The so-called "Ultra Emerald" was actually a fan-made modification based on the original Pokémon Emerald.
It added many Pokémon and maps from later generations, and even altered some of the plot lines. It could be considered a masterpiece among fan-made games.
As for the difficulty of this game, it was probably several times harder than the original Emerald. Every NPC possessed ultra-high AI intelligence, capable of judging their actions based on the player's team and Pokémon status.
For example, they would perform advanced maneuvers like switching out monsters for type coverage, executing kill shots, and using potions—sometimes acting even smarter than real players!
Furthermore, due to the game's level caps, it was very difficult for players to win through the traditional method of over-leveling and brute-forcing their way through.
This caused many people, upon first encountering this ROM hack, to get stuck and only barely scrape by after looking up walkthroughs.
As for "Lunatic Mode," it was a hidden difficulty setting within the game. It was written as "Lunatic," but in reality, it was Hell. It was difficult to a heinous degree, enough to make anyone have a mental breakdown!
And on top of this Lunatic Mode foundation, James had added some of his own ideas. For instance, he further increased the difficulty of the levels, relying on the System to boost the NPCs' AI intelligence even more, allowing them to make even more flexible combat decisions.
After all, this was a world where everyone was a Trainer and Pokémon were everywhere. If he didn't increase the game's difficulty, then for some people... it would be too easy.
Besides, James's main goal in making this game right now was to rage ba—err, to increase the challenge for the players.
So, he would leave things like "Easy Mode" for later.
With this thought, James opened the folder directly and proposed several concepts in his mind.
"System, can these be made?"
[Yes. Do you wish to begin production immediately?]
James nodded.
"Let's begin."
According to James's original expectations, with the System, his speed in making games should have increased by dozens of times.
And that was indeed the case; his efficiency had improved drastically.
But to realize some of his own ideas and improve the game's quality, he still spent a full night making modifications and adjustments.
Unknowingly, the night passed.
The morning sun spilled in from the window as the city awoke in the twilight.
James modified the game title and introduction one last time, dragged the folder onto the webpage, took a deep breath, and clicked the upload button.
This time, there was no red notification. Only large green characters popped up—"Upload Successful"!
He let out a long sigh of relief, drew the curtains, didn't even turn off the computer, and stood up only to collapse onto the bed beside him, falling asleep instantly.
After fighting through the night, he was truly exhausted. Although staying up late was a common occurrence in his past life, his body in this world seemed much weaker than before. He really couldn't hold on any longer.
If he didn't sleep now, he was afraid he might start his second transmigration.
Imustsleepimmediately.jpg.
Seconds later, he closed his eyes, and the sound of even breathing filled the room.
But just then, from the shadows behind the curtains, a figure suddenly emerged.
In appearance, it looked like a white candle with a pair of large, dark green eyes. A deep blue flame flickered atop its head, eerie and bewitching.
But if one looked closely, they would discover that the flame was somewhat weak, as if it were about to go out.
This was a Ghost-type Pokémon, "Litwick."
Don't let its cute appearance fool you; in reality, it was a Pokémon that fed by devouring the life force and souls of others!
This Pokémon would light the flame on its head, pretending to guide the way for passersby, while actually quietly absorbing their souls...
At this moment, the Litwick scanned the room somewhat blankly and swayed its body.
So hungry...
If only there was something to eat...
In the next moment, its gaze locked onto the sleeping James, and its eyes instantly lit up.
This person's scent...
It smells so good, so good!
If I just eat a little bit of his life force, it shouldn't matter, right?
Then... just a little bit?
–
Today was Saturday. According to laws, apart from the service industry, most people were on holiday.
And in this world where the entertainment industry wasn't very developed, watching livestreams was a great way for people to kill their leisure time.
At this moment, on the largest streaming platform on the entire web—the Psyduck Platform—a certain room that had been silent for a long time quietly opened once again.
In the next instant, users flooded into the stream like a tidal wave. The online viewer count broke through 100,000 immediately!
[She's here! She's here! My wife is here!]
[Ahhhhh finally streaming!!]
[Woo! The early Pidgey gets the worm!]
Amidst the frenzied barrage of bullet comments, the stream feed turned on, revealing a computer desktop. The wallpaper was a cool image of a Garchomp in battle.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, a woman was sitting in front of that computer.
