Player Guide

The complete guide to the gameplay loop and every feature on the platform. Written for players: no internals, no jargon. Status notes are marked inline where a feature is new or still in testing.

1. What is UltraKaizo

UltraKaizo is a browser platform where you and one partner play a brutally remixed Pokémon Emerald together. It is a kaizo Ironmon roguelite:

• One Pokémon each. Your party has exactly one slot, for the whole run. No box, no backups, no mid-battle switch-ins.
• Co-op by design. You and your partner each explore your own copy of Hoenn, but your worlds are synchronized: you see each other move in real time, boss fights snap you both into one double battle, and when one of you falls the other is the only way back.
• Every run is a new world. A fresh seed reshuffles stats, abilities, movesets, evolutions, enemy trainers, items, and shops. Runs are attempts on a seasonal leaderboard: die and you start over, but eggs, skins, banked money, and account collectibles survive.
• Gen 9 Pokémon in Gen 3 Hoenn, with Mega Evolution from the start.

Everything runs in the browser: the game, the emulator, the live Ironmon tracker, and the co-op link. Nothing to install.

2. Getting started

1. Sign in with Twitch or Discord. There is no waitlist anymore (since 4.1.8): anyone who signs in can play. If Discord's sign-in page stays blank, your browser is too old for it: try another browser, or sign in with Twitch.
2. Bring your own ROM. The platform requires a legally obtained copy of Pokémon Emerald (USA). The upload page walks you through a 3-step flow (disclaimer, upload, patch). Your ROM never leaves the browser: it is stored locally on your device and patched right there. When a new game version ships, the game re-patches itself from your stored original; you never re-upload.
3. Create or join a room. From the Co-op page you can invite a friend directly, create a room and share its 6-character code, join with a code, or use Random Match. The host sees a "Waiting for partner" overlay with a click-to-copy invite code; the game stays deliberately frozen until the partner is actually in, so you can never accidentally start alone.
4. Resume anytime. Active and paused runs are listed on the Resume page with your mon, your partner, and the room code. Saves live on the device that played them: a run can only be resumed on the browser that holds its save, and only while the game build it was started on is current (web-only updates never touch your run; when the game itself updates, an old run can still be left to bank its points). Leaving a run banks its points for both players.

Controls. Keyboard and controller, both fully rebindable in Settings, plus a touch gamepad on mobile. Speed controls run 1x/2x/4x with hold-to-fast-forward (capped at 2x during co-op battles, where the joiner follows the host's speed).

3. The rules of the run

These are the laws of UltraKaizo. Learn them before your first fight.

• One mon, slot one. Catching a Pokémon replaces your current one, instantly and permanently. There is no second slot.
• Faint and you fall. In co-op, your partner can pull you back (see The revive, section 7). If you both fall, the run is over.
• No wild encounters, no grinding. Experience comes only from trainers. Every level is earned on the road.
• Poké Balls always catch. A plain Poké Ball is a guaranteed catch (you start with 100). Choose your moment: the catch replaces your mon.
• Healing is a resource. Poké Center heals are capped at 100 per run (101 once you earn the 8th badge); the nurse shows your remaining count. Healing items cannot be used in the overworld: potions, revives, and status cures work only inside battle. Vitamins and other permanent boost items still work from the bag.
• Gyms lock behind you. Once you step into a gym, the exit stays sealed until you take its badge.
• HM moves can be forgotten, so a bad HM can never trap your only mon.

You are not entirely without an exit if a roll goes wrong. Deliberate ways to change your one mon mid-run: catching a scouted Pokémon, hatching and retrieving an egg, trading with your partner or the Wonder Trade queue, winning the Steal Battle, or paying the Chaos Monk. Every one of them replaces your mon; none of them adds a slot.

4. A new world every run

At the start of every run, a seed rebuilds the game:

• Stats: every species keeps its base stat total, but the spread across HP, Attack, Defense, Sp. Atk, Sp. Def, and Speed is rerolled.
• Abilities: every species rolls 3 random abilities (a ban list keeps out the degenerate ones).
• Movesets: level-up learnsets are rerolled.
• Evolutions: your mon evolves into a random species that shares one of its types and is a genuine upgrade in base stat total. Evolution is a gamble with a floor.
• Enemy trainers: every enemy team is rerolled (levels stay authored, so the difficulty curve is designed even when the species are not). Two exceptions fight with their true, iconic teams: RED on Mt. Pyre and the Boss Rush champions.
• Items and shops: every ground item ball draws from a pool of roughly 386 items, and every town mart stocks its own random shelf.

