With over 905 playable characters and higher sales revenue than even Star Wars, the Pokemon franchise has built a legacy to put classic books to shame. Players return year after year to shell out dozens of dollars on some of the most creative RPGs Nintendo has to offer.

But just like eating sushi every day, you can't keep coming back to the core series Pokemon games without getting tired of it. No matter how often leveling up and catching new friends to train for carnage sends dopamine through your reward pathway, you're bound to seek a new challenge. That's why here, we’ll be covering some of the best Pokemon games for PC, both official and fan-made!

This list will also include ROM hacks - patched versions of Nintendo’s classic games that change content for a new experience. In fact, the first entry on our list is a little bit of both, by the name of...

10. PokeMMO - https://pokemmo.eu/

 

Just as you and your friends dreamed on the playground.

PokeMMO is a free multiplayer adaptation of the Pokemon franchise. It covers the first five regions introduced - Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, and Unova - faithfully extracted from copies of the original games. While you get to explore all five regions and begin playing from anywhere you want, there's a catch - you can't leave said region without completing its core story.

PokeMMO's other selling points include:

• Streamlined Pokemon breeding for competitive purposes
• Integrated tournaments using the same competitive tiers from Smogon's popular Pokemon Showdown simulator
• Player matchups built on the mechanics from the beloved Generation V

Some fans agree that the series doesn't feel the same in their adulthood without healthily approaching the competitive scene. As such, this MMO should appeal to both casual fans looking for a fun way to spend weekends with friends and serious fans looking to predict their opponent’s next moves.

The catch is that since this game runs on ROMs, players are expected to extract the files from the original games' copies before playing. Today, the games included in PokeMMO are often expensive, living up to their franchise's worth. Regardless, this should serve as a treat for all Pokemon fans.

9. Pokemon Clover - https://poclo.net/

Mom would hate this one.

Note: this fangame contains mature content unsuitable for children and satirical humor with the potential to offend sensitive players.

Despite the controversy surrounding the website, there’s no denying that 4chan has played a crucial part in Internet history akin to Pokemon’s role in gaming. Launched in 2014, Pokemon Clover is a total-conversion ROM hack of the classic Pokemon FireRed (where I started with the franchise!) that parodies the chaotic, memetic culture of the 4chan imageboards.

Like the original game, Clover contains 386 Pokemon to catch. All of these are original creations. Some parody famous memes, such as “Pengas” (inspired by “pingas”) or “Falcaptain” (inspired by Captain Falcon), while others poke fun at more sensitive topics. Completionists can find over 100 hours of quality content, starting in the Fochun region and ending in the Ebin Isles.

8. Pokemon Insurgence - https://p-insurgence.com/

For when you gave up hope after Gen VII.

The first standalone game on this list is Pokemon Insurgence, created with the Pokemon Essentials kit for RPG Maker XP. Set in the Torren region, Insurgence’s plot is a more mature approach to the world of Pokemon. Legendary-worshiping cults roam the region, often killing for their mission.

The game offers varied difficulty levels, character customization, secret bases, fan-made Pokemon forms, new items, and postgame content to keep completionists busy. Combat is based on the mechanics from Generation VI, with minor tweaks.

Like the official franchise, Insurgence boasts over 900 Pokemon to choose from. While the first 721 are near-perfect recreations of the species from Generation I through VI, the last 200 are alternate forms including Delta Pokemon, with different types and stats.

7. Pokemon Adventure Red Chapter - https://www.gbahacks.com/p/adventure-red-chapter.html

Even the infamous Arbok scene is faithfully recreated.

Pokemon Adventure Red Chapter is another ROM Hack for Pokemon FireRed, adapting the events of the first few volumes of the Pokemon Adventures manga. The manga is well known for being franchise creator Satoshi Tajiri’s favorite adaptation of the Pokemon universe, as it portrays the game world as he imagined it.

Some characters and events also come from the famous anime franchise, including Team Rocket’s Jessie and James, and the armored Mewtwo. In terms of gameplay, the Red Chapter boasts four playable characters with portraits corresponding to their dialogue, quality-of-life changes from games released after FireRed, multiple regions to explore, a boosted level cap, a stat analyzer, and Pokemon fusions.

Fans of the franchise should treat reading the manga as a rite of passage - and the amount of developers’ passion that went into this project proves its importance.

Once again, please note that Gamers Decide does not endorse piracy and condones homebrew ROM dumping for those who own the original copies of the games.

6. Pokemon 3D - https://pokemon3d.net/

 

A snowbound Azalea Town - one of my favorite fictional towns.

