posted: 2025-11-18
Refractions on a Shattered Vase - A Tale About Pokémon Emerald Seaglass
Behold the tale of the unparalleled Flouis1 and his conquest across the dreamy landscapes of the Hoenn region. Attend this tale told on the surface of the shattered remains of this vase blown from only the finest sea glass. See how these fragments bend the light? This craftwork is a true indicator of an artist’s careful touch. It is a shame that the vase cannot exist today in the way it once could. One must wonder how this vase came to be in such a sorry state. Still, these shards here tell a fragmented tale, once that I shall recount to you today. Fear not my friends, I have made the effort to put the pieces in order. You must forgive me if there are any inaccuracies, or if Flouis’s mythical presence is misrepresented.
Observe with awe as he and his ally Teshie2 lay waste to the Hoenn region through Teshie’s divine providence with her innate gifts given by God3 themselves4. She sits there smiling, absorbing the pain from a toxic poisoning, calm as can be as she outlasts even the most powerful opponent from the most powerful trainer in Hoenn. Truly, God must have favorites.
Tremble in fear at Flouis’s mighty Boot5 as he6 shoots, slices, and kicks his way to glory against anyone who dare stand in his path. To Flouis, his foes are naught but ants beneath his Boot.
Cower at the might of Nimbus Jane7, the beast which reigns supreme with but a single shake of its cumulus cloud wings. Oh, how Nimbus Jane loves Flouis; her unyielding adoration gives her the strength to annihilate the darkest of foes. While others might sing about their love, she demonstrates her strength by her actions instead.
Agatha Rex8, the queen of iron, stands beside these warriors prepared to exhibit her regal strength. From her beginnings as an urchin hiding in the darkness beneath a simple rock, she has manifested her ascension and claimed her presence as one of the legendary forces of the world with her Iron Crown9.
Should a foe observe this foursome and hear the toll of a bell, it may be the final sound that enters their ears. This bell comes from no tower, but from a being long thought useless. In this reverie is where Coffee Cake10 11 finds its true strength in the form of a robust reimaging of its innate weaknesses and resistances. Its ability to float and now resist many attacks with its steely body makes it an omen of impending earthquakes. Heaven help those who hear its toll and feel the earth begin to tremble beneath their feet.
And last stands the bastard child, Moonshine12 13. The gift that was afforded to Flouis that he did not want nor need. The child who had to carve her place into the team when faced with Teshie’s more declared role as “starter” stands amongst the other five. She has not been taken for granted like so many others of her kind and has earned her place amongst the champions.
These six unflinching paragons of Flouis’s will will live on through tales of those who have had the misfortune of standing in their path. Love them. Fear them. You cannot defeat them. You cannot defeat nature. You cannot impede Flouis.
~***~
Pokémon Emerald Seaglass is a boutique romhack of Pokémon Emerald created by Nemo622. Whereas many modern Pokémon romhacks aim to increase the difficulty of the main quest to appeal to the hardcore Pokémon audience that would play a romhack in the first place, Pokémon Emerald Seaglass instead alters Pokémon Emerald’s entire presentation. The base of Pokémon Emerald Seaglass is built upon the third generation of Pokémon, but the aesthetics pull from the second generation. Sprites are made to look as if the Hoenn region were designed to be played in Pokémon Crystal (or at least, what you remember the sprites from Pokémon Crystal looking like). Pokémon that existed in Pokémon’s second generation have simple, touched up modernizations of their sprites from Crystal, while Pokémon from later generations have been recreated in this restricted style. If you ever wondered what a Swampert might have looked like if it had been released in Generation 2, look no further. The magnitude of new sprites is staggering, and the quality of each addition leaves the player with a slacked jaw and a twinkle in their eye. Towns in Pokémon Emerald Seaglass appear as though they were lifted straight from the hyper-detailed pixel “remasters” of Pokémon towns found on DeviantArt or TAHK0’s twitter profile circa 2015. Exploring the world of Pokémon Emerald Seaglass is like wandering through a work of art that could only be created by someone with an acute vision and a deep understanding of what would appeal to a specific subset of hardcore Pokémon fans. Because who would choose to cram every single mechanic into Pokémon Emerald and also try to make their game look like a work of art, if not a maniac with a deep adoration of the experiences they had with the Pokémon franchise which started with the Gameboy Advance14?
