Pokemon Little Emerald

Download Pre-Patched Download Pre-Patched GBA ROM Hack

• Creator: Purkat
• Version: 1.2
• Hack of: Emerald
• Updated: March 20, 2025
• Language: English
• Status: Completed

Pokemon Little Emerald is a GBA ROM Hack by Purkat based on Pokemon Emerald in English. It was last updated on March 20, 2025, and is now available to download.

Description

Little Emerald is a difficulty hack of Pokémon Emerald where only fully unevolved Pokémon appear in the wild and on trainers’ teams. It includes various quality-of-life upgrades and two difficulty modes. Designed with Nuzlocke runs in mind, it offers a fun yet challenging experience for all playstyles.

Features

• Starters: Snivy/Scorbunny/Squirtle
• Hard level caps
• Gen 9 battle mechanics unless otherwise stated
• Difficulty modes:
  • Hard: All gym leaders and most boss trainers have a full team of six Pokémon with strong movesets
  • Normal: Not all gym leaders and boss trainers have a full team of six Pokémon and have generally weaker movesets than in Hard Mode
• EV Gain can be turned on or off
• Mini-Bosses throughout the game that give prizes such as BP, battle items, and access to move tutors
• A BP shop where you can buy battle items and items to customize your Pokémon such as Ability Patches, Nature Mints, and Bottle Caps
• You will permanently lose any held items that were removed in a battle (only if you win the battle)
• You can permanently take held items from Pokémon in a trainer battle (only if you win the battle)
• Trainers don’t use items
• Attract works regardless of gender
• The 5 confuse berries (Aguav, Iapapa, Wiki, Mago, Figy) heal ½ max HP and trigger at ¼ max HP (As in generation 7)
• Oceanic Museum, Mauville Game Corner, Daycare, Weather Institute, Mossdeep Game Corner, Space Center, and Devon Corp (Fossil) encounter locations are now separate
• Two new custom maps:
  • Deep Woods (accessible from Petalburg Woods post-Cut)
  • Desert Oasis (accessible from Route 111)
• New “Mega Evolutions”:
  • All Baby Pokémon (Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff, Togepi, Tyrogue, Elekid, Magby, Smoochum, Azurill, Wynaut, Budew, Chingling, Bonsly, Mime Jr., Happiny, Munchlax, Rioolu, Mantyke, and Toxel) can evolve in battle via a held item (their respective incenses and new incenses added for the babies without one)
• Some type and ability changes, mostly to give unevolved Pokémon types and abilities from their evolved forms
• Follower Pokémon
• Most bosses have overworld partner Pokémon
• Minor story changes (just added and move boss fights):
  • Added an Aqua Leader Archie fight to Slateport’s Oceanic Museum just after fighting the grunts
  • Changed Magma Admin Tabitha on Mt. Chimnet to Magma Admin Courtney Courtney
  • Added a tag battle with your rival against Aqua Leader Archie & Aqua Admin Matt to Mt. Pyre
  • Changed Magma Admin Tabitha in the Mossdeep Space Center tag battle to Magma Admin Tabitha
• A few boss fights scale in levels depending on if you have defeated Winona yet (you can fight them before or after):
  • Optional rival battle in Lilycove City
  • Magma Admin Tabitha in Magma Hideout
  • Magma Leader Maxie in Magma Hideout
  • Tag battle with your rival against Aqua Leader Archie & Aqua Admin Matt on Mt. Pyre
  • Aqua Admin Matt in Aqua Hideout

