Pokemon Shin (真) Green - The kanji for “true”. Used in Japanese media to denote a remastering, updated retelling , or a “true form” of something.
Started in 2018 by a secret cabal of ancient Pokemon nerds, Shin Pokemon is an enhancement ROM hack of Pokemon Green that aims to be the ultimate remaster fans never got. It is a mostly-vanilla hack that focuses on fixing game engine bugs and oversights from the original game. Additionally, trainer AI routines are improved and multiple quality-of-life enhancements have been added. It is the image of a glitch-free experience with player-friendly goodies and enhancements common to other modern remasterings.
Summary
Lite features for a cleaned-up purist experience
Over 200 bugs, glitches, oversights, and text errors of all sorts have been fixed! There are too many to enumerate in a simple summary, and some of them are very obscure or previously undiscovered.
Engine features from USA Yellow version have been backported. No more duochrome! Yellow’s color scheme gets converted to display on the Gameboy Color. Attack animations are colored according to type during Gameboy Color play. Yellow’s audio engine is backported for stereo sound support.
New options that can be toggled! Hit SELECT on the options screen to see an extra options menu.
- Cycle through audio types.
- Playing in GBC mode on a backlit LCD screen?
- Press SELECT at the copyright screen to activate color correction. - Or activate it in the extra menu
- Experimental 60FPS Mode
- Zero-Delay Text
- Hard Mode
- AI Trainer Switching
The hard mode option increases difficulty by making the stats of trainer pokemon more on your level. It also doubles the effect of the X-stat items that AI trainers are fond of. And it disallows the use of Revive items in battle. Non-link battles will use the Stadium 1 critical hit chance formulas. Finally, it makes catching a wild Mewtwo more challenging.
Trainer AI has been improved and greatly expanded. Some trainers will even try to switch pokemon intelligently if you haven’t disabled it in the extra options menu.
You get notified when a box is filled (either via catching or depositing a pokemon).
Switching out of a trapping move wastes the trapper’s turn as per Pokemon Stadium. This prevents unbeatable AI scenarios as well as a PP underflow glitch.
Rage is limited to 2-3 turns but attack boosts are kept. This is primarily to prevent infinite battle loops.
Sleep does not prevent choosing a move, and the move is used upon waking up. To maintain sleep move accuracy, sleep starts with a counter of at least 2. And Rest now sets the sleep counter to 3.
Master features that go beyond engine modifications and fixes
All 151 Pokemon are available in one version including trade evolutions (rarities may vary per version).
You can play as a boy or a girl.
There’s an EXP bar in battle.
You can hunt for shiny pokemon, and they are valid with Gen 2 games.
No more grinding wild pokemon. Nearly all trainers can be rematched just by talking to them once or twice.
You can choose RUN while holding SELECT in trainer battles to forfeit the match and black yourself out.
There is a built-in nuzlocke mode that can be toggled from the extra options menu.