I too enjoy the Gameboy Advance. I enjoy the Gameboy Advance enough to buy a machine designed to emulate games while matching the form factor of the original device. I didn’t buy an Anbernic to play Pokémon Romhacks, but I opted to do so here because of Pokémon Emerald Seaglass’s more approachable design15. What can I say? If I wanted to play competitive mons, I would hop on one of my Showdown alts hovering around 1600 ELO16.
~***~
And even if you somehow could defeat these six generals commanded by their Napoleonic leader, it still would not be enough. For you see, these are just a subset of Flouis’s warriors raised by his infinite riches and endless wishes. For as many allies Flouis brought to his final battle, just as many he chose to leave behind. Look here at this piece to see what I mean.
First, he left behind his simple companion Redbert17, a canine intended to intimidate his enemies. The fear in their hearts subsided as they grew stronger than Redbert, and so Flouis set him aside. Those through history who claim to have spoken with Flouis report that he intended to bring Redbert back to his former glory, but this never came to pass. Redbert was never seen with Flouis after his sacking of Slateport City.
The Floozy18 shared this fate as well. The Floozy, as Flouis referred to her, was doomed well before Flouis ever recruited her. Despite her entire distinct self, she was familiar to Flouis. No one could discern this irrational understanding, nor this careless name for such a Timid creature such as The Floozy, even when she had matured into her strongest form. It is said that she would never have been in Flouis’s final army, even if she could hold her own against even them.
Lingenberry19 was never strong enough to stand out amongst the group. Despite its ever-rising speed, its ever louder humming, its ability to breathe fire, it never had a role of its own. Always second fiddle, never the star. Lingenberry had grown slowly but had been saved for the time when its ability to negate any attack when timed right would be pertinent. Alas, it was forgotten when the fight against the father’s ape came to pass.
Panzey, the cephalopod tank, shared a similar fate. While her intrinsic type was novel to Flouis, she too was Doomed by the presence of the God-loved Teshie and the Bastard Gift Moonshine. To share one type with a soldier was a limitation, to share a second type was a death sentence. For as novel as an octopus firing pulses of water and bursts of fire was, there was no place left for her when the time came.
It seems strange that Flouis discarded Blinder20 21 given the time, energy, and violence that went into finding her. He spent days atop the spectral Mt. Pyre, using his Boot to quash all but the absolute strongest of her kind. And when it came to pass that out of more than one-hundred of its fallen compatriots Blinder was the only one to survive, one would expect that Flouis would then champion this warrior. But instead, after strengthening her muscles and testing her agility in ways no natural creature would ever be able to do on their own, Flouis too left Blinder to rot in its efforts. All the trauma and all the straining only to never realize her survivor’s potential. It is a curious thing that she never slashed Flouis’s neck with her dire claws.
Toke Me On22 is not a kind name to give to a warrior, but Flouis was far from caring or kind. Perhaps its brother, Uncle Jake, would have bothered to offer its name to Toke Me On, but alas, a name is not something that is easily given. Toke Me On’s absence from the final army was a surprise as it had been a mainstay of Flouis’s party. And yet, with Boot’s immediate offensive offerings, Toke Me On’s more defensive and passive approach to combat was less appealing to Flouis. That is not to diminish its strength and ability to outlast its opponents. But here we can observe Flouis’s preferred approach to combat: “It is better to destroy your opponent than to outlive them. The seeds of memory are eternal, best to pluck these seeds from the earth before they can sprout.”.
