Of course, I immediately compared this ROM to the original. FireRed originally had two revisions (revisions 0 and 1). This ROM, surprisingly, isn't revision 1; it's a brand new revision A, and the ROM is very different.

Notably, the ROMs contain the build date! Revision 0: 2004 04 26 11:20 Revision 1: 2004 07 20 09:30 Revision A: 2025 12 19 16:01 2025 12 19 15:38 22afedd9 (The second looks like a version control commit ID maybe?)

The ROM opens up in mGBA, but it complains about an unimplemented syscall, which presumably means there are some emulator-specific hack shenanigans.

The game has a word filter - implemented in the ROM itself, not as an emulator patch. If you name yourself a swear, your name reverts to one of several default names. Offensive Pokemon nicknames revert to the species name.

Default player names (thanks to Skawo for finding these): RED LEAF FIRE GARY KAZ TORU ASH KENE GEKI JAK JANNE JONN KAMON KARL TAYLOR OSCAR HIRO MAX JON RALPH KAY TOSH ROAK OMI JODI AMANDA HILLARY MAKEY MICHI PAULA JUNE CASSIE REY SEDA KIKO MINA NORIE SAI MOMO SUZI

Dumping the strings from the emulator executable, and holy hardcodes; it seems to have the name of every Pokemon in here. I didn't look very hard, but i didn't find what these are used for. Pokemon Home transfers or something, maybe? IDK.

I'm not familiar enough with the GBA Classics app to have determined this myself, but I spoke with who confirmed for me that this is the same "Sloop" emulator.

Here's something from the emulator code: it sends telemetry about your game progress to Nintendo. There's quite a lot, including some things that aren't pictured, like which Pokemon you have and what level they're each at.

I found a function that initialises the emulator hacks based on the GBA ROM's ID. These are the IDs the emulator recognises for the Pokemon hacks. BPR and BPG are FireRed and LeafGreen, respectively, but AXV, AXP, and BPE are Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, respectively. Huh.

I love <failed Decrypt>

Breaking News: ROMFS contains ROM More at 11

For your info, the hardcoded pokemon names seem to be used for the profanity filter. The <decrypted Failed> string is actually part of the Pia library (peer-to-peer), which is most likely used for the wireless club.

Oh, thank you!

ok now do analysis for French and Spanish

i feel guilty spending $20 on this already

Hmmmm.... Now makes me wonder if I can go out and get this rom, Since apparently it's slightly altered to have the Tickets.