Pokémon Emerald Blitz
A nuzlocke draft-race across the whole of Hoenn, built to finish in about 90 minutes, where every gym leader's identity and place in the run is shuffled each time you play.
More about the game
Pokémon Emerald Blitz is built for racing: the whole of Hoenn, playable start to finish in roughly ninety minutes, built on the pokeemerald-expansion engine with the Physical/Special split, Fairy type, Mega Evolution and species up through the newest generations. It is built around draft-auction races — you and your opponents bid on a shared pool of Pokémon before the run starts, then race the same game with the teams you won — and the creator runs public races over Discord, with rules, stats and match histories kept on the game's own site. Two things set it apart from a normal Hoenn run. First, the gyms are shuffled: walk through any of Hoenn's eight gym doors and the game warps you to one of eight leaders at random (Rustboro's door is itself a coin flip between Roxanne and Viola, a new leader of the creator's own making), so nobody's run visits the leaders in the same order, or even fights the same nine possible leaders in the same combination. Second, difficulty is layered on top rather than left to the player: a level cap tied to how many badges you hold (not which leader granted them) stops any Pokémon from out-levelling the next boss, in-battle items are off, and every trainer's team runs perfect IVs.
What's different, point by point
- Randomized Gyms: walking into any of Hoenn's eight gym doors warps you to one of eight leaders at random, skipping any you've already beaten; Rustboro's slot is itself a coin flip between Roxanne and Viola, a new leader of the creator's own making. Whichever leader you draw, their team is picked by how many badges you already hold, not by which leader they are
- The Elite Four gets more diverse finalists too: four of its five rooms each draw at random between a classic Elite Four member and a Battle Frontier Brain (Phoebe or Lucy, Glacia or Tucker, Drake or Brandon, Sidney or Spenser). The Champion is always Steven
- A level cap tied to badge count rather than to a specific boss — 15/19/24/29/32/35/42/48, then 58 for the Elite Four and Champion — so the shuffled gym order never lets a Pokémon out-level what's coming
- Nuzlocke rules on top: no items in battle, and a Pokémon's stat stages can be lowered all the way to -6 but raised no higher than +1
- Every trainer's Pokémon run perfect 31-IV spreads
- A stocked Pokémon catalog from the start — pick straight from a notebook rather than needing to catch everything you draft
- A portable PC and a Pokémon Center in your bag (the Med Kit), a permanent-repel Cleanse Tag, and Rare Candies that jump a Pokémon straight to its next level-up move, evolution or the level cap, whichever comes first
- The bike is replaced by an overworld Flygon that hops ledges, crosses shallow water, leaps rocks and trees, and flies on command
- The Slateport Outdoor Market sells evolution stones, Mega Stones, ability-changing items and a badge-gated stock of TMs — including new Generation 6 TMs like Hone Claws, Dazzling Gleam and Trick Room — as your badge count rises
- Ordinary trainers no longer pick fights on sight; you choose whether to battle them
- All the plot trimmed away — Team Aqua and Magma's story, Steven and Wally's cutscenes, and Scott's scenes are gone — to keep a run moving
franklynathan
This guide is built from franklynathan's own documentation. The game, the ideas and the work are theirs — the site just makes the numbers searchable. Play it from the official page, and send them the feedback and the thanks.
What this guide covers
Every guide here is built from the game's own documentation. Where a ROM hack changed something but never published the numbers, this says so rather than quietly filling the gap with the original game's — which would be worse than leaving it out.