You and your partner each have your own seed: the same item ball can give you different items, and the same species can play completely differently in your two worlds. Certain moves are banned outright and cannot be obtained by any path.

5. Your first minutes

You wake in your bedroom. The intro is skipped; a Snorlax blocks the stairs until you touch the PC.

• The starter slot machine. The PC offers three random starters in a slot-machine overlay. All three are base forms with comparable power budgets, and you see only the sprite and the name: no stats. Knowing your Pokémon is the first skill of UltraKaizo. Your pick arrives at level 8, and the PC hands you the starting kit: 100 Poké Balls, a Potion, and a Mega Ring.
• Scouting zones. On the early routes, wild Pokémon are visible in the grass and battle on contact. Each scouting route holds up to 6 species; catch one (remember: catch = replace) and the rest despawn, spending that route's catch for the run. This is your early chance to trade a weak starter roll for something better.
• Spawnopoli, the hub town, is where the roguelite loop lives: the bank, the shop, the arena, and most of the special NPCs (full directory in section 10). The arena duo, Steven and Norman, are your first co-op boss and unlock the road out of town.

From there the run follows a reworked Hoenn: routes, gyms, and co-op dungeons, all the way to the Elite Four and beyond (section 9).

6. Playing together

Your partner is always present: their sprite walks your map in real time, wearing their chosen skin. A status pill shows their name and state (exploring, in battle, fallen, syncing), a quick-chat bar sends preset phrases as speech bubbles, and the tracker always shows their mon next to yours.

• Co-op gates. Gyms and dungeons are gated: both players must stand at the gate and confirm before either can enter. Dungeons seal behind you until the boss falls.
• Soul-Link. Press A on your partner's sprite to open a direct interaction menu:
  • Trade items: a true escrowed trade of any tradeable items (TMs and Mega Stones included). Fair trades are free; the player who gains value pays a 20% fee on the difference.
  • High five: hearts, a jingle, and nothing else. Free.
  • Coin flip: both stake 500, 2,000, or 10,000; winner takes the pot. No house edge.
• Partner Trade and the Mentalist (at the Social Center) swap whole Pokémon or whole movesets between you, with both players confirming.
• Disconnects are survivable. If either connection drops, the game pauses for both under a "Partner disconnected" overlay and resumes automatically on reconnect. Mid-battle, a brief drop is re-synced seamlessly (the partner pill reads "battle-sync…" while it catches up); a drop that cannot be recovered within about 20 seconds annuls the battle and rolls both players back to just before it. The run survives; the trainer can be fought again.

7. Co-op battles and the revive

Boss battles are fought together

Bosses are double battles fought by both players side by side: your mon and your partner's, against the boss pair, on both screens at once. Each player commands their own Pokémon through the native battle menu: Fight, Bag (items come from and are paid by your own bag, and you can use them on your partner's mon), and Pokémon (meaningful only in Boss Rush, where you actually have a bench). Running is refused; giving up a run is a mutual surrender vote on the web page, never a battle menu option. Mega Evolution works for both players, each under their own world's rules.

Starting one is a handshake: the host talks to the boss trainer and waits under a banner while the joiner accepts a prompt with START; the host can withdraw the invite with B. Co-op bosses only start from the marked spot in front of them.

What a boss win pays

Co-op double battles award no experience. Instead, a win grants both players a level boost (with any move-learn or evolution it triggers), the boss's unlock (badge, blockers removed, path forward), and the zone's score. Gym badges go to both players. When the beaten boss had a Phantom at their side, the Phantom flickers and vanishes after the win; the joiner stays locked in place until the whole post-battle sequence finishes (that is choreography, not a freeze).

Falling: Limbo and the Litwick

When your mon faints in co-op, you do not game over. You wake in Limbo, a dark waiting room outside the world, and on your partner's map a Litwick appears exactly where you fell.

Your partner talks to the Litwick to fight a revive battle: a rematch against the very enemy party that killed you, in the state you left it (damage you dealt stays dealt; if you had KO'd their lead, the next one steps up). Win, and you are pulled back into the world on the spot, revived. Lose, and your rescuer joins you in Limbo: both fallen, run over.

