#1 - Pokémon Emerald: Too Many Types is a mod of Pokémon Emerald that adds new types in the game. A lot of new types. Just... way too many types.
Pokémon debuted with Pokémon that could have up to two types from a pool of 15. A 15x15 grid of match-up knowledge to deduce and memorize to understand the basics of the game and 120 different combinations of types that could exist. That's a lot to learn in one game! And with inconsistent information in 1998 in magazines and even the manual, you had to deduce that stuff yourself if you really wanted to know if Psychic did double damage to a Ghost/Poison type.
That pool of types would be expanded to 17 a generation later and 18 in Gen VI. The grid was expanded to have 99 new matchups, 51 new type combinations. This is a good amount of additional complexity, but for those who have been playing since the beginning, a large portion of it has been solved for decades. You just never got that experience again of figuring out what your little fire dude was good against and what would destroy him.
So in walks in Pokémon Emerald: Too Many Types, kicking the door down and throwing you back to square one.
18 types with 324 matchups? Baby math. Get back to kindergarten. I'm not through the game yet, but so far I have discovered *54* types. That's *2916* type matchups.
And that's not all. Pokémon can have up to three types now. You ready for that shit? That's *28558* type combinations. Now try deducing why this Magic type move was not very effective versus this Water/Silly/Fluffy type. Was it 0.5x? 0.25x? Maybe even 0.125x? Who knows! Play the game and deduce that shit. Find more Pokémon, maybe one that is even a mono-type so you can get that rare glimpse at pure match-up knowledge.
Every encounter becomes an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to test a new move type, an opportunity to get a new Pokémon to level and learn its weaknesses and strengths.
Obviously, this is the main draw of this mod: for freaks like me who are given the opportunity to create a Google Sheets document that looks like a conspiracy board to try and find out the Song match-up. But you can obviously just look up the Type chart online if you find no enjoyment out of this aspect of the game and just want to do a silly playthrough of a Pokémon classic.
Plus this mod has a ton of great quality of life features, from giving you key items that function as HM moves, infinite Rare Candies to remove leveling, items to change Pokemon natures and abilities, in-menu relearning of old moves on your Pokémon, infinite use TM's, moves being split into physical and special, etc. etc. It gives you a wonderful way to play through Pokémon Emerald, whether it's your first time or tenth.
And that's not even talking about the Pokédex! Pulling from every generation up to Gen VIII (maybe Gen IX, but I haven't seen a Gen IX Pokémon yet), it replaces the Pokémon of the original Gen III Pokédex with favourites from across Pokémon history while retaining the (relatively) lean Pokédex size of Gen III. And all those newer Pokémon have new custom sprites that look fantastic and feel right at home on the GBA.
Is this is a hyperspecific game of the year that I doubt anyone else will even consider on their list? Yes. But I'm okay with that. Because this scratched an itch I didn't even consider needed scratching after 25 years.
