Darth Wiki / Pokemon Ass Version

A Pokémon Red romhack by Wax still under work.
The plot is simple: you, an eleven-year-old sheltered slave, are offered your very first Mon by Oak, who is the sole person of authority in the lost Pallet Town. He gives you the choice between Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle. His own grandson, The Rival, is put behind, just so he can outplay you and pick the mon that is efficient against yours.
In exchange for this mon, Oak wants you to fill his Pokedex's data by catching all the Pokemon from the Kanto region. All of this while your rival gets out to defeat the Pokemon Gym Leaders, collect their badges and beat the Elite Four to become the Champion, thereby granting Oak power over all the Kanto Region.
Along the way, you'll have to deal with another Pokemon-related world takeover attempt: Team Rocket also exists and Giovanni tries to upstage everyone by catching ghost Pokemon, forcing mass-production of Master Balls for his personal use, and becoming a Gym Leader.
Eventually, The Rival becomes the Champion by using Pokemon over level 100, most notable of which Mewtwo, who isn't catchable in this hack because it is the Final Boss.

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Pokemon Ass Version's story contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: The main character's mother doesn't care much about her son, but given what she's been subjected to at the hands of the Oaks, she's understandably broken.
• Angrish: The Bug Catchers in Viridian Forest when they're defeated, since they're based off of Smosh's Metrosexual Hipster.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Giovanni, Played for Laughs from his first appearance until he quits.
  • Quickly followed by Oak who has his world takeover attempt foiled, and even his grandson abandoning him.
• Character Development: Only The Rival and the main character have any. The Gym Leaders have for only growth their recognizing you as an enemy to Oak, and nobody else is seen often enough.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The Final Boss is The Rival's level 128 Mewtwo. The Rival's Madness Mantra after losing includes: "You can't beat Mewtwo!"
• Disappeared Dad: Guide Dang It! on who said dad is though.
• Free-Range Children: Both the main character and The Rival. However, it's a concern for the rest of the world instead of their parents, since both are the Kid With The Remote Control and unleash heaps of abuse onto the outside world.
• Jerkass: Almost everyone, including the main character.
  • The Rival takes the cake as he bullies everyone (the main character's mother being his favourite chew toy) he comes across. In this game, he is the one to fuse Bill with a Clefairy.
• Lampshade Hanging: Oak's Pokedex rating via PC makes little sense since only the main character and The Rival even have one. A panel (written by Lance) says: "Oak rates Pokedex via PC. But there's only 2 of'em."
• Meaningful Name: The rom itself. Everyone is an ASS!
• Shout-Out
  • The Player Character's Canon Name is Austin and The Rival's is Rock for a reason. They pick up Catchphrase after catchphrase and a bit of attitude from the two wrestlers over the course of the plot. Also, Giovanni bills himself as "the best there is", though he doesn't ever say the full catchphrase.
• Take Over the World: Oak and Giovanni's endgame. You have to foil both.
• World of Jerkass: It's the whole damn premise.

Characters

The Protagonist

Tropes associated with The Protagonist:

• Bastard Bastard -> Heroic Bastard: Starts out as the first, being out to take his anger out on everyone and their dog. He transitions throughout the journey and focuses himself on The Rival, helps that he mellows out a bunch.
• Canon Name: Austin.
• Catchphrase:

  "I won't do what you tell me."

• Expy: To "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.
• Put Them All Out of My Misery: Starts with a mindset akin to this, but eventually his hatred focuses on the Oaks.
• Rebellious Spirit
• Saving the World: As a side-effect of beating Giovanni, the Oaks' and Mewtwo's hides, the main character does this. He doesn't really care so much.
• Sociopathic Hero -> Unscrupulous Hero
• The Voiceless: Averted, he opens his mouth to berate many NPCs, even one guy who just doesn't have enough pokeballs to catch Pokemon with. The dialogue only gets extensive with more important persons, like The Rival or Giovanni.
• Worthy Opponent: The Gym Leaders admit feeling him as one and perceive his intent more and more with each passing defeat. Blaine takes the cake as he already knows the main character is good before fighting him.

