Pokemon Black Moon 2 is a great challenge for veterans, if it wasn’t so ethically grey to play

REVIEW: This fan-made ROM hack defeats the series usual innovation formula of two steps forward, one step back.

Forest-dwelling Mallow is right at home in her new gym: A fashion show.

Who knew Pokémon Moon's aloof captain Mallow lived a second life as a fashion queen? I'm at the fourth gym in Pokémon Black Moon 2. In the original game, it belongs to Elesa, an electric-type trainer seemingly modelled after Lady Gaga. In that game, she battles you on a catwalk, after you face off against three other models en route to her. The music blares, and the whole section has its own electro version of the gym theme in the game — with some vocal work added to it too.

But here, Mallow, a cook and grass-type user, has taken up residence, and is sporting a fully decked out team of six well-trained plant Pokémon. She's also in her usual blue overalls, far from fashion show material. But who am I to judge what's in right now?

These moments of narrative dissonance are common in Black Moon 2, a ROM hack of Pokémon Black 2. Mina, who is a fairy-type trainer and artist, apparently got her pilot's license, taking over both duties as a gym leader and airplane captain from Skyla. As the game goes on, the plot beats get weirder, as one game (Pokémon Moon) is smooshed into another (Pokémon Black 2). There's a loose link. Both are based on the USA: with Black 2 set on the mainland and Moon based in Hawaii.

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If you read the script, the game starts to fall apart pretty quickly. The effort put into the visuals does enough to maintain the illusion of a new game. But anyone playing a Pokémon game for the plot is bound to be disappointed regardless. It's all about the gameplay with these titles, and in this regard Pokémon Black Moon 2 delivers in spades.

The creator has edited the game to replace many of the gym trainers and Elite Four with their Alolan counterparts, with new pixel art. They have also added Alolan Pokémon and created some regional variants for Unova too. Koffing, for instance, is a steel-poison type in this game, over its usual mono poison typing. Mega-evolutions — beefed up versions of already powerful Pokémon — introduced in Pokémon X and Y also make an appearance here. And so does Ash Ketchum, for some reason.

A couple of Pokemon that were not in the original Pokemon Black 2.

The original Pokémon Black 2 was a bold game that attempted to push the series in a more adult direction — and it was the last to do so. It was released with an unlockable challenge mode for veteran players, though it was difficult to access and required a friend with another copy of the game. It also played host to the Pokémon World Tournament, where you could face gym leaders from every past region as well as other veteran trainers — a prime training ground for competitive play.

In a sense, Pokémon Black Moon 2 is the spiritual successor of this title. It ups the challenge of the original game and meshes together battle mechanics from later titles to create something pretty unique and fascinating to play. The challenge mode in the original is unlocked from the get-go. No weird gimmicks required. Each gym leader has six Pokémon — up from the usual three to four. Their AI has been improved too. As early as the third gym, I started to see strategies being deployed that are used in competitive play, which made overlevelling your team — a fairly standard way of steamrolling gyms in the base game — redundant. Emulating the game as a ROM on the Steam Deck, you can also speed up the game helping you power through what would be a real grind by today's gameplay standards. That said, it's not the most stable game. My rendition freezes periodically, forcing me to save every few minutes like it's nobody's business. The music and visuals here are roughly the same as the DS original, though the graphics can be upscaled on the Steam Deck.

So why not just play the original game? It's actually pretty difficult to get your hands on Pokémon Black 2 these days. Second-hand copies of the physical game go for well over $200 online. Nintendo is also painfully slow at remaking Pokémon games — and some are actually worse than the originals.

ROM hacks essentially take the canvas of a game, and either add to or edit it to create a new title. They aren't sold online and are free to play with an emulator. They are made out of love — and to practice game design — rather than to turn a profit. And that's exactly the case here.

Emulation is a grey area in gaming. Let's not beat around the bush: At a surface level it's piracy. ROM hacks sit in a sub-sect of this, where yes, it is a free version of the game, borrowing elements of it. However, it's also a new title. (For the record, I own Pokémon Black 2 and purchased it at launch. I also have a DS to play it, but its now got mould on it?!)

In case it was in doubt: My dusty copy of Pokemon Black 2.

The complicating factor: some of these games aren't easily available. And the owners of their intellectual property do little to service fans that want to play them. In the case of Nintendo, it's made some effort to emulate its library as part of its subscription service. But DS and 3DS games don't appear on the platform. Neither do GameCube or Wii titles. This all ties into the deeper issue of video game preservation, but that's a piece for another time.

Nintendo will happily police the sector rather than expand aggressively into it. Instead of taking the Netflix or Spotify approach of abolishing content piracy by making a paid option that's easier (and safer, given the viruses that can be embedded in ROMs) than pirating, it opts to target the emulators that make playing these games possible. Perhaps the latter is cheaper?

However, it's arguable the ROM hack ecosystem benefits Pokémon. It draws more players into the game on the whole, and in some regards ROM hacks actually push the franchise further mechanically than the baseline games. The fact that Nuzlocke runs — a version of the game where if a Pokémon faints in-game, you remove it forever from your party — exist is a testament to the challenge craved by veteran players of the series. One that really isn't being delivered upon by the mainline games.

Ultimately playing ROM hacks, like Pokémon Black Moon 2, really comes down to the ethics of the player. With Pokémon games few and far between, and newer titles are somewhat brain-dead in actual game difficulty, ROM hacks provide an attractive option. That will never stop me, personally, from investing in the main game series though — and I suspect that's the case with many who pick up these titles.

If anything, Pokemon Black Moon 2 could provide inspiration to Nintendo and series’ creator Game Freak. It defeats the series usual formula of going two steps forward with a new mechanic, only to march it back before the next game. While playing it does open a can of worms regarding the ethics of emulation, it also preserves, advertises and celebrates the base game. A goal worthy of any fan-made addition to the Pokemon franchise.

Reviewed on: Steam Deck using Emudeck

Worth trying if you like: Pokemon games? Or other monster tamers such as PalWorld, TemTem or Ni No Kuni.

Available on: PC, Steam Deck