The Pokemon Emerald Arena ROM hack keeps getting better thanks to new trainer arenas

Pokemon Emerald Arena caught my eye a few days ago and is probably one of the more interesting ROM hacks I’ve seen this year, thanks to its real-time combat.

Things are progressing fast, and the latest 0.7.0 preview build now brings supported trainer battles into the Arena system, complete with a bunch of new environments that change depending on where you’re actually fighting.

Trainer battles enter the Arena

Previously, Emerald Arena’s big party trick was transforming supported wild encounters into real-time battles where you can move around, dodge attacks, break objects, and directly control your Pokemon.

Now, supported single trainer battles work in the same way, with the opponent’s next Pokemon continuing through the real-time battle flow rather than throwing you back into traditional turn-based combat.

What’s even better is that fights don’t all take place in the same generic space anymore.

The newest preview build introduces forest, coast, cave, desert, and indoor arenas, with each one matching the environment you’d normally see during Emerald’s battles. They also come with their own scenery and breakable objects, including rocks, wood, plants, and even fancy crystals.

Developer German Burgardt says the current build now features 94 animated Pokemon and 50 adapted moves. During supported trainer encounters, pressing SELECT also opens your party, although you obviously can’t start throwing Poke Balls at someone else’s Pokemon.

However, this whole thing is obviously still very much a work in progress. Double battles, link battles, and encounters involving unsupported movesets, abilities, held items, or status conditions will still fall back to classic battles. Trainer item AI isn’t finished either, and not every Gym, story callback, or trainer combination has been fully tested yet.

The developer has successfully tested trainer fixtures including Calvin, Rick, and Roxanne, while all five new environments have been confirmed to load their respective arenas correctly.

There are some stellar Pokemon ROM hacks out there already, but watching Emerald (my personal favorite game of the franchise) transform into something resembling a top-down action RPG, all built within the base game, is very impressive.

UPDATE: If you’re looking to get everything installed in the simplest way possible, Burghart reached out and suggested you head to this page which houses relevant links and various in-game videos.