Can You Trade With Pokémon ROM Hack Games?

I got curious, so today I tested out Pokémon games that have ROM Hacks on them to see if you can trade with authentic copies!

Shoutout to DeepBlueTohruDragon, my first channel member!

[KevdogPlays]

One thing I wanted to add about transferring Pokémon that would have invalid 'met locations':
There's a chance it would never end up getting detected, since after the transfer happens, it's new info would be "Caught in FireRed, Met in the Pal Park" meaning it would never get detected as being in a weird area, like Mudkip originating from Pallet Town. I simply don't know for sure right now!

[four-fncd]

I’ve set up trading between Emerald and the rom hack Inclement Emerald several times and got interesting results. Whenever it was anything past gen 3 it displayed as a weird question mark glitch mon that crashed the game upon looking at the summary screen. The actual gen 3 Pokemon are completely switched around because the index numbers were changed in the rom hack too, so you have stuff like Zangoose on vanilla Emerald appearing as Latias in Inclement Emerald. And some very early gen 4 Pokemon turn into stable gen 3 Pokemon on the other game as well. It is actually possible to trade a Pokemon from Inclement to the main game as long as they don’t know moves past gen 3, since those just crash the game upon their names being loaded.

[ivebeenalne]

To my knowledge ROM hacks where they’re majorly changed, or in Pokémon unbounds case using CRFU, should not be able to trade and would give a bad egg if you were to even successfully trade. for that mudkip if you traded up to gen 4, it would assign it’s met location 0x37 which is Pal Park and disregard the original met location

[polocatfan]

Afaik, Pokemon Crystal Clear was specifically made so it has trading support. I've even heard it can work with stadium 2?

[missingnovgc]

I remember convincing my parents to get my a physical copy of Pokemon Quartz 16 years ago and trading over anything I could from Emerald and Fire Red to see what they turned into. It was super fun until the cartridge decided to just wipe the save and I lost 3 games worth of mons 🙃

[jeltemreal]

I traded a Firegg from a physical ROM hack cart of Pokemon Quarts. The Firegg became a Torchic, but her stats seem to be identical.

[yaa]

Some romhacks are compatible, some aren't

[Djwopnasty]

I’ve had no issue trading from Ultra Violet to Sapphire/Leaf Green 🤷🏻‍♂️

[roastymarsh]

I remember the rom hack of rse that my cousin used to have. It's called Frigo Returns. If you talk to a specific Pokémon Center npc, you'll get Frigo out of nowhere. And if you rock smash the rocks north of Mauville, you'll get Dryaz instead of Geodude. Those two had total different sprites, too.

Now who are Frigo and Dryaz? Well he traded them to me in my Italian copy of Ruby. (I'm Southeast Asian but one of my aunts who works in italy gave me that game). Going back to those two. Frigo is Articuno and Dryaz is Kangaskhan.

[dementeddusty]

I actually just beat unbound the other day. Best rom hacks I've played in a long time.

[CrocoDylianVT]

Something interesting is that many ROM hacks do disable any multiplayer features by removing the multiplayer section of the Pokémon Centers

Which is a shame cause Liquid Crystal would be REAL useful to complete the national dex since you have access to the Johto Pokémon which are by far the hardest ones to obtain in the third gen as the sevii islands are quite late in the game in FR/LG and doesn't even have ALL of them, and R/S/E barely has sum few Johto Pokémon here and there like some wild Scarmory in the north part of the map, while Liquid Crystal could make possible all including the legendaries (don't know about mythicals tho)

[Justgottaadamup]

In the few rom hacks I’ve played I’ve only found trading compatibility with these

1. Emerald Kaizo
2. Emerald Crest* only Kanto/Johto Pokémon
3. Orange Islands
4. Shiny Gold

[cardboard]

if you have a cartridge ripper you can use pkHex to trade between the cartridges with compatible pokemon

[K-.]

Can you try doing trade between emulators it will help a lot of us (both mobile and pc)

[silversonic]

It has a lot to do with the index values of the Pokemon and moves. For instance, Gen 1 glitch Pokemon traded to Gen 2 games would become whatever Pokemon the index value equalled. I think that would still be the case between deep rom hacks and original, but perhaps in reverse. After all, index values no longer match.

[geekAlot]

Dude, I've been searching for a YT channel just like yours! Trying weird and interesting stuff with repro, romhacks and legit carts, scratches my itch! Keep it up!

[TheSonicbuum]

Dude is risking a trade with a low battery lol.

[howdytherestranger]

I’ve actually been wondering this for a while, but for the life of me can’t find my old link cable. Thanks for answering the burning question!

[KratosAurionPlays]

The fact that any rom hack at all is compatible is super surprising to me.

[Zilear]

I was surprised when I tried this myself. My authentic copy of Emerald was able to trade with my fake copy of Sapphire.