Pokémon Spinoff: Pokemon Trading Card Game: Hard Mode

[Galap]

This is a hack of Pokemon Trading Card Game for the Game Boy/Game Boy Color. To play, apply the patch to the US ROM version.

I made this hack in 2019 but only shared it with a few people. The decompilation was underway at the time but not fully complete. I remember I had to change some things by directly editing the binary.


Hack Description:

-The core change of this hack is that all the opponents have had their decks significantly improved. In the base game, they have very bad card type balance (energy/trainer/pokemon), usually way too few trainer cards. I have given them all decks with much better types and numbers of pokemon, trainer, and energy cards, improving the quality of their decks.

-All the matches are for 6 prize cards, to be more in line with the way the TCG is normally played on paper.

-Playing the practice match again against Sam will give you 20 of each basic energy. This is an alternative to messing around with your decks before talking with the man who gives you energy cards.

-The other guy in the starting building who would normally give energy packs now gives regular packs.

Screenshots:



Credits:

I'd like to thank those involved in the disassembly of the game (https://github.com/pret/poketcg) and the game boy assembler RGBDS (https://github.com/rednex/rgbds) for making the awesome tools that I used to make this.


Known Issues:

-Don't spend too many turns in the practice match; the practice decks were shortened to create space, but this means that eventually Sam will start drawing corrupted cards, which will end up softlocking you since they don't have HP and can't be knocked out. If you play the duel normally you will never encounter this though.

-For some of the decks, the AI does not play them very well. At the time I made this, the AI was not very well understood. It probably could be fixed now with some effort, but I haven't gotten a chance to get back into this. I'd appreciate info/assistance from anyone who knows more about this.

 

[emperorwaldo]

I really like this mod, thanks so much for making it! Anyone who see's this, just get it, it really does make the game much more challenging.
It's good to see other people still enjoying this game.

 

[ablahblah987]

I'm happy to see someone made a hack like this. The original game is a lot of fun but way too easy.

 

[PalletTownKid]

this is awesome I was looking for something exactly like this

is work still being done on this?