~***~
In buying my Anbernic RG35XXSP, I sought a way to detach myself from the reality of my world as presented through the flat panel of my Samsung Galaxy S22+. I wanted to avoid subjecting myself to the modern equivalent of a self-induced swirly full of zone-flooded shit every moment before getting out of bed in the morning and before falling asleep in the evening. My doctors told me that “beds are for sleeping and recreational intimacy”. While they didn’t say that beds aren’t for reading about the modern fascist American party’s daily updates, I would hesitate to say that reading anything about these sad sacks of meat constitutes as “sleep” , let alone “recreationally intimacy”. So then why was I doing that every morning and every night? This needed to stop. So, to fill this void I started playing Pokémon Emerald Seaglass with one hand.
Did you know that the Generation 3 Pokémon games can be played with one hand? If you go into the settings menu, you can set the control scheme to be “L = A”. It’s quite a handy feature. A game in one hand and a brerb in the other. I would be sipping my morning coffee with my right hand and Bullet seeding opposing Pokémon with my left 23. Unfortunately for me, there would be times where, because of the additions to the menus in Pokémon Emerald Seaglass I had to reach my thumb all the way across the Anbernic to press the B Button as the “EXIT” option had been removed. How this issue might have been mitigated, I dare not offer a solution lest I reveal my lack of understanding of romhacking methods. Yet, I think this is a facet of solo-dev romhacks as a whole- the design priorities of these romhacks are determined by one person. While these choices can be stress-tested amongst peers, an edge-case (voluntary) one-handed player such as myself demonstrate accessibility blind spots. I don’t intend to chastise Nemo622 with their decision to remove the EXIT option, but I wonder if it ever crossed their mind why the “EXIT” option was there in the first place. I have to assume that they had not considered the “L = A” option at all, as the “L” button is actually used to trigger a shortcut with the new DexNav mechanism. I never had an issue in one way or another with these systems overlapping, but I would personally consider this a small near-miss in the process of adding an admittedly very impressive feature into the game.
Yes, the DexNav, a feature from Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, the generation 6 remakes of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, is here in a Generation 3 game. This is not the only mechanic from future games that has been retrofitted to Pokémon Emerald. Beyond the omnipresent physical/special split introduced in Generation 4, Pokémon Emerald Seaglass includes an anachronistic smorgasbord of mechanics. It’s got the Fairy Type from Generation 6, Z-Moves from Generation 7, Experience Crystals from Generation 8, specific moves from all generations including both from the Legends and the Let’s Go Games, and any and all later generation evolutions for Pokémon present in the first three generations. Given the lack of Mega Evolution, Dynamax forms, and Terastallization mechanics -combinations of which can be found in other Generation 3 Pokémon Romhacks- it appears as these mechanics that are included have been hand-picked by Nemo622. When considering the inclusions of the Tinkatink and Applin line, in tandem with the hidden starters a picture begins come into focus: this is what Nemo622 would consider the ideal experience of playing through the Hoenn region. It is their answer to “well then, how would you do it differently?”. It is their dreamed reality, a refraction of my own experiences. They made this world, and I lived through it. And then I broke it.
~***~
What would take some trainers their entire lives only took a day for Flouis. Had he not chosen to commit war crimes against the various species on Mt. Pyre, perhaps he would have completed his conquest even faster. What baffles the mind, however, is that in his haste to become the strongest in the land, the world seemed to move faster with him. Innovation accelerated, submersible vessels were made by the hands of men at speeds that would astonish in the most intelligent societies. The plights of the two villainous teams all came and went in this time. The weather of the Hoenn region underwent a tumultuous fifteen minutes before returning to normal; was this truly a legendary event, or just another example of our world slowly shifting towards a new normal? Perhaps Flouis’s presence in our world radically unraveled the very threads of life that had been woven together so meticulously. Or maybe, the rules of this world never had any bearing on Flouis in the first place.
If we are to concern ourselves with Flouis and his strength, we must first consider his means. How could a child with no more than a decade in years, whose father was a humble Gym Leader and whose mother sat at the table all day mindless in her waiting for her son to come home, have as much gold has he did? It is as if he were able to spin it from the thread of life itself. He carried an unending supply of golden nuggets with him no matter where he went. He was a charlatan bouncing from town to town, selling his cursed ware to anyone who might be lured in by his riches. Perhaps then we might call Flouis a demon king and his companions his cursed army. Or maybe Flouis had learned the secrets of the universe, shared only by God themselves? Perhaps Flouis knew of a magical treasure box which contained this unending supply, which could only be accessed by speaking aloud a magical passphrase. Maybe this too is how he obtained his primary champion Teshie, by speaking the tongue of God and asking the universe for the power unknown to the rest of us mortals.
