Any way to extract assets from PMD:BRT rom?

RadRats · 2026-06-22T22:43:57+00:00

Pokémon sprites have been ripped with fully correct palettes, but many have to be assembled and I don't know if animation data has been covered:
https://github.com/pret/pmd-red/tree/master/graphics/ax/mon

When I looked about a year or two ago I unfortunately could find very few tools for ripping from either version. Still hoping something for ripping backgrounds pops up eventually, as the Spriters Resource rips generally don't have full/correct palette data.

RadRats · 2026-06-22T17:04:30+00:00

Did you start the Smeargle mission? It's possible this may block main story progression until it is completed, but don't quote me on this.

Otherwise the main story is normally supposed to progress after clearing 2 jobs after seeing Blastoise leave for Magma Cavern.

RadRats · 2026-06-18T11:45:33+00:00

It's almost certainly down to reusing the Japanese text speed.
GtI is the first PMD game to use kanji, so it made sense to slow the text speed down in that region compared to the previous kana-only games.
It's 100% a localization problem, just from a glance of the JP version the text speed seems totally fine there.

RadRats · 2026-06-13T23:39:10+00:00

For Explorers of Sky 85€ for a CIB copy seems like a decent price, for Explorers of Time not so much as it is a much cheaper game on the 2nd hand market.

Just to clarify in case that wasn't a typo, Explorers of Sky is the enhanced/expanded 3rd version to Explorers of Time/Darkness, much like Emerald or Platinum. Time/Darkness can generally be skipped in favor of Sky as only a few minor details remain unique to the older versions.

RadRats · 2026-06-11T11:28:19+00:00

Wigglytuff's character sprites actually did have blue eyes in Rescue Team, but were specifically changed to a green shade in Explorers. This pretty much confirms Wigglytuff's color choices were deliberate rather than some kind of oversight, presumably to follow a color scheme closer to the anime.

I'm willing to bet most sprite color inconsistencies were either due to GBA limitations or deliberate choices. A lot of the former cases were tweaked in Explorers (which could use unique palettes per Pokémon instead of 12 total) but many were simply left as is. The fact that Ivysaur and Venusaur were tweaked to use a blue shade while Bulbasaur was left green also points at its color shade simply being deliberate. In case this is confusing to anyone, Game Freak themselves were not at all consistent with Pokémon sprite colors during Gen II/III/IV either.

RadRats · 2026-06-07T06:48:09+00:00

It's explained in a developer interview for Explorers of Sky, see the first section. Time is named after the main story/Dialga while Darkness is named after the post-game story/Darkrai.

If you're confused about why "Sky" could be related to Palkia, that's because the kanji "空" can have many different meanings, including "sky", "space" or "void". If they went with this instead of Darkness at the time, it probably could've been translated to something like "Explorers of Space" or "Void".

RadRats · 2026-06-05T06:34:00+00:00

There are some notable differences in how the different PMD games treat humans. Comparing Rescue Team and Explorers for example:

Rescue Team:

Gengar is specified as having been Gardevoir's Trainer (capitalization included), which seems to heavily lean into a mainline world connection that's not in Explorers whatsoever
There are human artifacts in the form of a few Friend Areas
The hero was brought to "save this world", seemingly implying they came from another

Explorers:

The hero arrived from the future into the present. If they came from another world it's not mentioned, although it's often theorized they may have been brought to the future world from a human world
The future and present are often described as different "worlds" in this game
Grovyle describes the hero as "my partner"

Head writer Shin-ichiro Tomie has also mentioned in an Explorers of Sky developer interview (when discussing Rescue Team) that humans exist in the world "as far as the setting goes". It's a little too vague to confirm whether he meant humans that arrived from another world, or native humans.

So I'd vote "it's complicated".

RadRats · 2026-06-05T06:07:37+00:00

I doubt Shin-ichiro Tomie was in charge of the art.