The Protagonist's Mother

Tropes associated with The Protagonist's mother:

• Open-Minded Parent: Subverted. The only reason she lets her son go is because she Stopped Caring about her son and hopefully it gets The Rival off of her.
• Rape as Drama: Heavily suggested when she says that hopefully her son leaving gets The Rival off of her.

The Rival

Tropes associated with The Rival:

• Break the Haughty: His final defeat causes a Villainous Breakdown since after failing to Take Over the World for his grandpa, he is now useless and disposable.
• Expy: To The Rock, specifically Corporate Champion Rock.
• It's All About Me: He grows progressively into this. It gets worse once he gets Mewtwo, to a point Oak came to confirm his grandson's victory but also to reaffirm his authority.
• Large Ham: Gets hammier with time.
• Obligatory Swearing: He's still an example of Hello, [Insert Name Here], but at least he's still Hello, [Insert Name Here] MOTHERFUCKING OAK.
• Running Gag: He makes a Your Mom joke before running away after losing. When this gag ends, The Rival starts meaning business.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Eventually starts asking you to refer to him as "the rival".
• Took a Level in Badass: He starts being referred to as a figure of horror by Blaine, signalling he got Mewtwo. Everyone in Victory Road who talks about him is scared shitless of him and even Lance had to admit defeat.

Samuel Oak

Tropes associated with Oak:

• Bad Boss: He treats everyone like crap. Even The Rival is just a pawn for him. This ends up biting him in the ass when his grandson turns on him due to going It's All About Me too.
• Complexity Addiction: Forces The Protagonist to go fill a Pokedex to assist The Rival's efforts to become Champion all he wants. He could've just shot him but instead chose to force half of the world's hatred on a kid who has to complete, by said kid's words, "the shittiest sidequest ever". Which also hands him the opportunity to foil his plans.
• Expy: To Vince McMahon, except he takes the "I am the devil himself!" claim and runs with it.
• Obligatory Swearing: On one of the game's earliest lines.

  "My name is Oak. Samuel FUCKING Oak!"

• Troll: He let a sign in Viridian Forest behind a grass patch that says "You wasted time reading it.".

Gym Leaders

Tropes associated with the Gym Leaders:

• Quirky Miniboss Squad

Tropes associated with Brock:

• Shout-Out: "Heaven or Hell, LET'S ROCK!"

Tropes associated with Misty:

• Mood-Swinger: A total bitch before losing, Sickeningly Sweet after.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: The main character ticks her off by invoking this trope, her Berserk Button.

Tropes associated with Surge:

• Darker and Edgier: He threatens to zap you and beat your teeth out of your mouth, as well as butchering your Pokemon like in a slasher movie.
  • Which is a Shout-Out to his dialogue in the French version of the original game.
• Eagleland: Type 2, though he's not fat, but has the self-centeredness, aggressiveness and obnoxiousness to count.

Tropes associated with Erika:

• Flashback Nightmare: When you challenge her, you wake her out of one she's having about The Rival's rampage in her gym (he ravaged all the beautiful CUT trees).

• Straw Feminist: There's a reason her gym is full of girls.

Tropes associated with Koga:

• Catchphrase: Just like Naruto, believe it!
• Defeat Means Friendship: Expects this from the main character.
• Easily Forgiven: Invokes this, but the main character still doesn't like him.
• The Maze: His version of it has a blatant opening right in front of the entrance.
• Troll: If you walk directly into him, he'll talk forever about how hard the trials were while there's an opening right next to him, and you can take it.

Tropes associated with Sabrina:

• Combat Sadomasochist: She actually uses that whip she has. On herself.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Almost all there ever is about fighting her.
• Psychic Powers: As usual.
  • Power Perversion Potential: She lampshades hers', except she doesn't actually use it.

Tropes associated with Blaine:

• Angst: See My Greatest Failure for why. There's a reason he sheltered himself in his gym.
• Cool Old Guy: He has a bit of a nasty streak and another angsty streak, but that aside, he's the same Blaine we know.
• Heroic BSoD: He is in the middle of one, and the main character has to snap him out of it.
• My Greatest Failure: This game runs with the "Blaine created Mewtwo" theories. Getting beat by The Rival using the Pokémon he made makes Blaine worry for the world.