If God wanted us to know about the worlds parallel to our own maybe they would have given us powers that they seem to have afforded Flouis. Flouis must have known the secrets of the universe that can only come through the ability to relive this existence over and over again. Could it have been that Flouis’s single roadblock, Brawly’s Heracross was unique to our existence, something Flouis could not have predicted? Could Flouis have had the ability to revert reality to a previous state to ensure his victory? Could he have had the ability to do both, perhaps? For as irrational and illogical as it may be to suggest, so too are the dreams of a single person. When we live within the plastic bounds of a fantasy, the only thing that can limit us are the rules that we allow ourselves to follow. If the entire world were deformable, it would simply lack any meaningful form. Would we want to live in a world like that? Would Flouis?
If you’ll allow this humble storyteller a moment to offer his own opinion, rather than the true facts of the history gleaned from these shattered remains, please hear my speculation. I believe Flouis is not so different from you and I, in our darkest, most depraved moments. I believe Flouis is living out a fantasy that we mortals can only dream of. But I also believe Flouis’s actions reflect a perverse disrespect of the world in which we live in. Flouis does not respect what we have so meticulously crafted in this world, he only meant to demonstrate his superiority over it. He does not intend to linger and marvel at the architecture of our buildings; he only means to laugh that they do not remind him of his own world. He appears to care more about demonstrating his strength over every single opponent he might be able to face, rather than to explore the world in which these opponents inhabit. Does he think he already knows this world? Is he never surprised at the marvels of engineering? Does he not find beauty in the tiny sandbars of the seas? Is he incapable of finding beauty in a small, mountainous town flourishing with flora despite an atmosphere filled with falling ash? What does Flouis love? Does he even love himself? Or will he continue his conquest into a new world with a new name and a new army? I suppose we may never know.
As quickly has Flouis arrived into our world, his departure was just as abrupt. No one has seen Flouis since his final fight with the champion of our realm, for as long ago as it was. Under normal circumstances, the Champion’s title is passed onto the victor of a given clash. But In Flouis’s absence, the title was never formally transferred. It remained with its previous owner as we worked to return the balance to our simple society. But if Flouis were to return, a new kind of tumult might rock our world once again.
But if you’ll allow this humble storyteller a second moment of speculation, I do not think Flouis will return to our world. With his own inexplicable familiarity of the Hoenn region, one must consider the impossible. One must assume Flouis called Hoenn his home, but that the Hoenn that we inhabit is not the one that raised Flouis. With his efficient and uncaring approach to our world, one must assume that Flouis never intended to stay here. And if one were to extrapolate this logic to its natural conclusion, it seems exceptionally unlikely that Flouis would actively choose to return to our world. This may be to everyone’s benefit. We may live in a world that can heal from thorough thrashing, better prepared for a second person like Flouis. And Flouis might find a place he might finally decide to respect and admire.
~***~
Playing through Pokémon Emerald Seaglass in the way that I did, I felt a strange sense of unease. I looked at myself every morning in the bathroom as I held my anbernic in my left hand and my toothbrush in my right. As the bristles vibrated over my molars, with my left hand scrunched into a claw I would navigate Flouis from one breezy battle to the next. It was easy to stop and start and stop again when pockets for a few minutes bubbled to the surface of my day. I would sneak into the machine long enough to move the needle of progress, and then evacuate from this fantasy before getting dressed for work. It became part of the routine, but it felt wrong, dismissive, and indulgent all at once. Beyond the mental trappings of rules from my youth (you don’t play video games before going to school), playing Pokémon Emerald Seaglass in this way felt like browsing a gravure magazine over breakfast in the same way one might a sports page from the local newspapaer. And I did this almost every day for three weeks until, twenty-eight hours and twenty-eight minutes later, I toppled Wallace with my overpowered party of mons I had obtained from the built-in methods to break the game.