Quality-of-Life Changes

• New Key Items:
  • Infinite Candy: Acts as a Rare Candy, cannot go past the next level cap (regular Rare Candies can, up to level 3 levels past)
  • Cap Candy: Brings a Pokémon to the next level cap instantly
  • Max Restore: Fully restores the HP, PP, and Status of a Pokémon
  • Infinite Repel: Lets you toggle wild encounters
  • Pokévial: Fully restored the HP, PP, and Status of all Pokémon in your party
  • Warp Panel: Lets you warp to a previously visited town
  • Flashlight: Brightens up dark caves
• Press ‘L’ in the overworld to open a utilities menu with the following utilities:
  • Pokémon Box Link
  • Infinite Repel (turn off encounters)
  • AutoRun Toggle
  • Change Time (set the clock)
  • Pokévial (heal your party)
  • Escape Rope
  • Warp Panel (fly)
  • Flashlight
  • Hatch Egg (choose an egg from your party to hatch)
• Press ‘R’ in a wild Pokémon battle to run
• Press ‘R’ in the overworld to toggle auto-run
• Press ‘A’ to relearn moves in the Battle Moves page of the summary screen
• Press ‘A’ in the Pokémon Info page of the summary screen to change a Pokémon’s nickname
• Press ‘A’ in the Pokémon Skills page of the summary screen to see a Pokémon’s IVs or cycle between IVs and EVs if EV gain is enabled
• Romhack Version, Difficulty, EV gain, and Battle Points can be seen on your trainer card
• HMs can now be used as long as you have it in your bag and the corresponding gym has been defeated
• Removed the field move text boxes and Pokémon pop-ups
• Hold ‘B’ and press ‘A’ on a valid tile to Dive
• Hold ‘A’ and press ‘B’ on a valid tile to Emerge
• Hold ‘B’ while Surfing or Diving to move faster
• A new bag pocket for Incenses
• A new bag pocket for Nature Mints
• New NPCs in each Pokémon center:
  • Nature Mint Maker: This NPC takes a Blank Nature Mint and turns it into any Nature Mint you choose
  • Pre-Damage & Pre-Status NPC: This NPC will give you the option of Pre-Damaging or Pre-Statusing one of your Pokémon.
    Pre-Damage: You choose any number between 1 and the max HP of the chosen Pokémon – 1 to set the Pokémon’s HP to.
    Pre-Status: You choose one of the following status conditions to apply to the chosen Pokémon: Poison, Paralysis, Sleep, Burn, Freeze, Toxic Poison. Electric types can’t be Paralyzed, Fire types can’t be Burned, Ice types can’t be Frozen, and Pokémon with any of the following abilities can’t be put to Sleep: Insomnia, Vital Spirit, Sweet Veil, Comatose, Purifying Salt. Poison and Steel types cannot be Poisoned or Toxic Poisoned until you add Salandit to your Pokédex (just seen, not caught).
    *Eggs and Fainted Pokémon can’t be Pre-Damaged or Pre-Statused.
  • Hyper Training NPC: This NPC will allow you to Hyper Train a selected stat of one of your Pokémon in exchange for a Bottle Cap. A Hyper Trained stat will act as if it is 31 IV in all battle calculations. Hyper-trained stats are marked in blue when viewing IVs on Pokémon’s summary screen.
    *Eggs cannot be Hyper Trained.
  • Battle Points Trader: This NPC will exchange certain items for Battle Points obtained from defeating Mini-Bosses.
  • Egg Move Tutor: This NPC will teach one of your Pokémon one of their egg moves in exchange for 1 BP.

Future Plans

Bugfix patches will be released as needed, but there are also several planned features for future updates. Here’s a sneak peek at some upcoming additions:

• Adjustments to the Damp ability
• Reaper Cloth Duskull & Lucky Punch Happiny
• Tweaks to Revival Blessing functionality
• Randomized berry amounts
• Monotype Mode for a unique challenge
• Sandbox Mode for more flexible gameplay options

Screenshots

Useful Stuff

Downloads

Credits

Purkat (Creator)

Inspiration from Other ROM Hacks:

• Run and Bun – Pre-Status NPC, Rare Candies bypassing level caps
• Pokémon Lucid – Boss trainers with overworld Pokémon
• Inclement Emerald – Nature Mint NPC
• Radical Red – Egg Move Tutor
• Montimon02 – Monster Magikarp idea

Coding Contributions:

• Jaizu, Buffel Saft, AkimotoBubble, PokemonCrazy, Scyrous – IV display in the summary screen
• devolov – Toggleable auto-run and HM field use without teaching the move
• Buffel Saft – Difficulty and EV options at game start
• AsparagusEduardo – New bag pockets
• Lunos (LOuroboros) – Infinite Repel item
• RHH’s pokeemerald-expansion – Base ROM hack, which itself is built on pret’s pokeemerald decompilation
• Meister_anon & Alex (rainonline) – Help with dynamic type changes in battle
• hudurlem & contributors – Poryscript and Porymap tools
• Team Aqua’s Hideout (Archie) – YouTube tutorials
• KinglerChamp – VanillaCalc as the base for the Little Emerald damage calculator