seed, I just ask that you don't tell me about Pokemon or items from locations that the LP hasn't visited yet. Once I've been somewhere, if I missed a useful item or Pokemon, let me know!

Let's be from Fuschia with a Kabuto starter.

I think Kangaskhan would be the best starter, really.

our name is JOEY

our RATTATA is in the top percentage of rattata

we live in LAVENDER, because that's where rattata go to die

oh gosh

gonna wait for more votes

but if this wins, I'll reset until we get a Rattata with high stats

Sounds good to me!

Might as well be Joey though I don't like Lavender.

Okay, gonna lock in JOEY the MOUSE TRAINER.
Which is good because I already started workshopping the world's greatest Rattata with a friend.

Waiting on a town to get three votes...

Out of curiousity was that start how every run begins? In Celedon until you use a PC?

Nah, that was smoke and mirrors. Professor Oak's "email" is what actually happens after you set your randomizer settings (if any).

I just started a new game named as ??????? with a Scyther (that I deposited). I picked Celadon for the first post since there's the freebie Pokemon you can grab. Being there on a shopping trip was just a convenient excuse. I wanted the first post to be more than "hey have some questions byyyyyyye."

When we go back to Celadon, Omanyte should be there waiting for us. Trainer Pokemon are "stable randomized" according to the romhacker, and I'd wager static and gift Pokemon are, too. The same seed means you should see the same ones every time if you randomize them.

What's funny is that hacking has revealed Joey's Rattata to be exactly the same as any other Rattata trained by a Youngster. And Youngsters being the very beginning game newbie trainers, all of his mons have an Individual Value of 0 in all stats.

Joey's all hot air, his Rattata is actually the worst imaginable.

I'm gonna put in my vote for trainer MISSINGNO starting on CINNABAR ISLAND with a DITTO, because I want to see how you get out of a town only accessible via HM.

There's a connection to Diglett Cave on Cinnabar for exactly that reason.

It's very convenient! Thanks, Diglett!

If I were choosing for myself, I think I'd go with Aerodactyl.

For you? How about a nice Geodude? I assume trade evolutions are converted in this hack.

Oh, does this game have the super GB coloration applied to it when not played on one, or is that merely an artifact of the emulation used

Emulation. I just turned the SGB border off for smaller screenshots

So if I understand correctly the this hack lets you start in any town, with any nonlegendary pokemon. And then you can go anywhere? You don't have to wait to unlock routes or such? Oh, and you can catch any pokemon anywhere?

Yep! Some locks are still in place, but there is a way to get to and from every location - you might just have to go the long way around without HMs or plot tokens.

If you turn the randomizer on, it'll randomize the Pokemon in locations. There will be A LOT of Pokemon in each location, but it is a limited, consistent number of species. If you played the hack and used the same randomizer settings as me, you too would find Gastly, Caterpie, Nidoran M, and Nidoking on Route 7 (among a bunch of others).

If you DON'T turn the randomizer on, it'll give you the original Pokemon for each location, but they'll scale levels and evolutionary stages. As an example, going back to Route 1 at level 50 without the randomizer on, you'll run into level 50ish Pidgeots and Raticates.

I'll cut off voting once a town hits three votes, or, like... three hours from now? So 6 PM EST.

VOTES
Trainer
Joey: 3

Pokemon
Top-percentile Rattata: 3
Kabuto: 1
Kangaskhan: 1
Geodude: 1
Ditto: 1

Town
Lavender: 2
Fuschia: 1
Cinnabar: 1

Pants
Ditto
Lavender

well that was quick

we are officially JOEY the MOUSE TRAINER from LAVENDER TOWN

If you start at Cinnabar is there any way to leave it? I know you said all pokemon can learn all HMs, but would you actually have access to Surf?

Edit: Oh hey, other people have posted in the past four hours. Never mind.

Professor Oak "Hello there! Welcome to the world of POKEMON! My name is OAK! People call me the POKEMON PROF!
This world is inhabited by creatures called POKEMON! For some people, POKEMON are pets. Others use them for fights.
Myself...

I study POKEMON as a profession."

??? "Yep, this is all pretty basic stuff... I'll just skip ahead to the important bits. Name's Joey."



Joey "I live in Lavender Town."



Joey "I picked the strongest Pokemon, Rattata."



Joey "Her name is Pants."




Joey "And she is in the top percentile."



Joey "I can't wait to show Mr. Fuji my incredible Rattata!"



* "That's odd, MR. FUJI isn't here. Where'd he go?"



* "This is really MR. FUJI's house. He's really kind! He looks after abandoned and orphaned POKEMON!"

Joey "I guess Mr. Fuji really isn't here. It's not like him to leave the Pokemon alone, though."



* "GHOSTs appeared in POKEMON TOWER. I think they're the spirits of POKEMON that the ROCKETs killed."

Joey "I bet that's where Mr. Fuji is, then. But if I know my ghost facts - and I do - ghosts are immune to the power of mouse Pokemon like Pants. Maybe Pants can help find another Pokemon? Time to take some notes! And catch some Pokemon!"



Joey "But first! Shopping!"

