Zeldamon Is A GBA Browser Fan Game That Adds Breath Of The Wild Inside Pokémon FireRed

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There's a current trend of fusing together different game genres in browser-based games that has gripped, but also divided the gaming world. The rise in AI has led to people fusing together games that have no business working well together, with the humans behind the ideas then spending countless hours trawling through code to make sure they work properly for eager gamers. I never thought I would see Pokémon FireRed and Breath of the Wild fused together in a GBA game in a million years, but I've been playing it this afternoon, and it's not half bad.

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This project was made with the use of AI and is not entirely human-led. AI has been used to write code that may or may not have been fully checked in its entirety by a human. In this case, the creator has fused two games using Fable 5.5 and has spent time fixing bugs that have arisen thereafter. AI has also been used for voiceovers. The game has an original score, but it's not clear whether AI has been used to make the soundtrack at this time.

The premise of the game is simple - it's Breath of the Wild with Pokémon. It loosely follows the storyline of Breath of the Wild, with more people appearing on the Great Plateau to create that Pokémon village/city feel. And, perhaps most importantly, there are Pokémon, and you need to build a team up to battle the four monks in the Great Plateau Tower in order to get the paraglider to get down into the main body of Hyrule.

The old man, who we all know turns into King Rhoam Bospherous Hyrule, tells you to pick your first Pokémon, one of the original Kanto starters. I obviously picked Charmander, because I've never changed since I was a child, and Charmander is the best). But then the mechanics from both games come into play, and Link has to make food for him and his Pokémon using ingredients from Hyrule and the cooking pot. The next minute you're battling Pokémon, and Link is throwing Poké Balls to catch critters. There are night and day cycles, as well as different weather patterns.

One thing that I wasn't prepared for was when Charmander fainted, Link stepped up with a tree branch to take down the Rattata I was battling. And his weapons break just like in BotW too, leaving you to use your fists, something that doesn't happen in Zelda but makes Link feel more like a bad-lad. You'll find Koroks, use runes, train Pokémon, battle strangers, defeat Guardians, and more.

This project has obviously been made with heavy AI use. MozeTech stated on X that he had 'just merged two of the highest-grossing games ($5 billion+) in history using fable 5.5 (rerouting) in just one shot!' It riles me up a little, considering I've covered games that have taken devs years to make from scratch, like KurkoMods with Jiggies Of Time, but AI seems to be finding its place for making ROM hacks like these. Link looks a bit rough around the edges, but you can tell its him.

Zeldamon is fun, I'm not going to lie, and you can play it in your browser for free, both on a laptop/PC or your mobile. The mobile version was a bit annoying, as it thought I was selecting the arrow text every time I held my finger over the button, but both games work well considering they're free to play. You can also save in your browser too and enter a procedurally generated passcode to get your save data if it doesn't.

It's impressive, but it's a game that fuses together two ideas with no new concepts in it. I'm starting to get to grips with the fact that AI isn't going away and coming to terms with how, in projects like these where its application creates something fun that people might play with for a little while, it's ok. I would have loved for this to have had more of a human-led element to it like Pokémon 2D Arena, but I can't have everything,

MozeTech recently caught people's attention with their other release of Pokémon Redstone, a game that fuses Minecraft and Pokémon FireRed together. Like Zeldamon, the game mechanics have been joined together so that you, as Steve, can cut down wood, build things, and train Pokémon. It seems that MozeTech has a bit of a penchant for FireRed (don't we all), and I'm sure you're all looking forward to seeing what they fuse with it next!

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