Tropes associated with Giovanni:

(see Team Rocket folder)

Elite Four

Tropes associated with the Elite Four:

• Quirky Miniboss Squad: More true to form than the Gym Leaders, since they're always together.

Tropes associated with Lorelei:

• The Ditz: Taking a page from Cirno, who is associated with ice.
• Dumb Muscle: Not as straightforward as Bruno, but she counts. Her Pokémon' are levels above 100. But she is also really stupid.
• Verbal Tic: She's got a lisp.

Tropes associated with Bruno:

• Charles Atlas Superpower: He's not the first to be mentioned to train with his Pokemon. He mentions, however, taking hits for them, which isn't reflected in gameplay.
• Dumb Muscle: He says he'll go into battle with his Pokemon, which is stupid considering what one can do to a human.
• No Indoor Voice: Not on default, but his KO scream (read: his dialogue upon being defeated) is in capslock, prompting a Deadpan Snarker answer from the main character.

  PC: "Ouch, my ears."

Tropes associated with Agatha:

• Never Say "Die": Defies the trope, mentioning killing the main character and the Oaks quite often in her dialogue. And after losing, she asks you directly to kill The Rival.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: To Oak. She's still the lesser evil of the two.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: After losing, she doesn't have a change of attitude.

Tropes associated with Lance:

• The Comically Serious: In the hatemail they sent to Oak.
• Godzilla Threshold: Lance did all his cheating to fight Mewtwo.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: His way of judging everyone's character: taking Hyper Beams to them.
• Playful Hacker: Mentions his "1337 H4x0r 5k1llz".

Team Rocket

Tropes associated with Team Rocket:

• Angrish: Some of them devolve into this upon defeat.
• The Four Gods: There are four Rocket brothers, and in this hack they're named Tiger, Bird, Turtle and Drach.
• Funetik Aksent: Many of their Mooks talk like they're black.

Tropes associated with Giovanni:

• Big Bad Wannabe: Definitely doesn't measure up to the original, much less the Oaks.
• Break the Haughty: On his first battle. He then is under a permanent Villainous Breakdown.
• Crazy-Prepared: He knew the main character would roll in at Silph Co. Some rockets shout "Main character alert!" or "NAME Alert!"
• Hair-Trigger Temper: In contrast to normal Giovanni. When you defeat him, he starts SPEAKING ENTIRELY IN CAPSLOCK!
• Rage Quit: On the entire game after his Viridian Gym defeat.

Pokemon Ass Version's gameplay contains examples of:

• Always Someone Better: [Insert name of rival here] Motherfucking Oak still always shows up ahead of you.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Charizard is a Dragon-type, as many wanted... but the other starters too become Dragon-type, along with enough other Pokemon that the Dragon-type becomes almost commonplace. And the type's weakness to Dragon plus the ubiquitous Hyper Beam now being Dragon-type means that Dragon isn't a broken type, and that makes Charizard the same Glass Cannon as before, with weaknesses just as blatant.
• Character Select Forcing: Defied in your starter choice. Despite the buffed stats, Venusaur isn't the starter of choice it is in the original game, mainly because Brock uses an Aerodactyl. Charmander also has an easier time against Brock due to getting Dragon-type attacks (with STAB) much earlier than the other starters.
• Com Mons: Rattata (and its evolution Raticate when you progress through the game) is still almost everywhere, especially in early-game zones, and mostly on the highest spot on the wild Pokemon list for any place, meaning you have around 25% chance of meeting one anywhere. This is much less than in the original game, but much more than any individual evolutionary line in the whole game. While the Com Mons aspect is downplayed, all Com Mons Took a Level in Badass.
  • Zubat got his status lampshaded on a panel in Mt.Moon, despite not quite being as frequent an encounter in this ROM.
    "Goddamn ZUBAT warning!"
• Critical Hit: Couldn't be nerfed. All instant-crit moves have lost power as a result.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Some Pokemon had their whole typing changed, most notably Ninetales, which from a pure Fire-type became a Ghost/Rock-type. Also, all stone and trade-related evolutions (except Eevee, who still evolves with stones) are changed to simple level-up evolutions which, due to the easy nature of the first levels, are bumped up. In consequence, not only will using a Leaf Stone not work to evolve your Exeggcute, you'll need to grind it up to level 47 to have an Exeggutor. Also, stopping evolutions is useless: any Pokemon learn all their possible attacks before evolving.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: Onix's status as this was defied, since it's been heavily buffed. It remains somewhat true though, as its base stat total is the lowest possible of all evolved Pokémon.
• Fixed Damage Attack: All were taken off of this hack. Only attacks that halve HP remain, but they are much more numerous as compensation, adding Toxic, Psywave, Submission and Confuse Ray.
• Final Boss: The Rival, and his Pokemon being at levels you can never reach as well as having Mewtwo while you can not get any Pokemon that's as strong as it makes due for the fact that his mons have no EVs.
• Glitch Entity : MissingNo is still here, and an easy way to farm these Rare Candies.
• Guide Dang It!: The way Oak gives you 5 Pokeballs still isn't mentioned. You need to beat The Rival on Route 22 before buying any Pokeball or getting more caught data (by evolving your starter).
  • Several facts about the story mentioned in this page are only stated by Word of God.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Well, duh.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Inverted: The League's levels are over 100 simply because they can, and your rival's Mewtwo is level 128.
• Level Grinding: While the enemies' levels (and the evolution levels too) are much higher, this is made much easier by several factors:
  • All mons maximum experience is 800000 instead of the standard 1000000 or more.
  • Non-fully-evolved Mons give much more EXP, making early level grinding around three times as fast.
  • You can actually enter Diglett's Cave before you fight Brock. The levels of the 'mons in this cave hover around the high-twenties or low-thirties, which you can reach by that point with some Level Grinding.
  • In Saffron City, you can buy Rare Candies, which can give your 'mons their last few levels.
• Magikarp Power: Except there's no absurdly weak critter anymore: even Magikarp itself gets respectable stats (though the ATK stat required to use Tackle definitely isn't its forte).
• Nerf: Some Generation I things had to be heavily nerfed.
  • The Special stat has been heavily reduced (at least relatively because of the huge general stat increase) for most non-legendary Pokemon.
  • Psychic-types: Their weakness to Ghost is put in the ROM properly (it wasn't a bug, but a programming error, easy to rectify) and Ghost-type Pokemon and moves are much more common, as well as resistant to it. And all of the makeshift counters that were used in Gen I were buffed: Jolteon with Pin Missile as the move always hits for high damage (as much as if your normal Pin Missile always hit 5 times), and some Fighting-types had their Special stat more-than-doubled (most notably Hitmonchan).
    • The Psychic move itself was nerfed. In that most moves received a huge powerup, and its power, while increased, is now relatively low.
    • Alakazam deserves special mention again: its 250 base Special, even with the stat increase, results in such Crippling Overspecialization to the point that its Speed got nerfed in a game that applied a 150% modifier to most bases. While you can still get one just as early (though Abra can only be found on Route 24), it's much harder to solo the game with it since its low Speed and Defense greatly hinder it.
