Pokemon Sun and Moon is due out in November, but Pokemon fans that can’t wait that long have another option. Fan-made Pokemon Uranium has released for PC after more than nine years of development, and it’s a very ambitious – and very faithful – rendition of the mainline Pokemon series.
The game takes place in the Tandor region. Many classic Pokemon have been irradiated after a mishap at a nuclear reactor. The game tasks the player as a Pokemon trainer that can be female, male, or gender neutral. You must stop these Pokemon from overrunning the world while doing the standard Pokemon trainer routine of collecting gym badges and becoming a Pokemon master.
Polemon Uranium has three playable characters, online battling and trading, a Pokemon speech translator, and more than 150 new Pokemon to capture. The game’s Wiki lists tons more features. This is a robust game with a lot of gameplay.
The game looks and plays just like a game in the regular Pokemon canon. The game has been in varying stages of development for nine years, and hardcore fans of the project have followed it every step of the way. Once the 1.0 version released on August 6th, they flooded the server to grab the game. The game has since seen a 1.01 patch that fixes a few issues. Game creators JV and Involuntary Twitch encourage players to post on the game’s forums if they have any issues with the game and take time to answer any fan questions.
The worry, of course, is that Nintendo or The Pokemon Company will take the game down. Project AM2R, a fan-made remaster of Metroid 2: Rise of Samus, was taken down after a day of existence. There are other fan-made Pokemon that have been allowed to live, including Pokemon: Advanced Adventure and Pokemon Ash Gray.Those games, however, are ROM hacks that require an emulator. This game is a standalone game that doesn’t require an emulator. I hope it is allowed to exist, though, as it is a great game in its own right.
