Hanging out on route 128 with my new best pal Archie
Posted by: greentyphlosion
Date: 2019-08-26 15:14:09
I've been playing through Emerald's story mode using walk through walls codes and warping codes to see if I can elicit any interesting sequence-breaking quirks. The only notable difference I've observed so far comes after obtaining the Lavaridge Gym badge. In RS if the player beats Flannery but whites out due to poison damage before leaving the gym, Brendan/May will be standing idly in the centre of town and the part where they give the player the Go-Goggles and recommend they challenge Norman can be skipped. In Emerald this also happens but Brendan/May react to the player's presence, so the Go-Goggles can't be skipped unless the Pokemon Centre that the player last used is in a different town (possibly they accounted for this too? still investigating).
Even the most minor of positioning alterations can seriously f**k with the game, though. I challenged Norman whilst stood behind him (where the player can't normally stand) and it meant I was unable to get Surf, since the sequence with Wally's dad doesn't trigger afterwards.
The image comes from after the Seafloor Cavern scene. I used a warping code to take me elsewhere when Maxie warps the player up to route 128, then warped back to the Seafloor Cavern and made my own way out. Depending on where you come up, you can watch Maxie and Archie's sprites head away from the player and blink out of existence where they'd usually be offscreen (always fun to witness). if you're too far north, however, neither of their sprites will move. Case in point: Archie is now perpetually frozen there on Route 128. He doesn't disappear if I leave the area and return, so this is pretty neat.
There's probably no way of replicating most of what I'm doing without codes, but it's interesting all the same - anyone have any requests or potentially interesting scenarios to try?