I smashed the sea glass vase and then was left to appreciate its craftsmanship through the shattered pieces upon the floor. The vase, by its very nature could always be broken if mishandled, but I made the choice to smash it to pieces. But was it my fault? Was it not the fault of Pokémon Emerald Seaglass for refracting my own memories back at me for choosing to indulge in a parallel version of my own experiences, forcing my hand? Was it Emerald Seaglass's fault for having these mechanism in the first place? No. The fact remains: I broke the vase because I could, and because no one would stop me.
To enjoy Pokémon Emerald Seaglass like this is to indulge in a kind of perversion. It is fantastic and fascinating and fun in the moment, but then when you’re done you look at yourself and think “did I really just spend 30 hours doing that?”, and when it’s true that “yes, you did just spend 30 hours doing that”, you have to think to yourself, “was it worth it?” and maybe it was a fun time and a good distraction from the myth of the strong man perpetuating social media, but at the same time that’s 30 hours of time that you spent playing Pokémon Emerald AGAIN, but it wasn’t Pokémon Emerald either, it was one specific person’s dream of what they wished Pokémon Emerald would be, a dream that they dreamed so strongly that they just went and made it themselves, and you have to give them credit for it but then it makes you think “well what would I want Pokémon Emerald to be?” and you can’t find a good answer for that because Pokémon Emerald is already kind of exactly how you would want it to be 24.
So then, what did you really, honestly do besides break something beautiful for your own amusement?
end matter
the author hopes you have enjoyed this post. please consider posting in the guest book
please consider supporting Nemo622 by playing Pokémon Emerald Seaglass and their newest release, Pokémon Lazarus. Both hacks can be found in their linked ko-fi page.
Footnotes:
Flu for short.↩︎
The walrein↩︎
Pronounced “Jod”↩︎
(perfect IVs, EVs designed to maximize bulk, moves that emulate any effective low-tier Calm Mind Sweeper, ability that halves the damage from all physical attacks, which can also be switched to an ability that halves all the damage taken from special attacks using an in-game item if you so desire)↩︎
the Leafeon↩︎
Boot↩︎
the Altaria↩︎
three guesses↩︎
Wait shit no not Paradox Cobalion, not you, you’re not in this game.↩︎
The Chimecho↩︎
yes, its name is Coffee Cake, do you know how hard it is to make the name “coffee Cake” sound imposing? Gimme a break here. I didn’t expect to do some silly shtick like this when I set out to play Pokémon Emerald Seaglass, found a Chingling in Rustboro city and then realized that Chimecho is actually really fucking good.↩︎
The Blaziken↩︎
Because “Hooch” wouldn’t be an approrpriate name, imo↩︎
And if I’ve mischaracterized Nemo622 then oopsies!↩︎
I have found over the years that many Pokémon Romhacks, and perhaps romhacks in general, are designed with many common emulator systems. I cannot play Pokémon Fools Gold without a fast forward mechanism, and I cannot imagine playing Fools Gold without it given its adherenceto Generation 2’s systems. And heaven help the fool who dares play any kind of Kaizo romhack without having a damage calculator next to them. News flash, I did not bother to have a a damage calculator next to me in bed.↩︎
No, I will not tell you what their names are. One is named after a former player on Survivor.↩︎
The growlithe↩︎
The Gardevoir↩︎
The Yanmega↩︎
The Weavile↩︎
with the short i sound like in “wind” or “mince”.↩︎
The Arbok↩︎
I’m not someone who finds the act of preparing, making, or drinking any way romantic. Coffee, and caffeine for that matter, has always been a utility for me. Then again, up until 2025 this was because of my undiagnosed ADHD. Still, I am not a coffee snob, and don’t see myself becoming one anytime soon. It is my gasoline. It ruins my environments, but is a mandate of the society in which I participate.↩︎
If I could make my call, the only change I would make to Pokémon Emerald is to be able to run indoors. And I’m not joking.↩︎