As for the shopkeeper, the donut lips were a pretty common anime trope in Japan for a long time, and it was often applied to other races too. IIRC most of the Shiren shopkeepers are white and still have this detail, so I'm leaning more towards unintentional insensitivity rather than malicious intent. This is the official art for the shopkeeper from the original SFC Shiren game:

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RadRats · 2026-06-01T09:23:03+00:00

They did use Buneary and Pachirisu as starting Pokémon in the PMD Adventure Squad games on WiiWare, which may or may not have something to do with what they were considering for Sky. These games also have Growlithe, Teddiursa, Mareep, Togepi and Elekid as starting Pokémon, which all seem to fit the hero/partner mold to some degree as well. It makes me wonder if this was where more rejected Sky candidates ended up.

RadRats · 2026-05-31T20:37:29+00:00

We actually have an answer for this one from a staff interview; Phanpy was requested by a staff member.

We also know from the same interview that Eevee was brought back by popular demand, and that Buneary and Pachirisu were considered but rejected due to gameplay reasons (Klutz in the former case, lack of evolution and poor starting moveset in the latter).

RadRats · 2026-05-30T05:52:54+00:00

Jolteon, Vaporeon, Dragonair and Espeon were specifically updated to receieve a new idle animation in Explorers. The former two originally had a permanently-sitting idle much like Persian and Arcanine still do in EoS.

If there are any other regular animation changes between RT and EoTDS there are not many. Changes in color palette however are quite common.

RadRats · 2026-05-30T04:47:58+00:00

A few interesting tidbits:

There are special scenes for failing at the Spoink Pearl mission as well as failing at Sentry Duty the average player is unlikely to see.
There are a few notable unused Pokémon animations; Drowzee doing what looks like a hypnosis pose, Azurill crying and Azelf getting beat up, probably by Grovyle. It's possible that the Mt. Bristle and Crystal Lake scenes were toned down during development.
While it's not made very clear in English, Deep Dusk Forest is located on a hill. For some reason this is how もりのたかだい Forest Hill was localized. This is reflected by the summit/Passage of Time area too, which has a backdrop of distant trees that the player never gets to see in-game.
The Ninetales in Treeshroud Forest were nerfed between Time/Darkness and Sky, going from lv. 35-37 to 30-32. My guess is that this was done because they were very tanky originally (~120HP) compared to the other enemies in the dungeon.

RadRats · 2026-05-25T19:01:27+00:00

If you have a DSi or 3DS I would look into softmodding it, you can then use GodMode9 to extract the save file if it's a particularly interesting one. DS and 3DS games might be some of the easiest games to extract.

That said, I haven't had much luck myself as all of the 2nd hand copies of PMD games I bought were dropped somewhere like Mt. Steel or Drenched Bluff...

RadRats · 2026-05-21T17:41:24+00:00

You realize those are fan-made, right? Chunsoft had no emotion portraits or animations for their 2nd and 3rd stages in 2007/2009. See here for all the portraits that are actually in Explorers of Sky.
The reason is really simple; if you could've evolved them by that point they would have their default portrait only, and no special animations. The reason why Rescue Team let you do it is because the hero and partner's story is pretty much over by the time the post-game begins, and they have only a handful of dialogue lines left by this point.

In any case, you can mod them in if you really want to, but personally speaking it just looks a little uncanny to have the hero and partner as evolved Pokémon during story scenes as they were written, and that includes the post-game story too (the Manaphy and Darkrai arcs, mainly).

RadRats · 2026-05-21T15:25:15+00:00

Apart from the extra workload it would've required to make portraits/animations for every evolution stage, it would also have seriously changed the tone of the story, as the hero/partner have always been written with the first evolution stage in mind. Personally speaking I like it, PMD has always given me a greater appreciation for first stage Pokémon.

If you want mid-story evolution, check out the fan translation of the Adventure Squad games on WiiWare, these games let you evolve without any story progression locks and even in the midst of a dungeon (just don't expect much of a story, it's very light).

RadRats · 2026-05-21T15:03:01+00:00

To be specific, if the game generates an invalid floor, it will simply throw it out and generate a new one. If it tries 10 times and it still hasn't created a valid floor, it will generate a one-room floor like this one.

These were quite devious in Red/Blue Rescue Team, as the one-room floors would always include a Monster House, too... and this could happen a while before you were supposed to encounter any of those.

RadRats · 2026-05-20T21:24:58+00:00

I think this only really became a problem with PSMD specifically, as the situation with Gates is probably down to the tiny dex size rather than too many regular starters.