We bought 10 Poke Balls, 4 Great Balls, 1 Ultra Ball, 5 Antidotes, 10 Potions, and 1 Super Repel.

While Poke Marts don't have a complete selection of items, they're pretty well stocked now no matter where we are. Roaming Red doesn't pull any punches, so spending our money as soon as we get it is a good move most of the time.

Lavender Town has three adjacent routes to search for Pokemon. Let's check out what we've got!



North of Lavender Town, in Route 10, we get our first trainer battle!



Pokemaniac had a Level 10 Cubone that dropped Pants to 1 HP in two turns. We dipped into our Potion stash, but Cubone survived Pants' third Bite, and we went down! The true Pokemon Roaming Red begins here.

Leveling Pants up will level the entire world up with us, so we won't get a huge advantage by grinding. EV points will gradually let us outclass enemy Pokemon, but it'll be a slow process.

For now, we head back to Route 10 and side step the Pokemaniac.

Off to the side, we find our second opponent:




I don't think I have to tell you how this one went. Hint: poorly.



Side-stepping both trainers, we find our first bit of juicy loot: a convenient tree fossil! We know where we can find an Omanyte already, but hey we might need two maybe?



Right outside Rock Tunnel's entrance, we find our third trainer!



This is more like it! Jr. Trainer had a level 9 Pidgey and a level 10 Pidgey. Thanks to a critical hit, we won in a couple tries, earning us 200 Pokebucks and about as much EXP. I won't keep breaking down every single fight like this, but I wanted to illustrate how mean Roaming Red can be.

We found one more trainer that we completely ignored and... no grass!



Route 8, west of Lavender Town, is swarming with trainers we don't want to mess with. We might be able to handle them once we have more Pokemon, but right now Pants can't do a lot alone. We power halfway through a fight to land Pants a level up, though:



That leaves us with Route 12 to the South, which...



Oh.

Never mind.

Rock Tunnel it is!



On our way up, we accidentally get into a fight with the Pokemaniac again... and win! Pants hits level 12! And here we see an advantage of fights being this hard: our Pokemon level up lightning fast!

We don't have Flash, so we can't SEE in Rock Tunnel, but we CAN walk back and forth to find wild Pokemon, which is good enough for us!



We find a good candidate for Team Top Percent fairly quickly, a Bulbasaur! But I think we can do a bit better than that.



Oooooo, a Flareon. I haven't quite figured out the logic the randomizer uses, but this might mean we can find Eevees here, too. Anyway, Flareon gets added to Team Top Percent! Here's the other advantage the level-scaling gets us: Pokemon we catch will almost always be within two levels of our strongest Pokemon!




With Flareon, we've now got an anti-ghost Pokemon!



Now lets see what trouble we can get up to in Pokemon Tower, shall we? Under normal circumstances, we wouldn't be able to complete this section right now. Maybe the randomizer will put normal Pokemon in the Tower? Let's find out together!



The first floor is safe, full of grieving visitors. But as soon as we ascend these stairs, it's dungeon time. Rule of thumb for Roaming Red dungeon time: don't fight any wild Pokemon unless you want to catch them.



Oh boy. Forgot about this.

Percy "Hey, JOEY! What brings you here? Your POKEMON don't look dead!"

Joey "Wow, Percy, you're... still a tactless jerk, huh?"

Percy "I can at least make them faint! Let's go, pal!"

Joey "Have you ever considered this is why no one likes you?"



Percy goes down with little trouble, thanks to packing a Pidgey and two Pokemon that aren't high enough level to have a decent moveset. Thanks level scaling!



* "Even we could not identify the wayward GHOSTs! A SILPH SCOPE might be able to unmask them."

Joey "Uh-huh, sure thing. Have you seen Mr. Fuji? No? Okay, I'll keep looking."



Joey "Another wild nope! Maybe I am gonna need that Silph Scope after all."

Looks like we still can't identify the ghosts. We're not completely out of options, but no matter how we approach this, we're gonna need to go to Celadon City.

But here's the question...

DECISION POINT

Our hero, Joey, needs to deal with the ghosts in Pokemon Tower to continue his adventure!

Will Joey do this the right way or try some shenanigans? Let's actually set up some voting rules in advance this time - we'll go with whichever gets three votes first, or whichever has the highest votes the evening of the next day.

Also, Joey's Flareon needs a name! First person to respond with a name for Flareon is the one we use. I reserve the right to reject names I deem are inappropriate - no WeedLordGoku69, etc.

Team Top Percent
Pants the Top Percentile Rattata
??? the Flareon

Joey's Field Notes
Route 8 Encounters
Can't get to them

Route 10 Encounters

• No Pokemon

Route 12 Encounters
Didn't even try

Rock Tunnel Encounters
Floor 1

• Snorlax
• Jynx
• Bulbasaur
• Ivysaur
• Pidgey
• Sandshrew
• Sandslash
• Ponyta
• Flareon

Pokemon Tower Encounters
Floor 2

• GHOSTs

Previous Notes

Go find a Pokedoll and glitch your way past the ghost without the scope, as god intended.

SHENANIGANS, SHENANIGANS!

This

FIRERAT

all is rat