Gen1Recomp

A native LÖVE2D recreation of Poke Red, Blue and Yellow. The engine and map behavior are hand-written Lua; game data and graphics are decoded from a ROM supplied by the player.

Caution

We are NOT affiliated with the website gen1recomp[.]com That website is not run by this project, was not authorized by us, and we have no idea who operates it. It is impersonating this project; do not download anything from it, and treat anything it hosts or claims as untrustworthy. Even if the site currently links back to this repository, the people behind it can change its content at any time, so nothing on it should ever be trusted. This GitHub repository and the Discord linked below are the only official sources for this project.

SUPPORT / ANNOUNCEMENTS / MODS: Discord

Watch the latest update video

This project does not include a ROM, emulate the Game Boy, transpile assembly, or download a disassembly. A canonical US Poke Red, Blue, Yellow, or Gold ROM is the only game content input.

The ROM is verified, used during import, and then released from memory. It is not copied into the cache. Later launches load the private generated cache and do not ask for the ROM again. Red, Blue, Yellow, and Gold can all be imported side by side. Gold is Gen 2 Phase 1 (import + launcher; see docs/gold-phase1.md): the Gen 2 engine is still under construction.

Quick Start

Open the desktop app. On first boot, choose your legally obtained .gb / .gbc file or drop it onto the window. Import takes a few seconds and the game starts automatically.

Only the canonical US Red, Blue, Yellow (1 MiB), and Gold (2 MiB) ROMs are accepted. The importer verifies SHA-1 before creating any game data:

• Red: ea9bcae617fdf159b045185467ae58b2e4a48b9a
• Blue: d7037c83e1ae5b39bde3c30787637ba1d4c48ce2
• Yellow: cc7d03262ebfaf2f06772c1a480c7d9d5f4a38e1
• Gold: d8b8a3600a465308c9953dfa04f0081c05bdcb94

The packaged app contains neither a ROM nor pre-extracted game data. Music, sound effects, and cries are synthesized while the game runs from compact audio channel programs copied out of the verified ROM.

A note on Windows Defender warnings

Windows Defender sometimes flags the Windows build with a generic machine-learning detection such as Trojan:Win32/Wacatac!ml (#621). This is a known false positive: the exe is the official LÖVE runtime with the game archive appended (the standard way LÖVE games ship), and Defender's heuristics distrust unsigned executables with appended data. Every release publishes SHA-256 checksums (sha256sums.txt) so you can verify your download, and you can confirm a flagged file yourself on VirusTotal, where these builds come back clean on every engine except Defender's heuristic. False positives are reported to Microsoft as they come up.

Controls

Action	Keyboard	Controller
Move	Arrow keys / WASD	D-pad / left stick
A	Z / Enter / Space	A
B	X / Backspace	B
Start	Escape	Start
Select	Tab / Shift	Back / Select

Rebind any of these in-game under OPTIONS → CONTROLS. Controllers are supported out of the box.

Hotkeys

Key	What it does
- / =	Zoom out / in (overworld; also mouse wheel)
1	Cycle GAME SPEED up (controller: R2 faster, L2 slower)
2	Cycle COLORS
3	Cycle TILT (free-roam overworld)
4	Cycle ZOOM through every level (free-roam overworld)
5	Cycle GBC FX
F1	Save
F2	Load
F10	Open / close the mod manager

COLORS, TILT, ZOOM, GBC FX, GAME SPEED, and VOID FILL are also in the Options menu and persist in options.lua.

Low-end devices

OPTIONS → PERFORMANCE scales the port's optional extras for weaker hardware: HIGH (everything on), BALANCED (no 3D tilt or GBC FX), LOW (also no survey zoom, FPS capped), or AUTO — the default, which picks a tier from your device (ARM handhelds → LOW, phones → BALANCED, normal desktops → HIGH, unchanged). It only scales presentation; the fixed-step game logic is identical on every tier, and a lower tier hides your tilt/zoom/GBC-FX preferences without forgetting them. Details in docs/new-features.md.

