How to play Pokemon ROM hacks on Android or iPhone

A Brief Overview of ROM Hacks

There’s just something about Pokemon that people can’t get enough of. Whether it’s because of the cute character designs or the fun and challenging gameplay, the Pokemon games have always held the attention of people who’ve played it. In fact, I personally know of people who’ve played almost all of the Pokemon games from the Gameboy’s Pokemon Red and Green to the 3DS’ Omega Ruby and Sapphire. Of course, there are also people who prefer to make their own stories and adventures centered around the world of Pokemon. You could even say that there’s at least two or three ROM hacks for every Pokemon game released on the GBA (and older systems). A ROM hack is basically a patch that re-writes the code of the original game to allow for a new story, features, and/or Pokemon.

Pokemon Dark Rising (Hack)- Walk through walls

Getting started

ROM Hacks have recently become more popular owing to the availability of emulators like GBA4iOS, My Boy, as well as John GBA for mobile devices running on iOS and Android. Additionally, a majority of these ROM hacks are free to download and play. There are some ROM hacks (usually beta versions) though that would require you to have a working copy of the parent ROM. In these cases, a quick Google search of the parent ROM should do the trick.

Set up for iOS and Android

Once you have an emulator downloaded on your mobile device, all that’s left for you to do is to download the ROM hack of your choice.

For iPhone/iPad users, clicking on the search button on the GBA4iOS app will automatically direct you to CoolROM.com on your Safari browser. Once the ROM hack is downloaded all that’s left to do is to click/tap on the option “Run on GBA4iOS” and you should be able to see it on your app’s library of games.

Pokemon ROM Hacks

On the other hand, the My Boy and John GBA emulators for Android will automatically detect any GBA ROMs you’ve downloaded on your phone/tablet’s internal storage and external storage.

Are ROM Hacks safe?

So long as you know where to download them, ROM hacks are relatively safe. In the event that you find a ROM hack that’s not on CoolROM or any other established ROM directory then make sure you scan it with antivirus app first.
You might also want to check out forums like PokeCommunity first if you’re not sure whether the ROM hack you’re trying to download is safe or not. ROM hack developers usually frequent these forums/netboards to promote their creations. These are also great places to get feedback regarding the quality of the hacks and whether they’re worth playing or not.

PhoneResolve’s Recommended ROM Hacks

Pokemon ROM Hacks 2

As you may know, I’ve already featured a couple of ROM hacks here on PhoneResolve. The first 2 games from Pokemon Dark Rising series (Dark Rising and Dark Rising 2) are particularly good for the story as well as the gameplay. Both of these games are also based off of the Pokemon Fire Red ROM which means you can use the same cheats on either of them. Then there’s also Pokemon Flora Sky, a Pokemon Emerald ROM hack which has a faster pacing in terms of gameplay and story compared to the first Pokemon Dark Rising games.

Pokemon ROM Hacks 3

Any ROM hacks you’d like to recommend? Well, hit the comments section and let us know! We’re coming up with another article that will list down essential ROM hacks that every Pokemon fan should play at least once in their lives.

James Inovejas

James Inovejas

I am in a love-hate relationship with games. If a game catches my eye, I make sure that I get to play it. The problem now is that I have too many games but so little time to play them! My current backlog (Steam and Android games) is at an all time high.

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