Just as the recent release of Legends Arceus has proven, many fans of the Pokemon franchise can agree that they’d enjoy a more immersive take on the franchise - and Pokemon 3D sets out to do exactly that. Currently, the game only adapts the world of Pokemon Gold and Silver to a first-person perspective, but the goal is to cover all future generations of the franchise.

Like Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, the game itself is a largely faithful recreation of its inspiration, for the sake of nostalgia. However, the game’s official forums boast hundreds of free mods to enhance the player experience. Players may replace their Pokemon’s battle cries with their voices from the anime series, choose different starter Pokemon, or replace the nostalgic art and music.

Not that I’d want to myself - the franchise’s aesthetic is just plain timeless. I wish I could go into detail about how Littleroot Town’s theme makes me feel nostalgic even though I didn’t play Ruby and Sapphire as a kid but I don’t get paid to digress!

5. Pokemon Reborn - https://www.rebornevo.com/pr/index.html/

The Byxbysion Wasteland - and this is all just one big map.

Note: this fangame’s official wiki (https://pokemon-reborn.fandom.com/wiki/Home) states that some content may be more triggering for sensitive players.

The Pokemon franchise is often misconstrued as being only for children - which is unfair, considering how some Pokédex entries could put Stephen King to shame. That’s why the developers of Pokemon Reborn set out to write a darker and edgier original story for more mature fans to play, all in the RPGMaker XP engine.

Reborn is set in a region plagued with decay. Black smog and acid rain hint at severe climate change. The general population lives in fear of unregulated crime and nostalgia for past prosperity. 

Reborn combines the third-Generation aesthetic with the gameplay content of the rest of the series up to Generation VII, including the more recent Field Effects. Players can obtain every available Pokemon, battle at 18 gyms, and find even more fresh content over 55 hours.

4. Pokemon Team Turbo - https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Team_Turbo

Y’know, you’d think they’d just be rolling in the balls instead of spinning like tops.

Pokemon Team Turbo is a racing game with six courses and five minigames. Players may participate in these races using one of 20 playable Pokemon or participate in minigames to earn power-ups for use in the races. Unlike the other games on this list, this one is an official racing spinoff rather than a fan-made RPG.

The six courses include little quirks not typically seen in other racing games. One involves collecting dominoes with letters from the player’s name for speed boosts, one involves hitting pictures of opponents, and one allows players to grind into them.

3. Pokemon Unbound

Imagine showing this Moltres to your kid self.

Pokemon Unbound is another ROM hack of FireRed set in the Borrius region. Here, the echoes of a war that ended with devastation many centuries ago have come back to haunt humanity in the form of an organization known as “The Shadows”, who wish to bring it back for unknown reasons.

This hack utilizes the Complete FireRed Upgrade, a set of hacker tools to update the FireRed ruleset to more modern standards. Unbound includes Pokemon from the first seven generations and all their moves and abilities. It also includes over 75 missions, a feature not common to the main Pokemon series but occasionally seen in spinoffs, allowing players enough content to procrastinate completing the storyline.

Additionally, Unbound boasts hundreds of character customization options, plenty of time-restricted events, a few minigames and puzzles, and finally, for those who feel as though they’ve run out of things to do, a postgame arguably richer than that of the Sinnoh games.

2. Pokemon Uranium - https://pokemonuranium.co/

Looks like one of those hoax videos from the mid-2000s.

Pokemon Uranium, like Clover, features mostly fan-made Pokemon species across the Tandor region, in which the player character participates in the traditional eight-gym adventure repeated in almost every generation of the series. The story revolves around his mother’s disappearance after an explosion at a local power plant causes widespread irradiation across Tandor.

Initially, the game would have included multiplayer features like the beloved Global Trade Station. However, the game was unfortunately scrapped, as Nintendo would issue its creators a DMCA takedown notice. While the official game is gone, fans on the Internet have uploaded backup versions of the game to share.

1. Pokemon Trading Card Game Online - https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-tcg/play-online/

“You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

Pokemon Trading Card Game Online is a simulation of the real-world Pokemon trading card game with added RPG elements, much like the ’90s Game Boy Color game. Players may battle computers, or each other, with the same 60-card deck structure.

Each game mode offers a different twist on the classic game. Trainer Challenge limits players to using themed decks, rewarded with booster packs. Versus Mode allows for more customization unless the Theme Mode is enabled, allowing for a more personalized experience with greater rewards.

What better way to top this list than with an official game made by the Pokemon Company? This one’s one of few adaptations of the famous trading card game, soon to be replaced with Pokemon Trading Card Game Live - so check it out while you still can.

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