Rulesets

OPTIONS → RULESET picks which set of Gen 1 battle behaviors to run. Both rulesets share the same damage formulas; they differ only in whether the original's quirks are kept. The setting persists in options.lua, and mods can register their own.

gen1_faithful is the default and reproduces the original cartridge, famous bugs included:

Rule	Behavior
oneIn256Miss	A 100%-accurate move still misses on a roll of 255
critUsesBaseSpeed	Crit rate reads base speed, not the current stat
critIgnoresStages	Crit rate ignores stat stages
focusEnergyBug	FOCUS ENERGY quarters the crit rate instead of x4
enemyUnlimitedPP	Enemies never spend PP, so they never Struggle
hyperBeamSkipRechargeOnKO	HYPER BEAM skips its recharge when the target faints
randMin / randMax	Damage random factor 217-255

modern_clean keeps the formulas but removes the notorious quirks:

Rule	Behavior
oneIn256Miss	Off: a 100%-accurate move always hits
critUsesBaseSpeed	Unchanged: crit rate still reads base speed
critIgnoresStages	Off: stat stages count toward the crit rate
focusEnergyBug	Off: FOCUS ENERGY raises the crit rate as intended
enemyUnlimitedPP	Off: enemies deplete PP and Struggle when empty
hyperBeamSkipRechargeOnKO	Off: HYPER BEAM always recharges, like Gen 2+
randMin / randMax	Damage random factor 217-255, same as faithful

Running From Source

Requires LÖVE 11.x. Place a Red, Blue, or Yellow ROM in the project folder and double-click Play-Mac.command or Play-Windows.bat, or run:

scripts/setup.sh --rom "/path/to/Poke Red.gb"   # or Blue.gb / Yellow.gbc
scripts/run.sh

then love . for later launches. Windows PowerShell scripts, the optional developer data build, test suites, and cache management are covered in Developer Setup.

Portable Mode

By default the game keeps your save, options, and the private ROM-derived data cache in your OS's normal per-user app data folder. To keep everything next to the game instead (handy for a USB stick or portable drive you carry between computers), drop an empty file named portable.txt next to the app (next to gen1recomp.app/.exe, or next to main.lua/conf.lua when running from source), then launch the game. Portable mode is desktop-only (Windows, Linux, macOS); it has no effect on Android or iOS, where the app runs from a read-only package.

With portable.txt present:

• save.lua, save.lua.bak, and options.lua are read from and written to that same folder instead of the OS save directory.
• A ROM import writes the generated data/generated and assets/generated cache straight into that folder too (nothing is left in the OS save directory), so a later launch reuses it without asking for the ROM again even on a different computer, as long as the same folder comes along.
• Deleting portable.txt switches back to the normal OS save directory; nothing already written to either location is touched automatically, so copy files over yourself if you want to carry existing progress across the switch.

Launch Options

By default the app opens the launcher so you can pick a game. Launch options skip it and start one game directly, which is what you want for a one-click entry: a desktop shortcut per game, a Steam entry, or a handheld frontend.

Option	Effect
--game=red	boot Red, skipping the launcher (blue and yellow too, or just r / b / y)
--slot=2	load that save slot; takes a slot number or a slot id
--launcher	open the launcher anyway, so you can edit a shortcut you already made

Linux on arm64 (Raspberry Pi)

Alongside the x86_64 gen1recomp-*-linux.zip, every release ships gen1recomp-*-linux-arm64.AppImage for 64-bit ARM desktop Linux — Raspberry Pi 4/5, Armbian and other SBC distros, and arm64 VMs on Apple Silicon:

chmod +x gen1recomp-*-linux-arm64.AppImage
./gen1recomp-*-linux-arm64.AppImage

LÖVE publishes no aarch64 binary of any kind, so this artifact compiles the engine — and SDL2, OpenAL and the codecs — from source inside a Debian bullseye arm64 container. It needs only glibc 2.29+, libstdc++, freetype and zlib on the host; OpenGL, X11, Wayland, KMSDRM, ALSA and PulseAudio are all dlopened, so the same image runs on a full desktop, a Wayland-only session or a KMSDRM handheld with no X server. Build instructions and the reasoning are in docs/linux-arm64-build.md.

iOS

Every release ships gen1recomp-*-ios.ipa. Sideload it with AltStore (Windows or Mac) — see docs/ios-sideload.md. To build and install from source on a Mac instead, see docs/ios-install.md.