She was tall, with a slender and graceful figure.
Her gray eyes were like deep, dark pools, tranquil and mysterious.
Her knee-length blonde hair was like flowing creamy silk, shimmering with a captivating luster in the sunlight.
The woman exuded a natural affinity, but if one sensed carefully, they could detect a perfectly hidden aura of confidence.
She was none other than—the Strongest Champion of the Sinnoh League, the Legendary Trainer, the woman standing at the pinnacle of strength, Cynthia!!
At this moment, Cynthia turned on her camera and flashed a smile at the audience in the livestream.
"Good morning, everyone. The League hasn't assigned any missions today for once, so I finally have time to see you all."
"Did you miss me? I missed you guys."
With her appearance, the bullet comments in the stream exploded again, and the viewer count skyrocketed instantly.
[I missed you too, baby!!!!]
[She asked if I missed her; I'm in her heart!]
[Finally waited for you boohoohoo. I was supposed to work overtime today, but as soon as I heard you were streaming, I quit my job immediately.]
[As soon as I heard you were streaming, I rode my bike for three hours from the village to the town's internet cafe just to watch you.]
Watching these comments, Cynthia couldn't help but chuckle softly.
"Everyone in the stream is as humorous as ever today."
"Alright, since it's a rare streaming day, what would you guys like to see me play?"
Following her question, the bullet comments responded.
[I'll watch whatever you stream!!]
[Battle Road, maybe? Watching you play that teaches us a lot.]
[How about playing something else? I'm getting tired of watching that.]
[To the guy above, if we don't play Battle Road, are we supposed to play that trash game where Geodude rolls on the road?]
Among the comments, the majority supported Cynthia playing "Battle Road."
Seeing this, Cynthia nodded and opened a red-and-white Poké Ball icon on her desktop.
"Then let's stick with Battle Road."
Battle Road was a battle simulation game released by "Dream Factory" six months ago.
Although its functions were incomplete in many aspects, it still had some bugs, and the updates over the last six months had been extremely lazy...
But this game allowed players to customize their Pokémon teams and conduct relatively realistic simulated battles against other players. It was already an epoch-making game. Its competitiveness was self-evident; there were simply no rivals on the market.
So even though players complained endlessly and were very dissatisfied with Dream Factory, they had no other choice. This game was extremely popular.
Over these six months, from ordinary people who weren't Trainers all the way up to Elite Four members and Champions, everyone played it. It could almost be called a game for the whole nation.
Speaking of which, Cynthia chose to stream this game not only because the chat wanted to see it but also because, even as a Champion, she could use this game to conveniently experience and understand new Pokémon and teams, increasing her own battle understanding and cognition.
However, at this moment, when Cynthia opened the game to log in, she froze.
A line of text appeared before her eyes.
[Server Error: Unable to Connect!]
At this moment, dissatisfied comments began to fill the screen.
[Damn, Dream Factory is slacking off again.]
[Classic server crash. They make so much money every year, if they used even a tenth of it to maintain the servers, it wouldn't be like this.]
[Dream Factory RIP]
[Well, guess we can't watch the streamer battle today.]
Dream Factory's game servers were notoriously bad. This was already common knowledge, something everyone was used to and found unsurprising.
Cynthia just frowned slightly and closed the game interface.
"Looks like we can't play this today. Does anyone have any other suggestions?"
Unable to play Battle Road, Cynthia had actually lost some interest internally, but considering the many viewers in the stream, she still smiled gently and asked.
[Angry Stones!]
[Pikachu Legend!]
[How about watching a movie?]
The comments started flooding again, offering suggestions all at once.
However, just then, a paid red Super Chat message caught Cynthia's attention.
It was an old viewer of the stream, one who had gifted millions in total.
["Cat Who Loves Fish": there seems to be a New Game Promotion Festival on the League's official website recently. Why don't you go check it out?]
Yes, as the builders of the world's internet, these matters of game culture were naturally the responsibility of the League.
And on Cynthia's end, after seeing this message, she suddenly noticed an ad for the New Game Promotion Festival right beside her stream interface.
So she clicked on it and began to browse.
Coincidentally, she also wanted to see if there were any new games worth playing recently.
But the results before her eyes were unsatisfactory. The webpage featured cliché, low-quality game content. There were even three reskins of "Angry Stones"!
