Pokémon Secrets and Rumours

Pokémon Secrets and Rumours is a hack with a long history and many past incarnations. The goal of the hack has always been to re-create the world of Pokémon Red, "The way WE PRETENDED it was supposed to be" by incorporating as many of the old rumors as possible. While there were countless variations of rumors circulating the internet, and many of them containing varying degrees of "implementability", this hack still aims to recreate the world that we all wanted to exist in the late 90s Pokémon World.

=Basic Plot=

The player starts in Pallet Town and receives hist first Pokémon from Professor Oak. He has a choice between Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur. His rival is Professor Oak's grandson, Gary/Blue. The player travels the Kanto region, collecting the 8 official badges, as well as a few unofficial gyms in places like Brick Town that don't appear on maps. After defeating the original Elite Four, the player can travel to Cerulean Cave and encounter the legendary Mewtwo. The goal is to catch 'em all- All 151 original Pokémon, as well as the super-powerful Pokégods such as Pikablu.

=History=

First Version
This hack was originally started on Pokécommunity in 2005 by Mateo and Pyro, the founding members of Skeetendo, Inc. In its first incarnation, the hack barely resembled Red Version, and had a number of ridiculous additions and changes that made no sense. Notable inconsistencies in the first version were:
 * Not starting from Pallet Town.
 * Not getting your starter from Professor Oak
 * Visiting Mr. Pokémon's House on Route 2, instead of receiving Oak's Parcel in Viridian City
 * Playing as Brendan from Pokémon Ruby instead of Red/Ash.
 * Numerous glaring text errors.
 * MANY people with nonsensical text. For example: "OAK: How do you like my lab? Dirty, huh? Yeah, that's why I got aids..." (Which probably wins the "Typo of the Year" award.)
 * A Gym Leader in Brick Town that spoke broken German and resembled Hitler much more than he needed to.
 * A man in Pewter City who would give the player an unlimited number of free Lv5 Rattatas for no apparent reason.
 * A woman in Viridian City that claimed to be "impersonating a Berry Tree" and would give an unlimited number of BERRY items to the player, despite the fact that Berry Trees should not exist in a Red remake.

Later
The hack was abandoned in 2007, due to (understandable) belief that people would not enjoy the hack in its current form, and due to a lack of understanding of how the game's scripting engine worked. However, after working on other projects and getting a better grasp of scripting, the hack was restarted and released in June of 2009. This became "The" version that was available for a long time. However, while it was much closer to Red than the original, it still had many inconsistencies. Some of the more notable were:
 * A Potion in an item ball sitting on top of the stairs in the player's room, instead of one in the PC as it should have been.
 * Starting with Eevee instead of the original starter choices.
 * The rival starting with Pikachu instead of an original starter.
 * An unobtainable key item, the Explorer Kit, which would have allowed excavation of fossils and opening Secret Base locations.
 * A re-designed Mt. Moon

Current Version
After a good facebook conversation with Redstar, it was decided that the hack should be re-designed yet again to make it even closer to Pokémon Red. This meant a return of the original starters, return of the original design for Mt. Moon, and many other things. The current version was released in 2012 and covers events from Pallet Town to Brick Town, and introduces a few other locations. This version also introduced Pikablu, the Mist Stone, and a way to obtain Mew.

The Future
After discussions with Cartmic, concerning accuracy in re-creating Red on the Gold and Silver engine, and with current advances in hacking the Generation I games, it has been announced that the hack will become a Red Hack (as it should have been all along). This will mean less time is spent attempting to re-create what was originally there, and more time adding what we wished was there instead.

=Connectivity=

Unlike most games, connectivity with other games is currently disabled in the most recent beta. This is due to concerns about the use of Pokégods in competitive battles, and to avoid the hassles of attempting to trade them to other games. While trading them to games that do not have them in the game code will of course be impossible (They would appear as another Pokémon, and be declared "irregular"), this would still be a frustration to players. However, when the game switches to being a Red Version-based hack instead of being based on Silver Version, connectivity will be restored.

=New Features=

Pokégods
One of the primary rumors that circulated the internet in the late 1990s was the existence of several super-powerful Pokémon known as Pokégods. As such, several of them will be included in this hack, although currently only Pikablu is present. The proposed list contains (but is not necessarily limited to):
 * Charcolt
 * Rainer
 * Sapusaur
 * Pikablu
 * Raticlaw
 * Spooky
 * Mewthree

New Locations
A few new locations have been added to Kanto in order to help flesh out the rumors a bit. The following locations have been added in the current demo, and are planned to be included in the Red-based release as well:
 * Brick Town
 * Abandoned Warehouse
 * Volcano
 * Volcano Research Lab

Beta Information
Like official games, this hack also contains a few beta locations that can be found by poking around with map editors. These include:
 * A map representing a route in the grass to the left of Pallet Town.
 * A map representing the beta form of Violet City from Gold and Silver Versions.
 * Events belonging to a small, unfinished town to the North of Route 3, similar to Brick Town that was scrapped because it was not rumoured. It would have been accessed through a new exit in Mt. Moon, that was visible in the 2009 version.
 * An unused warp event in the gate between Pewter City and Route 3.
 * Warps on some of the buildings in Brick Town that lack doors to use them. The maps connected do not necessarily reflect the buildings' future purposes.
 * A number of unused Items can be found. Most are useless, some serve an actual purpose.
 * While Missingno. cannot be encountered in this demo, there is Pokémon data for a few of his forms. One is his standard "sprite", the others are used in the Pewter Museum of Science to display fossils.

=Continuity=

This hack takes place in Kanto, three years before the events of Pokémon Gold and Silver. As such, it is supposed to be the same as the original Red Version, only with features added based on the rumors people invented and circulated. Also, while it is not technically part of the Johto Legacy series, it is often referred to in that series, establishing it as "That series' version of Generation I".

=Reception=

The hack been very well received, and was awarded the Hack of the Week award on Pokécommunity for 2/24/2008.

=Screenshots=

=Trivia=


 * The choice of starters in the previous version was based on an "inverted-Yellow-Version" scenario. It could be seen as, "What if Gary had been distracted and didn't steal your Eevee at the start of the game?".
 * Eevee as a starter was also a reference to the discontinued hack, Pokémon Sterling Silver.
 * The Volcano Research Lab uses the same basic map layout as the scrapped "Pewter City Police Department" from the 2009 release.
 * There is a secret, hidden "Pokémon" fully inserted in the game, that can only be encountered through the use of Gameshark code. Entering "01CBEDD0" and battling any wild Pokémon will force an encounter with the secret Pokémon.