| Section | Source | |
|---|---|---|
| Wild Pokémon by area | From the game itself | Every wild table the game's own files hold, read at full species/level/rate fidelity — 63 areas, 307 tables in all. |
| Encounter rates | From the game itself | Slot percentages are the game's own, unchanged from the engine's standard spread. |
| Wild levels | From the game itself | Real, fixed level ranges straight out of the game's data. |
| Stats, abilities and movesets | From the game itself | Stats, types, abilities, level-up moves, egg moves and evolutions for every species a wild table or a placed trainer uses, straight from the game's own tables. |
| TM and HM compatibility | From the game itself | All 70 TMs, including the game's own Generation 6 additions, with per-species compatibility worked out the same way the game works it out. |
| Where TMs are found | From the game itself | 34 of 70 TMs are placed — either a specific trainer's reward or a rung of the Slateport Outdoor Market's badge-gated stock. The rest aren't sold or handed out anywhere in the game's own scripts, and the table says so rather than guessing. |
| Trainer and boss teams | From the game itself | 599 trainer fights the game's own map scripts actually place, gym leaders and Elite Four included, each with a full team — levels, items, abilities and movesets. The nine gym leaders are shown as their eight numbered tiers rather than pinned to a town or an order, because the game itself shuffles both. |
Credits
- Pokémon Emerald Blitz, and the game's own site: franklynathan
- The game's published source, which every number in this guide is read from: franklynathan
- The base of Viola's overworld sprite: aveontrainer
- The Flygon overworld sprite and the bike-replacement palettes: Ulithium_Dragon
- The game's logo: catwalkvivi
- The release trailer: Kten
- Beta testing across roughly sixty test builds: Christian, Frazz, Soosk, Jason, Justin and Lucas
- The Emerald engine this game is built on: the pokeemerald-expansion team at RH Hideout
- The Emerald decompilation underneath it: the pret team
- Sprites via PokéAPI; base move and TM data from PokéAPI and Bulbapedia.
Reading the tables
GymsEvery one of Hoenn's eight gym doors runs the same script: walk in, and the game rolls a random number from 1 to 8 and warps you to that leader's own gym, skipping (and re-rolling) any leader you've already beaten. So the town you walked into says nothing about who is waiting for you. Rustboro's own slot is a second coin flip, between Roxanne and Viola — a brand-new leader of the creator's own making, with her own sprite and her own gym room — so there are really nine possible leaders across the run's eight badges, not eight. This guide lists each leader's team by tier ("fought with N badges already"), which is what the game actually keys the fight off, rather than pinning any leader to an order or a town the game itself does not commit to.
Elite FourEver Grande's Pokémon League has five hall rooms, but only four are fights: each of the four draws at random between a classic Elite Four member and a Battle Frontier Brain — Phoebe or Lucy, Glacia or Tucker, Drake or Brandon, Sidney or Spenser. The Champion is not part of the shuffle: it is always Steven.
Level CapsThe level cap is read straight from the game's own table and is keyed entirely to how many badges you hold, not to which leader granted them: 15 with none, 19/24/29/32/35/42/48 as you pick up your first through seventh, and 58 once you hold all eight, which also covers the Elite Four and Champion. A Pokémon at or past the cap for its stage cannot gain another level until the cap moves.
Field MovesCut, Rock Smash, Strength, Surf, Dive and Waterfall are each gated on how many badges you hold — 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 — the same way every badge counts toward the level cap. Flash and Fly need no badge at all here.
TM LocationsMost TMs in this guide are either a one-time reward for beating a specific fight (several gym leaders hand one over) or sold at the Slateport Outdoor Market's Power TM counter, which unlocks three cumulative stocks as your badge count rises: 7 TMs from badge 1, 9 more from badge 4, and 5 more from badge 6. A TM this guide can't place in either isn't documented as sold or given away anywhere in the game's own scripts.
Draft RacesThe format this game is built for is a draft auction: before a race starts, everyone bids on a shared pool of Pokémon, and each racer then plays the game with only what they won. The creator runs public races like this over Discord, with rules, stats and match histories on the game's own site — see the links on this page rather than numbers repeated here, since none of that is published anywhere this guide can read them from.
SpeciesThis guide publishes every species a wild table or a placed trainer actually uses — 275 in total. The game's own "Pokémon Catalog" (the notebook you draft from before a race) is described by the creator as holding species up through the newest generations, but no separate list of exactly which ones are in that pool is published anywhere in the game's own files, so this guide does not claim one.