The Best Pokemon Fangames to Play.

Pokemon is the largest property in the world, generating the most revenue out of any media out there, making over a hundred billion dollars in its lifetime. However, fans of the video games have steadily been getting more and more annoyed at the lack of progress in the main line series. One of the most common criticisms is how it's stayed mostly the same over the decades it's been out and any genuine innovation is removed the next game for some unwanted gimmick. Therefore, the fanbase has created a ton of fangames over the years that fixes whatever the developer of that particular game feels is wrong with the game series. Let's take a look at some of the best among them.

Pokemon Sage:

Pokemon Sage is an incredibly promising fan game. It has 229 original Pokemon designed and the story is written well enough to stand on its own. Despite the fact that it takes story beats from the official Pokemon games, it's managed to put enough of a twist on each of those beats that it becomes its own wholly original plot beat. It's an engaging experience all around and I can genuinely say I've had more fun playing this game than any of the recent mainline games.

The big downside, however, is that this game is incredibly slow to update. Completely understandable because of the size of the team and how none of them are being paid, of course, but if you're someone who isn't a fan of having to follow a project and only getting bite-sized content drops every update, then you should probably give this one a wide berth.

Pokemon Fire Ash:

But if you want to play a completed game, then look no further than Pokemon Fire Ash. This is a fanmade game that lets you take control of Ash Ketchum from the anime series and you can take him through all his anime adventures. That's right, you can play through practically every region in all of Pokemon save for the most recent one, which the creator has said will remain undeveloped until the Pokemon Journeys anime concludes.

As you might imagine, that is a ton of content. You can face all the same challenges that Ash went up against and duel his friends for fun as well. If you ever thought some of his decisions in Pokemon battles were questionable, this is where you can prove you're smarter. And best of all is you can actually deviate from the anime and go out of order if you so choose.

PokeMMO:

That's right, PokeMMO is exactly what it sounds like. Somebody made a full Pokemon MMO featuring regions from four Pokemon games. How does it do this? Well, it is basically a client that loads up ROMs from four games. Naturally, you'll need to have dumped these ROMs yourself because to do otherwise is illegal. 

This game is pretty much everything you'd want in a Pokemon MMO. If you want, you can play it as a full single-player experience and pretty much just replay the games with some other players dotted around the map. Or, you can play through the games with a friend by your side. And if you're really hankering for the multiplayer experience, there's a very competitive ladder.

The biggest thing with Pokemon being turned into an MMO format is that your achievements finally have some meat on them. If you get a shiny, you can now show it off to other players. If you've raised the perfect Pokemon, you can now subject other players to your wrath. It's really what the fans have been waiting for.