Pokémon fan games

Pokémon is a Japanese video game media franchise. The franchise takes place in a shared universe in which humans co-exist with creatures known as Pokémon, a large variety of species endowed with special powers. Pokémon are often used in the series to battle other Pokémon, both wild and trainer-owned, using the Pokémon's special abilities. Due to the Pokémon franchise's wide popularity, many fans of the series have attempted to produce unofficial fan-made games, which range from modifications of pre-existing games to larger, full-scale games. These fan projects have garnered a wide popularity and a strong subcommunity in the Pokémon fandom. Due to their popularity, many projects have faced legal issues from Pokémon's parent companies The Pokémon Company and Nintendo.
Modifications of pre-existing games in the Pokémon series have been present in the Pokémon community since the games originally came out. Early devices such as GameShark and Action Replay allowed players to modify Pokémon games, letting them obtain in-game items and rare Pokémon species with greater ease. When emulation of video games became more popular and made games available to play on computers, fans began to produce full modifications of games. Done through methods such as ROM hacking, modifications of pre-existing games became popular within the Pokémon community and have maintained their popularity as technology to make them has improved. A bootleg pair of games, Pokémon Diamond and Jade, based on the Keitai Denjū Telefang series, were cited as popular inspirations for many early ROM hacks.
ROM hacks tend to add new content, such as custom storylines, new game mechanics, and other features not present in the original games, with some creating entirely new games unrelated to the Pokémon series. Most still tend to follow the sequence of official Pokémon games, often utilizing similar story beats, narrative progression, and mapping styles. Many ROM hacks focus on making quality of life improvements, such as adding features introduced in later installments to older games in the series, or by making more species of Pokémon available to players of the game. ROM hacks can also utilize or add many elements that would not normally be featured in the Pokémon franchise, with many including aspects such as references to sexual themes, language considered vulgar, and violence and gore. Many fan-made games also add fan-made Pokémon species, known as "Fakemon." Another type of fan-made Pokémon game, known as fan games, are more difficult to create and often utilize game development tools separate from hacking the original games. These games often take years for their creators to develop. The 2007 release of Pokémon Essentials, an RPG Maker XP game, made it easier for fans to produce these fangames, allowing a greater ease of creation than before.
Fan games and ROM hacks are popular with the wider Pokémon community, with many popular fan games achieving high player counts. Kotaku author Patricia Hernandez stated that "fan games have always been a big part of the culture" in the Pokémon community. Though the creation of fan-produced content for a time was not considered mainstream, the release of Pokémon Essentials has been cited by prominent creators in the community for its ease of use in helping create more fan-made Pokémon games. Due to the reliance on Essentials, many fangames use a 2D art-style, which influences how the games are produced. Many online communities have been formed focusing on these fan-produced games, including forums such as Relic Castle and PokéCommunity.
The Pokémon Company and Nintendo have attempted to target modifications done to Pokémon games, with newer entries in the series including more anti-modification measures in an attempt to curb hacking. Legal action is frequently threatened against both modifications of both fan games and modifications of pre-existing Pokémon games though companies have been stated to be more neutral against minor alterations, and do not go after many games directly. IP media strategist Alex Tutty, in an interview with Wired, stated that Nintendo often took action on fangames in order to avoid a given franchise's IP from eroding, as not taking action toward the infringement caused by fan-games would be seen as negligence toward the IP on the part of the company. Lawyer Ryan Morrison, in an interview with PC Gamer, additionally suggested that having a free alternative to paid releases in the form of fan-made Pokémon games threatened sales of Pokémon products. Don McGowan, a former lawyer who worked for The Pokémon Company, stated that he would monitor games that received coverage in the press, though he would often not engage with a given fan-made game on a legal basis until the game received monetary funding. The producer of the Pokémon games, Junichi Masuda, commented on fan-made games, stating that "I see a lot of people on Twitter [sending me] different takes [on Pokémon]... If I see that you are having fun creating things, or working on an art project...working on game development, we kind of share that feeling [of appreciation]." Masuda encouraged individuals who worked on these projects to apply to work on production of official Pokémon games.
Due to the prominence of video sharing sites such as YouTube and Twitch, fan produced games receive more publicity than they did in the past. This publicity has led to an increase in games being shut down by both Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, with notable examples including the fan-game Pokémon Uranium and the ROM hack Pokémon Prism, the latter of which received a cease and desist a few days prior to its release. The website Relic Castle, a major forum and website for fan-made Pokémon games, was taken down by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company in 2024 due to issues of copyright.
The increased risks of legal issues have led to many creators of fan-made games attempting to "play it safe" in regards to promoting their games. ROM hacking communities additionally try to clamp down on the sharing of pirated copies of Pokémon games to use as a base for ROM hacking, often encouraging the purchase of official copies to use instead. Sharing modified games proves difficult due to the inability to share copies of official Pokémon games, both altered and unaltered, as well as due to difficulties with many game systems' firmware.