Pokémon: Wishes of Tomorrow
A brand-new region in three acts, with Shadow Pokémon you steal off enemy trainers and purify at a shrine on an island.
More about the game
Wishes of Tomorrow is an original Game Boy Advance game built from the source of Pokémon Emerald rather than patched over it. You start in a snowed-in mountain village, pick one of three Dragon-type starters, and follow a three-act story through a national park, a volcano town, a rail line and finally a surveillance city called Shin-Tokyo, where a man known as The Oni is running a machine that corrupts Pokémon. Those corrupted Pokémon are the game's own system: a Shadow Pokémon hits harder and defends worse than it should, can lose control mid-battle, and can be stolen from the trainer using it once you have the Snag Machine. Take one to Celebi's shrine and you can purify it. Alongside that there is a quest journal, a shop that trades curios for Mega Stones, machines that hand a Pokémon a new ability, and a decision about the professor's research that changes which Shadow Pokémon turn up and how strong they are. Species, moves and abilities are the modern ones the engine brings with it, so Pokémon from every generation up to the tenth appear. Version 1.2.3 is the creator's full release: an early build had already reached several thousand players on Hackdex about two weeks earlier, and this version folds in their bug reports and redraws the opening hours (bedroom, Munen Village, Munen Lake, Walnut Woods and Frostwood Town) on new tilesets.
What's different, point by point
- A new region and a three-act story, ending on a tower in the middle of the city
- Three Dragon-type starters — Gible, Frigibax or Axew — and a fourth Pokémon waiting on the road out of town
- Pokémon from every generation appear, with modern moves, abilities and the physical/special split
- Shadow Pokémon: they hit harder, defend worse, and can slip into Hyper Mode in the middle of a battle
- The Snag Machine, which lets you take a Shadow Pokémon straight off an enemy trainer
- Purification at Celebi's shrine, and a Shadow Log that tracks every one of the 59 Pokémon that can turn up as a Shadow
- Twelve tracked quests with a journal in the start menu
- Mega Evolution, with every Mega Stone either found in the region or bought — from the curio exchange in Tradewind Town or the Minister's shop
- Ability Machines that give a Pokémon one of twenty new abilities
- Decisions that change the game — keeping or destroying the professor's research changes which Shadow Pokémon appear, and how strong they are
- An HM menu, so no Pokémon has to carry Cut or Surf
- A randomizer mode, chosen when you start a new game, that can shuffle starters, wild Pokémon and trainer teams independently while keeping every Shadow Pokémon and level the story was built around
- Fast forward, up to 3x, from the Options menu
- A post-game chapter with a private jet that flies you to anywhere you have already been
Flatfoot Labs
This guide is built from Flatfoot Labs'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 in the region is here, read from the game's own encounter file. Sixteen areas carry one; the rest of the region is towns, gyms and interiors, which have none. |
| Encounter rates | From the game itself | Slot percentages are the game's own, out of the encounter file's own rate tables. |
| Wild levels | From the game itself | Wild levels are real numbers: the game rolls inside the min–max range printed beside each Pokémon and never rescales it to your team. the game's source |
| Stats, abilities and movesets | From the game itself | Stats, types, abilities, evolutions and learnsets for everything the game compiles, including the seven creatures it invented. Pokémon carried over from the main games keep their own real numbers; this game did not change them. |
| TM and HM compatibility | From the game itself | All 67 TMs and HMs, with which Pokémon can learn each one, worked out by the game's own build tooling rather than by hand. |
| Where TMs are found | From the game itself | TM, HM and item locations come from the region's own map scripts — a hand-over, a ball on the ground, a hidden item or a shop counter all count. 17 of the 67 TMs and HMs turn up somewhere in the region; the other 50 rows say so rather than guessing a spot. |
| Trainer and boss teams | From the game itself | Every trainer the game places on a map inside the region, with species, level, held item, ability and any written moves. The Battle Frontier's facility fights are left out, as on every guide here, because the game builds those teams as you play. |
Credits
- Pokémon: Wishes of Tomorrow — story, direction, game design, map design and event scripting: Joe Maloney, Flatfoot Games
- The game's own source, which every number on this guide is read from: Joe Maloney
- The field guide this guide takes its place names and story order from: Joe Maloney
- Sprite design: Rafael Sanna, aveontrainer, baylorhernandez, biadoxaf, DarkusShadow and jaov46
- Character art: ToxShadows642
- Shadow Pokémon art: pogokitten, WeeGeeDude and Quanyails
- Tileset art: pinkscales, Phyromatical, MagiScarf, PeekyChew, Elinthind, lo8jd and Dark Slayer
- Shin-Tokyo art: Emeiry, and ekat99 for Odisea, used under CC BY-NC-SA
- Battle backdrops: carchagui and aveontrainer
- Playtesting: Luke Devereux, Mike Mancuso and Kyle Clarkson
- pokeemerald-expansion 1.15.3, the engine this game is built on: Rom Hacking Hideout
- pokeemerald, the Emerald decompilation underneath it: the pret team
- Sprites via PokéAPI; base move and TM data from PokéAPI and Bulbapedia.
Reading the tables
AiThe creator's release page carries this disclosure, quoted in full: “AI Disclosure — This hack contains some AI-assisted content. NPC portraits are generated caricatures of my friends. (These can be toggled off in the options menu). Some dialogue was drafted with AI then edited by hand. Cover art and region map: the artwork is human-made, then quantized to downres to the 16 color hardware limit. Some complex scripting was automated.” The game's repository separately says AI coding tools were used while building it.
LevelsEvery level on this guide is a real, fixed number out of the game's own files. Nothing here scales to your team: wild Pokémon roll inside the level range printed beside them, every trainer's Pokémon carries a written level, and the engine's level-cap system is switched off in this build, so there is no cap to play around.
RatesEncounter percentages are the game's own slot rates, with two slots holding the same Pokémon at the same level added together. * marks anything at 5% or less.
TrainersRosters — species, held item, ability, level and moves — come straight from the game's own trainer file. Where a Pokémon has no moves listed, the game gives it the last four moves it learned, so the roster shows the level and leaves the moves blank rather than inventing them.
ShadowA trainer whose team includes Shadow Pokémon has a line under the roster saying which ones. A Shadow Pokémon hits harder and defends worse than the same Pokémon normally would, and it is the one you can steal with the Snag Machine.
RivalYour rival Draco's team depends on the starter you picked — he takes the line that answers yours. All three of his written teams are here, each labelled with the starter it goes with.
SpeciesPokémon carried over from the main games keep their real, current stats, types, abilities and evolutions: the engine imports them, this game did not redesign them. The seven creatures this game invented are its own, and the creator says plainly that their stats and movesets are a first pass and that their learnsets borrow from a similar Pokémon.
FormsMega Evolution is part of the game and its stones are on the items page. Gigantamax, Terastal and fusion forms exist in the engine this game is built on and so appear in the Pokédex here, but the game gives you no way to reach them.
RegionThis game is built inside a full copy of Emerald's and FireRed's maps, and most of those maps are unreachable leftovers. Only the region you actually play is documented here — the places the creator's own field guide names — so nothing on this guide sends you to a Hoenn route that no door in this game opens.
FrontierAfter the credits a boat out of Shin-Tokyo reaches the original Emerald Battle Frontier. Nothing there is this game's own work, so the only thing carried across from it is its move tutor, which is the one tutor in the game you can actually reach.
TMsSeventeen of the game's 67 TMs and HMs are handed out, hidden or sold somewhere in the region. The other 50 exist in the game and Pokémon can be checked against them, but nothing in the region gives one out, and those rows say so instead of guessing.