Modder has made a Pokemon x Snake puzzle game where up to 1,000 pocket monsters follow you at once

There have been plenty of ambitious Pokémon ROM hacks over the years, with fans finding increasingly creative ways to put their own spin on the franchise's classic games.

For instance, Pokémon Crestfall offers a chance to play a reimagined Emerald version. Meanwhile, Super MarioMon lets you take on a different kind of Pokémon world in the form of Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom.

In the wake of rumoured Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire ports being on the card for the Nintendo Switch, there are plenty of must-play ROM hacks to give a try — including fully immersive RPGs in their own right.

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In this newly tested ROM’s case, though, it’s merely all about building on one Pokémon mechanic: having Pokémon follow you around, and twisting the classic game Snake into the mix.

Pokémon meets Snake in a chaotic new ROM hack experiment

ROM hacker ranbla (@ranbpa0) has shared footage on X (formerly Twitter) of a modified Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen ROM that combines the classic RPG with Snake, allowing a staggering 1,000 Pokémon to follow the player in one enormous line.

Across the increasingly nerve-racking two-minute video, ranbla shows off how the ROM works.

Starting from walking out of the Viridian City Pokémon Center, another Pokémon in numerical order of the National Dex will start following you in a line, one after the other (beginning with Bulbasaur, then Ivysaur, then Venusaur, then Charmander, etc).

Then, as ranbla moves up and down Viridian — down to Route 1, near the entrance to Viridian Forest, then back around Viridian City again — you’ll immediately notice they’ve got an ever-increasing lack of space with each step, as more Pocket Monster sprites appear.

Impressively manoeuvring so that as much space as possible is saved, the ultimate goal is to see how many spawned Pokémon can the game technologically withstand before crashing out.

Impressively, the ROM hack seemed to hold out properly until most of the 1,000 Pokémon that had Gen 3 sprites made appeared. We spotted plenty of Gen 9 Pokémon like Fuecoco and Pawmi running around.

That said, it was nearly the 1,000th Pokémon where all the generated sprites started to flicker with incorrect colours, quickly overlapping into a mess of pixels (like the MissingNo glitch in the original Pokémon Red and Blue), and the whole hack crashed out with a loud-ish screech.

How the Pokémon x Snake hack was made possible

Although those hundreds of Pokémon sprites are still made in the style of early-to-mid 2000s gaming technology, it’s still very easy to wonder how a ROM hack is still able to sustain close to 1,000 of them before crashing out.

The creator has since explained that this particular build is indeed more of a technical experiment than a finished game that anyone can play, currently made possible by prioritising the sheer number of following Pokémon over other features.

Responding to a question on X about their ROM-hacking projects, such as if recent postings are all part of the same hack ranbla clarified: “This one is just a ROM kinda optimised around squeezing in following Pokémon at the expense of everything else. It doesn't have the other regions, etc.”

They added: “I start with the least pressure I can (just making the sprite animations work on PC) then I get it working on a blank-ish ROM, then I put it on the real build.

“The end goal is to put the best tech on the ROM, but it's a juggling game because not everything can fit”

The footage has attracted plenty of attention on Reddit, where players have already begun imagining what a proper Pokémon and Snake crossover could look like.

One user suggested on a Reddit thread sharing the video: “Snake x Pokémon puzzle game crossover where you have to catch them all but it becomes increasingly difficult to navigate the environment, and if you get stuck you white out!”

Another admitted what surely many would have been thinking during the two-minute video: “This gave me anxiety.”

Meanwhile, a YouTube repost of the footage has attracted around one million views, with one commenter joking: “Bro doesn't catch a Missingno, he creates his own.”

There's no indication that this ROM hack will become a playable release, but ranbla has since posted on X if any Discord users want to take in a potential beta test.

Topics: Nintendo, Pokemon, Retro Gaming, Mods, PC