HeartGold Generations

HeartGold rebuilt with every generation's Pokémon and modern mechanics.

HeartGold Generations keeps Johto and Kanto, and rebuilds the game around a much larger Pokémon roster and modern battle rules. hg-engine, the engine under it, is a community overhaul of English HeartGold: more Pokémon, abilities, moves and items, Mega Evolutions, the Fairy type, hidden abilities and 30 PC boxes.

By

spearmintz

Built on

Pokémon HeartGold (DS), on BluRosie's hg-engine

Version

2.0 (September 2025)

What the game adds

• Around 950 Pokémon from over 500 families, across all nine generations, with trade and cross-generation evolutions available
• Mega Evolution, and a level cap to stop over-levelling
• Infinite Rare Candy and Pocket Heal for grinding, and a portable PC on the L button
• Buyable nature mints and ability capsules
• Type changes for underused Pokémon
• Free Heart Scales after 7 gyms and free Master Balls after 8
• An unlocked 60 fps frame rate, and the Kanto gym leaders as an endgame boss rush

With Tallgrass

• Live party, read straight from DraStic's memory while you play (DS games need no RetroArch commands)
• Your location and the route's wild encounters, with seen and caught marks from the Pokédex
• All 30 PC boxes, live
• The Journey, including PC catches with real names and levels
• Versioned backups of your .dsv save
• Every trainer, a Bosses page with each gym leader, Elite Four member, rival and villain boss and their teams, plus shops and items, including this hack's own shop stock

Good to know:

• DS memory moves while the game runs, so roughly one live read in ten fails. Tallgrass keeps the last good party, so you shouldn't notice.
• OpenHome doesn't support this hack's saves.

Getting started

1. Get the hack from the official thread. Tallgrass doesn't download or share ROMs: patch your own copy of English HeartGold, as the thread describes.
2. Put the ROM in your RetroPie nds folder, and play it in DraStic.
3. Open Tallgrass → Setup and choose HeartGold Generations. It checks that DraStic can be read by Tallgrass (the ptrace_scope check) and finds your save in DraStic's backup folder.
4. Start the game and load your save. The party appears on the dashboard within a few seconds.

Full install and setup steps are in the guide.

Official and useful links

• HeartGold Generations on PokéCommunity: The official thread, with downloads and updates.
• hg-engine: The engine the hack is built on.

Written from the hack's public information and Tallgrass's own testing, for the version above. Features change between releases, so the official thread is the authority.