Artistic Collaboration Celebrates Pokémon Emerald’s 20th Anniversary
To honor the 20th anniversary of Pokémon Emerald for the GBA, 130 artists have come together to recreate the sprites for all 386 Pokémon featured in the game (thanks to gamesradar).
The updated sprites have been integrated into a fully playable ROM hack known as Pokémon Emerald: Respirited, allowing you to experience the new designs firsthand (we won’t provide a direct download link here, but finding it shouldn’t be too difficult).
Two versions of the ROM hack are available: ‘Vanilla’ retains the original gameplay with the new sprites, while ‘Plus’ enables players to capture all 386 creatures on a single save file and also alters in-game trainers to reflect the artists involved in the project.
While some redesigns are breathtaking, others are more humorous. For example, Charmander now resembles Agumon from the Digimon series, and Mew sports a single eye – quite peculiar. The full roster can be viewed via a Google doc.
Despite the varying styles, this project is a delightful celebration of one of the franchise’s most popular titles (in the opinion of this writer). It’s definitely worth exploring if you have the means to do so.