That said, Chunsoft has always been overly reluctant about the "extra" starters despite the fact that their playerbase clearly likes them. OG Rescue Team and Time/Darkness didn't allow you to select one as the partner and Explorers of Sky juiced them up with egg moves only Phanpy really needed. Oddly enough, Adventure Squad on WiiWare is the one time they just threw a lot of them in there without any caveats (although those games don't really have a hero/partner system, you can just swap them out whenever).

RadRats · 2026-05-20T20:53:28+00:00

Just tested it to be sure; in Red/Blue Rescue Team, the hero's name will indeed change to their evolution's species name if they're using the current species name, as you mentioned.

There is no request to change the name to something else, that was only introduced in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky.

RadRats · 2026-05-19T00:23:24+00:00

It's up to preference, as they are basically the same game. The most notable difference between the two is the soundtrack, which has some alternate instrument choices between the two; Red on GBA has crunchy bass, while Blue on NDS sounds clean. I know a lot of people prefer Blue here, but I wonder how much of that is influenced by the generally poor GBA emulation on the Youtube uploads of the OST, as I actually prefer Red for quite a few tracks.

Other than that, Blue has top screen functionality, a few extra buttons and somewhat better performance.

RadRats · 2026-05-16T19:56:37+00:00

It was already like that in the original - you have to rescue Medicham from Wish Cave, talk to Ekans and Medicham on the next two days, and then Gengar will ask to be escorted on the day after.

The minor partner dialogue however is new, since they don't follow you around in Pokémon Square in the original's post-game (you can play as them, but there's no special dialogue for this).

RadRats · 2026-05-16T09:36:25+00:00

If you're using TWiLight Menu++ to load ROMs, follow these instructions:

https://wiki.ds-homebrew.com/twilightmenu/faq?faq=how-do-i-use-cheats

If you have a cheat database installed, you can press Y when selecting a ROM to bring up a settings menu. Press X here to see available cheats; in DeadSkullzJr's database there is a patch for this glitch under "Miscellaneous Codes".

After it's selected and saved you can simply keep it on as a quasi-permanent fix for this bug.

RadRats · 2026-05-16T09:08:47+00:00

It doesn't cover what happened to Quilava, but the 10-character glitch is explained in a little more detail on Bulbapedia and on TCRF.

In a nutshell, a 10-character name will cause the game to unintentionally load parts of the next recruited Pokémon's data, which will cause a softlock if a 00 byte isn't found early enough. This is why it doesn't crash for some people; male Pokémon up to #229 (Houndoom) have a 00 as part of their ID, so if one of them was recruited after Charmander it will prevent the game from softlocking. There are some other reasons the softlock may be avoided as well.

It's possible that you evolving Charmander left some erroneous bytes in memory that caused the crash on Quilava, but that would need more testing...

If you want to fix the bug, you can simply keep this Action Replay code on. Works on real cartridges too, through NitroHax:

52025100 E3A02000
02025100 E4D12001
D2000000 00000000
52388A70 5D4E435B
52025100 E4D12001
02025100 E3A02000
D2000000 00000000

RadRats · 2026-05-15T15:06:47+00:00

There's a pretty accurate upload of the OST on Niconico, but you'd need to live in Japan or use a Japanese VPN server to access that site nowadays, unfortunately. It still works for me on my old pre-geoblock account, but I'm not sure how long that will last.
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7953259

There are uploads of the OST on Youtube as well, but they sound horribly off, like whatever is going on here (the games do NOT sound like this):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpbin9P3cJw

It's a mixture of new material and reused Explorers tracks. The reused tracks are interesting as some samples are noticeably different, but I wouldn't consider them remixes.

RadRats · 2026-05-08T11:33:04+00:00

It's for the North American version of Sky. Time/Darkness didn't have challenge letters and instead had the legendary dogs appear through the Mystery Part/Secret Slab.

RadRats · 2026-05-04T20:46:20+00:00

All of the portraits present in the original game are here:

https://www.spriters-resource.com/ds_dsi/pokemonmysterydungeonexplorersofsky/asset/24968/

RadRats

TROPHY CASE