Pokémon Crossroads Lets You Explore Kanto And Hoenn In One Game

1 hour ago 9

Published Mar 14, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT

Austin King is the Senior Editor of Gaming at ScreenRant and has been with the site since 2020 with a focus on RPGs and tabletop games. He previously managed content for Geek to Geek Media, and has served as a writer for sites like Nintendad, Geek Fitness, and more.

In addition to his work at ScreenRant, he also hosts the Dragon Quest FM podcast and is the author of several books, including co-writing Nimbus (a #1 bestseller in 2013). His latest is the nonfiction The Dragon Quest Book, available now.

He's written about pop culture, video games, and genre studies over the course of his career. You can find him on BlueSky, X, and at Dragonquestaustin.com

There's no shortage of Pokémon news lately, with February's Pokémon Presents revealing the Gen 10 games alongside a number of updates to mobile titles and some really cool merchandise to celebrate the franchise's 30th anniversary. There's also the re-releases of FireRed and LeafGreen on Switch. Still, that doesn't mean we're not looking for other ways to play Pokémon games right now.

One of these new ways is a ROM hack called Pokémon Crossroads, which released on March 3, 2026, making it one of the newest Pokémon ROM hacks around. It's technically a ROM hack of the GBA version of FireRed and Emerald, allowing you to explore multiple regions in a single, seamless experience. From what we've seen of it so far, it looks pretty awesome.

Pokémon Crossroads Is A Promising New ROM Hack

Pokémon Crossroads, which was created by the Crossroads Dev Team, lets you 100% explore Kanto (including the Sevii Islands) and Hoenn right now. These Gen 1 and Gen 3 regions are fan-favorites, so that should be a selling point already. However, Gen 2's Johto region is currently in the works and will be added in an upcoming 2.0 Beta. You can read more about it on the PokeHarbor website.

Billed as the "ultimate Game Boy Advance Pokémon adventure," Pokémon Crossroads includes all the following in the current 1.1 version of the game:

3 Fully Explorable and Connected Regions: Hoenn, Kanto, and the Sevii Islands
Dual Complete Storylines: Experience the complete narrative campaigns of Pokémon Emerald and FireRed together.
16 Gym Badge Challenge: Prove your mastery by collecting all 8 Hoenn badges and all 8 Kanto badges.
Choice of Starting Region: Choose to begin your journey in Pallet Town (Kanto) or Littleroot (Hoenn) via dedicated patches.
Seamless Region Switching: Travel between regions instantly via the Pokémon Centers in Viridian City or Oldale Town.
Multi-Region AreaNav: Fully functional and accurate minimaps for each region within the AreaNav menu.
Modern Technical Base: Built on the pokeemerald-expansion engine, ensuring modernized battle mechanics and stability.

As you can see, that's a lot of cool features for one game. The dual narratives is an interesting approach, and being able to travel seamlessly between the regions sounds really nice. And with Johto on the way, Pokémon Crossroads will just keep getting better.

Pokémon Fans Love Multiple Regions In One Game

Map of the Kanto Region from the Pokémon Franchise.

Getting to explore more than region has been a fan-favorite part of some previous Pokémon titles, and it's sadly one that's been underutilized in the Switch era. Thankfully, we have ROM hacks like Pokémon Crossroads to make those kinds of dreams come true. Hoenn is one of the best regions ever, and there's an incredible amount of love and nostalgia for Kanto since it was the first region ever.

The premise behind Pokémon Crossroads is pretty interesting, and it'll be cool to see how the game looks once Johto arrives. This seems like a really cool new ROM hack, so Pokémon fans should definitely consider checking it out.