The rules of the revive:

• A fallen player comes back only through a won revive battle. There is no timer, no automatic rescue, no free way out of Limbo.
• Revive battles can be retried and are unlimited across a run; roles swap freely (rescuer one death, rescued the next).
• Revive battles award no experience.
• If the Litwick has connection trouble fetching the battle, it says so, stays put, and you simply talk to it again.
• A fallen player who disconnects is still in Limbo when they return, still revivable.

The run ends when

• Both players are down (a lost revive battle, or a full team wipe inside one battle).
• A surrender vote passes (Forfeit: both players must agree; a rejected vote puts the button on cooldown).
• A player leaves the run for good (points are banked for both).

On game over you get the run report: final mon, death cause, and the per-zone score breakdown. In co-op, a new run starts when both players press New Run.

The safety net

Co-op battles are protected against the ugly failure modes:

• A pre-battle checkpoint is armed automatically when a co-op battle starts. If the game freezes, a watchdog notices within seconds, reloads, and restores to just before the battle. A manual Restore lives in Settings (and in the mobile menu) while a checkpoint is armed.
• When one player restores, the other gets a one-click banner to restore too, landing both of you at the same moment.
• Checkpoints can only escape an unresolved battle. A battle you lost, or a forfeited run, can never be rolled back. Death is death.

8. Money: the vault, the shops, the economy

Money is a roguelite currency. You start each run with 3,000 and earn more from trainers.

• The Vault (Spawnopoli bank). Deposit and withdraw at the bank NPC. Banked money survives death and carries across runs; money in your pocket is lost when you fall. The vault also pays for account upgrades like incubator slots.
• Kaizo shops. Spawnopoli, every gym town, and a couple of extra stops each run a randomized mart: 8 items rolled per run per player, each with a 15% chance to be a TM (shops and gym leaders are the only TM sources). Every slot holds exactly one unit: buy it and it is SOLD OUT for the run. Prices scale with how deep in the run the shop sits; selling always pays a flat quarter of an item's base value, wherever you sell.
• Field items. The world holds over a hundred randomized item balls. About a quarter of the pool is Mega Stones by design: fuel for the Stone Curator (section 10). Your mon can also proc Pickup after won battles.
• Gift heals. Two scripted caches of random healing items exist: the Mew at the top of Mirage Tower (4 heals) and the Route 119 house woman (3 heals, after you beat all six trainers lurking in that route's grass).

9. The road: bosses, dungeons, and the endgame

The run's spine: Spawnopoli Arena, then eight gyms with routes and dungeons between them, then the Elite Four gauntlet, the Champion, and the final boss.

• Gym bosses are possessed. Every gym leader fights alongside a dark Phantom of themselves, as a co-op double. Beat them and the leader is freed, the Phantom dissolves, and both players take the badge. The one exception is Mossdeep, where the real twins Tate and Liza fight you as a true pair. Petalburg is a puzzle gym: each room's trainer carries a mon massively skewed toward that room's stat, and each win opens your choice of doors.
• Mandatory co-op dungeons (gate in, sealed until the boss falls): Granite Cave, Aqua Hideout (its boss guards the submarine ride onward), Mossdeep Space Center, Cave of Origin (with a secret floor below it), and Victory Road, where every fight on the climb is a co-op double.
• Optional dungeons pay the bold: Mirage Tower, Jagged Pass, the Weather Institute (with a free-heal bed), and Mt. Pyre.
• Mt. Pyre is the trophy dungeon. Its summit holds RED with his true iconic team, the only randomization-proof trainer on the map. Beating him in co-op pays the biggest optional zone bonus in the game and permanently unlocks the RED character skin for both players.
• Set-piece bosses punctuate the routes: the Abandoned Ship captain's office, the Slateport Battle Tent duo, the Mt. Chimney summit (Maxie and Archie together, and a story scene worth seeing for yourself), a bridge ambush on Route 119, and more.
• The Elite Four is a gauntlet. A dual-tile gate at the League makes both players confirm past a warning ("no turning back"): the four rooms and the Champion are one continuous locked corridor with no healing between fights. Each member fights beside their Phantom; the Champion is Steven.
• Beyond the Champion, the Hall of Fame hides a teleporter to the true finale: Pike Queen Lucy and her Phantom at the Battle Pyramid summit, the highest-value fight in the game. Beat her and the run is won: both players get the victory screen, the run is recorded as CLEARED, and the win feeds Boss Rush eligibility.

Free healing ladies are stationed at fair intervals on the road (Mt. Chimney, Route 121, Route 125, Mt. Pyre, deep Cave of Origin, Ever Grande) so the heal cap is a budget, not a wall.