    • Mewtwo is somewhat nerfed too despite his unobtainability. Most of its stats are relatively decreased, except Attack since it tries to fill the niche of both Mega-Mewtwos. And its Amnesia now only upgrades Special by one rank.
    • Mew is not nerfed the slightest bit, aside from the hardship of catching him due to the Special stat changes altering the requirements for the Mew glitch to actually cause an encounter with Mew (it's still possible to get one just as early), forcing you to either beat the game or get beat across Cerulean Cave if you want to get it before the League. In the event you use the Mew glitch to get it, it will not only know Pound as usual, but it has Psywave (which halves your HP), Night Shade (here a flinch move) and Psybeam.
    • Exeggutor's Special stat was nerfed, and due to its type-change giving it more weaknesses and a relatively reduced HP stat, it can't take beatings too well, and its base Speed isn't reliable at all.
    • Slowbro lost Amnesia's brokenness, making it lose most of its high-level ability.
  • Double Team. Evasion boosts disappear from this hack. All this move gives now is a simple Defense boost.
    • Minimize has been triply nerfed. All sprite-change moves are hacked to be self-kill moves with minimal or zero damage that absolutely nobody can learn properly.
  • The Toxic + Leech Seed combination doesn't work anymore: Toxic was changed to halving the opponent's HP.
  • High critical-ratio moves' power have been relatively nerfed (read:buffed less), though they're still viable to be spammed, with damage that can't be lowered and is still the best this side of Hyper Beam.
  • Blizzard. While freezing is removed, it's still a force to be reckoned with since if it hits, you still get a 30% flinch chance, meaning it can still act as a death sentence on a faster Pokémon.
  • Jolteon, despite its Psychic-counteracting buffs (usable Pin Missile, and a Normal type that resists Psychic in this hack), has taken a relative hit to its Special stat.
  • Wrap-trapping doesn't exist, limiting stunlock Death of a Thousand Cuts to flinch moves, that are not guaranteed due to the at best 30% chance.
  • Normal-type isn't the best offensive type in the game given the much more common spread of Rock (most Pokémon that evolved with stones in the original game instead become Rock-type here) and Ghost-types. Also, since all Status Effects were removed, Body Slam trades the 30% paralysis for a 30% flinch rate and has a lowered base power, and Hyper Beam being Dragon-type means no STAB on it for Normal-types (except Tauros, who is Normal-Dragon-type here).
  • Earthquake is less a catch-all offensive move now that it has 10% flinch and Poison isn't weak to Ground.
  • Snorlax got its special unchanged despite the massive increase in stats and it has relatively weaker HP than normal, but its Defense has massively increased. The Amnesia nerf means that its Special-tanking ability greatly suffers.
  • Chansey got more Attack and Defense, but it's really nerfed by comparison to the original game. Its Special-walling dominance is also put to a stop with its HP being unchanged from the original (due to being close to the cap).
  • Tauros keeps its very solid stats, but almost every other 'mon got buffed to its level (or close). It also gained a Dragon typing in addition to its Normal type, giving it an additional weakness to Dragon. Since Dragon-type is specially-based, Hyper Beam (which is Dragon-type) will probably take it out in one hit. Fighting-type moves being more common and more useful, plus Fighting-type 'mons being buffed, means it can be beaten more easily.
  • Persian got nerfed too, by becoming a Ground-type (to fit as Giovanni's ace) and consequently gaining more weaknesses. It underwent a stat spread change, with much more Attack but much less Speed, and Slash's power was relatively nerfed too. Besides, the much higher number of Ghost-types and Rock-types make STAB Slash much less threatening.
  • Starmie's Special nerf and its change to Water/Rock type make it much weaker, because of the additional Fighting and Ground-type weaknesses.
• One-Hit Kill: Somewhat defied. One-hit-KO moves are changed to be simply very powerful, no-effect moves. They can still easily result in OHKOs.
• Optional Boss: Mew is in the depths of Cerulean Cave. Though, it is level 64, and you have likely defeated Mewtwo to see it, so it won't put up a fight of any sort.
• Power Trio: Not only the starters and the Eeveelutions, but several other Pokemon have been reworked as such, sharing similar stats.
  • Parasect, Rapidash and Seadra now make one, with the same type as the starters (including the Dragon-type at their final levels of evolution). They become Pokémon of choice for your rival, since he gets one of them depending on your own starter, and Lance whips out all three of them.
  • Jynx, Electabuzz and Magmar are also treated as one.
• Sequence Breaking: The 7 first Gyms can be beaten in any order. Even Brock can be skipped since the guy who blocks your path doesn't realize there's a sneaky path just behind him. You don't need Cut to go to Surge and Erika's Gyms, making the Misty fight skippable. You also don't even need Surf anymore to go to Cinnabar and beat Blaine.
• Spam Attack: Attacks that could hit up to 5 times in the same turn were taken off to avoid randomness. Now they all hit twice.
• Status Effects: Defied: all are removed from the game.
• Useless Useful Spell: A useless useful buff in that Splash is now Water-type. But its effect (doing absolutely nothing) is unchanged.