Little Red Cup

January 23, 2024

Don't Want to Read?

A gen 1 ROM Hack that brings (almost) all Pokemon down to level 5 and to original evolution to mimic the little cup format. Unfortunately, it has some fairly blatant misses. I enjoyed it until the lack of playtesting caused it to become fairly unplayable.

• Interesting kind of challenge run, no XP gain or evolutions makes you make very different decisions.
• Huge drop in cave encounter rates helps keeps the game moving.
• Even as early as Mt. Moon mistakes are seen as you fight a level 5 Raticate.
• Gift pokemon do not have their levels lowered.
• Giovonni fight in Game Corners levels not adjusted.
• Clearly not given a full playtest run.
• Gameplay does grow a bit stale without having viable moves or new options.

1/5 Stars

Review

I was enjoying this one, but the blatant errors got to be too much as more teams and Pokemon turned out to not be adjusted down to level 5 the later I got into the game. However, by that point the lack of new options or need for new strategies made beating one or two of these "impossible" battles more interesting than actually playing the game would have been.

Your Pokemon can still learn wrap, but everything only knows whatever moves it knows at level 5, so while you do get some changes as the game continues it gets a bit dull. It's worth just fiddling around with, but not much more than a novelty.