5 Best Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver ROM Hacks

If you’re on the hunt for the best Pokemon Heart Gold ROM hacks and Soul Silver hacks, this article is definitely for you. If you search online, you’ll find that for whatever reason, there aren’t too many lists available for these games. For whatever reason, most sites have focused on other games from the series, and Heart Gold and Soul Silver haven’t received the level of love that they deserve.

We recently also wrote a list of the best Pokemon Fusion ROM hacks as well, however, today we’ll be covering Pokemon HGSS Rom hacks.

We’re going to be sharing the ultimate list of HeartGold and SoulSilver hacks that you need to play. We’ll be breaking down all the best fan hacks, what features they have, and why you need to give them a playthrough.

That’s enough of an introduction, let’s get into the games!

What Are The Best Heart Gold and Soul Silver ROM hacks?

1. Pokemon Sacred Gold and Storm Silver

First up on our list is Pokemon Sacred Gold and Storm Silver. These hacks were created by the well known ROM hack creator Drayano and were released back in 2012. They continued to receive updates up until 2017 and are enhancements of the original games.

They add tons of quality of life updates like earlier TMs, additional Pokemon, and increase the game’s difficulty levels a bit past where the originals were.

These hacks fix a lot of the “issues” that the originals had and increase the difficulty curve just enough for it to feel more challenging, yet still fun to play. Boss fights are a bit tougher and almost all Trainers have 6 Pokemon on their teams.

Even though the difficulty level is a bit higher here, once you get a few badges until your belt, things really do become easier to progress.

We should mention that Drayano apparently also has been working on an updated version of these ROM hacks and has plans to release a version 2 of them soon. You can read more about this on their Twitter post here.

2. Soul Silver Deluxe

Created originally by ImainMeleeKirby, this ROM hack doesn’t try too hard to be something it’s not. The creator added changes that simply make sense overall. Some Pokemon are available earlier in the game, you can purchase evolution items (an evolution stone) at the store, trade evolution has been removed, and the level curve in Johto feels more natural.

There are also other quality of life changes that have been added. For example, Gym Leaders all have a Johto Pokemon added to them and it doesn’t really disrupt the overall flow of battles.

It’s mainly a ROM hack that is very faithful to the original and adds some additional tweaks here and there to improve it ever so slightly. If you enjoyed the original and are looking for some slight variations, you’ll enjoy this hack

3. Pokemon Light Platinum DS

Pokemon Light Platinum was created by WesleyFG and is a ROM hack that was originally released back in 2011. Even though the name of this hack makes it seem like it is based on Platinum, it’s actually a hack of Pokémon HeartGold. It was very popular at the time in part because it was one of the only ROM hacks that was actually completed.

Light Platinum is arguably one of the more popular ROM hacks on this list primarily because it is an OG in the space. While it may not necessarily be one of the best Pokemon ROM hacks ever released and some things about it could be seen as a bit outdated when compared to other hacks available now, some of these flaws are what make it truly great. It allow us to look back on the origin and see where things started and just how far they’ve come after all these years.

The original creator has mentioned that they’ve gone back and are working to update the hack to release a newer version for fans in the near future. You can read more and check out updated on the creator’s Twitter here.

4. Pokemon Soothing Silver

This is another ROM hack of Soul Silver and adds some quality of life improvements to the original game. The main goal of this hack is to remain faithful to the original game while still managing to introduce some more variety and some added difficulty to keep things exciting.

There are also custom shinies added and Alolan forms which are a nice touch. This helps the game still feel new, but familiar. It’s still similar enough for fans of the original game, but does well to add just enough to make it feel like a new experience. You can beat this game all the way through to Mt. Silver.

5. Pokemon Mind Crystal

Mind Crystal is another Soul Silver hack that was released back in 2017. The game was original created and released in French, however, it was later translated and released in English as well.

The game’s plot has been changed a bit and new characters, gyms, Gym Leaders, Elite 4, etc have all been reworked. The game also changes a number of features from the original and helps it feel more like a new game than just a hack.

The battle style is now always set to Set. You also can’t use items from your bag against a Trainer. Trainer Pokemon have 31 IVs in all 6 stats and 255 EVs in all 6 stats.

Several TMs have changed their location, the day care gives you the Odd Egg which can be hatched into any 17 non-Togepi babies, all 16 Gym Leaders have been reworked along with their teams, and there are now level 100 battles against Gym Leaders and Elite 4 and Red after beating them for the first time.

Summary

This list is meant to serve as a resource for those looking for the best Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver ROM hacks to play through. These are some of the community’s favorites and are all a really fun playthrough. It’s cool to see the original creators of these hacks still working on releasing updates to some of these even after all these years.

It just goes to show the level of commitment the community has and how passionate the fan base really is.

Be sure to also check out our list of the best Pokemon Black and White ROM hacks.