What Celia's Stupid Romhack changes
How the game plays differently from Pokémon FireRed, then what it does to the Pokémon.
How the game plays
Celia's Stupid Romhack is a FireRed hack by Celia Dawn and Celia's Stupid Team that is built to be solved rather than played straight, and that spends most of its running time making fun of the Pokémon franchise and the people who love it. It looks like FireRed and it is not: species stats, types, abilities, evolution lines, move names, move effects and the whole TM list have been rewritten, mostly as jokes and riddles. Bulbasaur evolves into Venusaur at Level 1, Ivysaur into Charizard, and ten separate slots in the species table all print the name Pikachu. The team asks players to talk to everyone, work at the Pokédex, and go through it with friends. Because the game is built on not knowing, this guide undoes it: every table below is read out of the source the team publish themselves, and it answers questions the game means you to sit with.
It is a puzzle game wearing a Pokémon game's clothes
The shape of a FireRed playthrough is still there - talk to everyone, fill the Pokédex, work through Kanto - but the content behind it is riddles and jokes rather than a normal run.
Almost nothing matches the base game
Species stats, types, abilities, evolution lines, move names, move effects and the TM list are all rewritten. Bulbasaur evolves into Venusaur at Level 1 and Ivysaur into Charizard; TM01 is not Focus Punch. Nothing on these pages was filled in from FireRed, because almost nothing would be right.
One name, many Pokémon
The game's species table reuses display names across separate slots as part of the puzzle - ten different Pikachu, seven Unown, five Raticate, each with its own stats and moves. In-game they all print the same name. On this site the plain species keeps the plain name and the others carry a label in brackets taken from the game's own internal name, so each one keeps its own page.
Meant to be played with friends
The team's pitch is to grab some friends and work through it together. A guide is the opposite of that, which is why the spoiler notice is on every page here.
From the team's own description of the game and from the game's own data files.
The main changes
- A full Kanto game whose real content is riddles, gags and things that are not what they are labelled
- Roughly 8 hours or more, and built to be worked through with other people
- Species, types, abilities and evolution lines rewritten as riddles: Bulbasaur evolves into Venusaur at Level 1, Ivysaur into Charizard
- 534 Pokémon a player can actually meet, 164 of them extra slots that share another species' name in-game as part of the puzzle
- 851 moves and a completely rebuilt TM and HM list
- 201 wild encounter tables and 386 trainer fights, read from the game's own source
How the Pokémon change
The game leaves the official base stats, types and abilities alone. What it changes is elsewhere: movesets, encounters and trainer teams.