——They just changed the Geodude to an Electrode, a Magnemite, and a Miltank.
Just as Cynthia was feeling somewhat disappointed, a game cover suddenly grabbed her attention, making her eyes widen involuntarily.
amidst a hazy, illusory mist, the silhouette of a giant dragon appeared, accompanied by shining golden symbols.
Even through the screen, she could faintly feel the majesty and powerful aura emanating from this phantom image!
This... how is this possible?
Cynthia was stunned.
Because she could recognize the outline of this phantom. It was unmistakably a Legendary Pokémon!
——The legendary Overlord of the Sky, the Dragon God, Rayquaza!
She knew of Rayquaza because she held the status of Champion and possessed many information channels. At the same time, she was a mythologist and archaeologist.
Ordinary people simply didn't know of the existence of such high-level Legendary Pokémon—stories related to this beast had vanished hundreds of years ago.
Even the last ancient text recording its information had been turned to ash in a fire.
But now, the appearance of this Legendary Pokémon was on the cover of a game?
Could this be a coincidence?
This thought appeared in her mind for a split second before Cynthia completely rejected it.
No, absolutely impossible!
Before that text was buried in the sea of fire, she had been fortunate enough to read its contents. The description of Rayquaza in the book and the features of this silhouette were almost completely identical!
Her gaze fell on the location of the game creator's name. There was only a single simple character:
[Wind]
As a Champion, she had never heard of such a person. It seemed to be some kind of alias?
Cynthia took out her phone and searched for the publisher information of this game, only to find that the publisher had left no contact details. There wasn't even a company; it seemed to be an individual creator.
This is a bit difficult...
Originally, Cynthia wanted to contact the other party directly to ask about Rayquaza.
Now it seemed that since the other party published individually and left no contact info, even if she used her connections in the League to search, she might not necessarily find them.
Most critically, that friend of hers who excelled at finding people probably couldn't be reached recently...
As Cynthia pondered, she subconsciously began to examine the game carefully.
The name of the game entered her vision.
[Pokémon: Emerald (Beta Version)]
What kind of name is this?
It seemed to belong to a completely different world than the games currently on the market.
Moreover, the genre of this game was "Pixel."
This was a common classification for low-quality, low-tech games. Because production costs were cheap, trash titles were endless—mostly the "cash grab and run" type...
She checked the game's introduction again and found no flashy information. The content was very simple, just one sentence.
[Encounter and nurture different Pokémon, form your team, and embark on a wondrous adventure with them.]
And below this sentence were two lines of small red text.
The first line read:
[Warning! Non-professional Trainers are prohibited from playing this game! This game is not responsible for any negative issues such as high blood pressure, heart disease, cerebral hemorrhage, etc.!]
Seeing this, Cynthia couldn't help but raise her beautiful eyebrows slightly, somewhat surprised.
High blood pressure? Heart disease?
Just from playing a video game? Could it be that serious?
That's a bit exaggerated, isn't it...
She looked toward the second line of red text.
[The first player to clear the Beta Version of this game can use the obtained Friend Code to add the creator's contact information and simultaneously receive a prize of 100,000 ₽.]
Cynthia's gaze sharpened instantly.
Contact information!
Regarding the game itself, she didn't think there would be anything special about it. After all, it didn't look like an epoch-making game; at least it wasn't comparable to Battle Road.
As for the 100,000 prize, a dignified Champion like her naturally didn't lack such small change.
But if clearing the game meant obtaining the creator's contact information... then she had to play it.
Since this creator could so accurately produce the image and pattern of Rayquaza, he was definitely no ordinary person!
He might even hold more information about Rayquaza in his hands!
As a mythology enthusiast, Cynthia couldn't accept even the slightest possibility of missing out on this information!
With this thought, she added the game to her cart and clicked purchase.
However, in the next moment, the payment interface that popped up made her freeze again!
[To purchase Pokémon: Emerald (Beta Version), you need to pay 288 ₽. Confirm purchase?]
288 ₽??
Even for those major masterpieces, she had never heard of a game daring to price itself in the hundreds...
And this pixel game dared to sell for almost three hundred bucks??
Even the usually calm and collected Cynthia couldn't quite hold back at this moment.
Although she didn't lack the money.
But this price... isn't it a bit too excessive?