Pokémon Unbound

A FireRed hack with four difficulty settings, raids, missions and plenty of quality-of-life.

Pokémon Unbound began development in 2016 and is a full game with its own region, story and postgame. It runs on the same engine as Radical Red, so the two share most mechanics, and Tallgrass handles them alike.

By

Skeli

Built on

Pokémon FireRed (GBA), on the CFRU engine, which Skeli also made

Version

Completed in December 2020, with updates since

What the game adds

• Four difficulty options, from Vanilla (close to a traditional game) up to Insane
• Mechanics from later generations, up to Gen 8: the physical/special split, the Fairy type, Mega Evolutions, Z-Moves and Dynamax
• Unlimited bag space and auto-run
• DexNav and daily raids
• Over 80 missions to complete

With Tallgrass

• Live party with IVs, EVs, nature and moves
• Route encounters by time of day (morning, day and night, matching the game's own schedule), with seen and caught marks
• The Journey with an optional Nuzlocke view
• All 25 PC boxes, live and from save files
• Versioned save backups
• Every trainer, plus a Bosses page with each gym leader, Elite Four member, rival and villain boss and their teams, documented on this site

Good to know:

• Hidden abilities show the regular ability, because the hidden-ability flag isn't decoded yet.
• Only some trainers are placed on maps so far; all are listed.

Getting started

1. Get the game from the official thread. Tallgrass doesn't download or share ROMs: use a patch on your own copy of FireRed, as the thread describes.
2. Put the ROM in your RetroPie gba folder.
3. Open Tallgrass → Setup and choose Unbound.
4. Bringing a save from another emulator? Setup can convert a .sav to the .srm RetroArch reads. It keeps your old files and trims the copy to the right size.

Full install and setup steps are in the guide.

Official and useful links

• Pokémon Unbound on PokéCommunity: The official thread, with downloads and updates.
• Unbound community wiki: Fan-maintained pages on locations, Pokémon, missions and difficulty.
• OpenHome: A save editor and Pokémon bank that supports Unbound saves. See the guide's editing section.

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.