Pokémon Emerald ReSprite Trailer – YouTube
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To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pokémon Emerald's release in Japan, a group of 130 artists joined forces and redrawn all 386 Pokémon from the game and put them into a romhack.
Pokémon Emerald is one of the most beloved games on the Game Boy Advance and fans generally consider its graphics to be timeless, but if you just want a new way to play a classic game, you might want to consider checking out Pokémon Emerald: ReSpirited, which swaps out all of the original Pokémon sprites with newly drawn versions.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pokémon Emerald, 130 artists came together to redraw the sprites of all 386 Pokémon and put them all into a hacked ROM. pic.twitter.com/Av5RhMVlukSeptember 16, 2024
There are two versions of Pokémon Emerald: ReSpirited. Vanilla is just the standard game but with the new sprites, and the other, called Plus, swaps out the sprites and also allows you to get all 386 Pokémon in a single save file and makes edits to the trainers to represent the artists who contributed to the project.
Now, to be fair, I've taken a look at the Google document that shows all the new sprites, and I will say that the quality of the art is… inconsistent. Another way of putting it is that it's very clear that some of the artists were just having fun and not taking anything too seriously. It seems like about half of the sprites are faithful, and in some cases improved, versions of the original art, and the other half are… less than that. Take a look for yourself and you'll see what I mean.
Still, if you're one of those Pokemon fans who still plays Emerald after 20 years and just want a change of scenery, ReSpirited is certainly worth your time at the very least.
Otherwise, here are the The best Pokemon games You can play right now.