     

Xbox Dev Mode

Every release ships gen1recomp-*-xbox-uwp.zip for Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles in Developer Mode. It cannot be installed in retail mode.

Extract the archive, then use Xbox Device Portal to install the .msix and the x64 package under Dependencies.

External setup

1. Put your legally obtained Red, Blue, or Yellow ROMs on an external drive. Mod ZIPs can go on the same drive.
2. Connect the drive to the Xbox and open Gen1Recomp.
3. Select Import ROM or Import Mod, then choose the file with the Xbox file picker.
4. Repeat the ROM import for each version you want to use.

Internal setup

1. Create a folder named baseroms on your PC and place your legally obtained Red, Blue, or Yellow ROMs inside it.
2. ZIP the folder, keeping baseroms at the top level of the archive.
3. Launch Gen1Recomp once, then close it.
4. Open Xbox Device Portal and upload the ZIP to Gen1Recomp/LocalState/pokemon-love2d/.
5. Choose Yes when Device Portal asks whether to extract the archive.
6. Open Gen1Recomp. The launcher checks baseroms once at startup. When it finds a compatible ROM, that game’s tab shows ROM FOUND and an Import detected ROM button.

ROMs, generated game data, saves, and mods remain in LocalState and are not included in the app.

Source builds and package details are covered in the Xbox UWP build notes.

Handhelds

A PortMaster-style port for the Anbernic RG34XXSP on Stock OS 64-bit MOD ships with every release as gen1recomp-*-rg34xxsp-stockos64-mod.zip. Install steps, controls, and troubleshooting live in docs/anbernic-rg34xxsp.md.

Nintendo Switch

Releases ship an SD-ready gen1recomp-*-switch.zip. Runtime target is pinned love-nx 11.5-nx1. Requires a console that can run Switch homebrew.

• Players: docs/switch-install.md. Download the zip, extract at the microSD root (install or update), title-override launch, import your own legal ROM, Joy-Con controls and shortcuts.
• Builders: docs/switch-build.md. --fetch / --loose / --fused, toolchain, Docker fallback, and CI vs release (path-gated ubuntu selftest, fused PR artifact on the main repo, release hard-fail).
• File transfer (MTP / SD / FTP): docs/switch-transfer.md.

Modding

The game ships a native mod platform: content registries, events and hooks, per-mod saves and options, and an in-game manager. The full modding book — getting started, a twelve-rung tutorial ladder, a cookbook, and the generated reference — lives on the project wiki.

Shipped example mods, one per kind of author, live in [mods/](mods/).

Maps can be edited in our own build of Tiled, bryanthaboi/tiled_gen1recomp, and exported back out as a mod; see docs/tiled-map-editing.md.

Bugs and Ideas

Found a bug? A warp dropping you somewhere it shouldn't, a battle doing math that looks wrong, text in the wrong box, anything that does not match the original game. Open a bug report. Attach a screenshot if you can. It saves a lot of back and forth, and if you can't get one, the form asks you to describe what you saw instead.

Thought of a feature that could be good, or a way to improve one that already exists? Open a feature request. Say what you want, why it is worth doing, and how you picture it working. A request with real detail is one that can actually get built.

More

• Link play — START > LINK connects two copies directly over UDP.
• Save editor — edit party, boxes, items, events, and Pokédex flags outside the game.
• docs/architecture.md — runtime details; docs/behavior-porting-notes.md — formula provenance.

Special Thanks

This project would not be possible without pret > the pret band of decompiling maniacs > and their pokered disassembly.