10. The special NPC directory

The recurring characters that make the loop turn. Hub NPC locations may still move as balancing continues.

Spawnopoli:

• The Nurse: instant heal, shows your remaining heal count.
• The Banker: the Vault (section 8).
• The Mart Clerk: the first kaizo shop.
• The Stone Curator (also at a second late-game post): turns the run's Mega Stone flood into value. Transmute any 3 stones into the stone that fits your current mon's line; salvage any 2 for a pick from a curated heal stock; and bank up to 3 stones in account-level slots that persist across runs (withdraw at Spawnopoli, one slot spent per withdrawal).
• The Boss Rush Gatekeeper: the door to the endgame gauntlet (section 12).
• Steven and Norman: the arena duo, your first co-op boss, and the source of your first egg.

The Egg Lab:

• Egg retrieval: the counter where hatched Pokémon are claimed (section 11).
• Four reroll specialists, each usable once per run, paid in cash: reroll your mon's ability (3,000), its nature (3,000), all six IVs (3,000), or 1 to 4 of its moves (500 / 1,000 / 1,500 / 2,000). A doomed roll can be fixed; the stakes stay.

The Social Center:

• The Trade Desk: Partner Trade (full mon swap with your partner, both confirm) and Wonder Trade (a queue that matches you with a stranger's mon within a 2-minute window). Trade evolutions trigger and cannot be refused; a traded mon keeps the stats and ability of the world it came from. The jackpot: trade Shelmet and Karrablast for each other and they evolve into their original Accelgor and Escavalier, shiny, with stats scaled far beyond anything else on the map.
• The Mentalist: swaps your and your partner's entire movesets, both confirming.
• The Steal Battle: win, then take any one mon from the enemy team as your own (it replaces yours).
• The Money Battle: a straight fight for a fat cash prize.

The Specialist House (through the house on Scout Zone 4):

• The Depot Keeper: 3 account-level item crates that persist across runs. Store items, balls, berries, and TMs; withdraw them in a future run.
• Lady Fortune: wager 500, 2,000, or 10,000. 45% to win double, else the stake is gone. Unlimited plays.
• The Scrambler: once per run, free: he takes one random item from your bag and hands back something random from his coat. Could be anything in the field pool.
• The Chaos Monk: the big gamble. 5,000, once per run: your mon is rerolled into a random species of comparable power. Level and moves stay; species, stats, typing, and ability are fate's.
• The Memorialist: reads your previous run and pays condolences scaled to how far it went: the deeper the fallen run (or a won one), the better the gift.

Talking to ordinary NPCs is worth your time too. Some of them remember things they should not.

11. Eggs and incubators

Eggs are milestone rewards that hatch into replacement Pokémon.

• Earning: win the Spawnopoli Arena and an egg drops (rarer types at lower odds; more milestone drops are planned as the system expands). Each egg's Pokémon is rolled at award time under your run's seed: species (gated by the egg's tier: legendary eggs roll from the 600+ power pool, epic 500+, rare 400+, plus special and type-themed eggs), moves, ability, nature, and stats, all fixed inside the shell.
• Incubating: eggs hatch on trainer defeats, not clocks. Every trainer you beat ticks every incubating egg at once. Tier decides the count: rare 5, special and type eggs 8, epic 10, legendary 15. You have 1 free incubator slot; slots 2 through 5 unlock from the profile for 10,000 / 20,000 / 40,000 / 80,000 out of the vault. Incubation is one-way: once an egg is in, it comes out only by hatching. Storage holds up to 20 waiting eggs.
• Hatching and claiming: a hatch mid-run pops a banner and frees the slot. Hatched Pokémon collect in your Box (profile, Eggs tab) with their full details, and are claimed in-game at the Egg Lab. Claiming replaces your current run mon, and a hatched mon can be claimed only once. A hatched mon carries its own stats and ability with it into any run.

Your profile's Eggs tab holds the inventory, the incubators, the Box, and a history of every egg you have earned.

12. Boss Rush

The alternate endgame for proven teams. Live now, in its testing phase: expect tuning.

• Entry: the Gatekeeper in Spawnopoli checks both players. Each needs 3 unspent winning runs on record, each with its final mon saved. Both players confirm past a warning; there is no way out but through.
• Your team: the one-mon rule is suspended, deliberately and only here. Each player brings the 3 Pokémon that won their qualifying runs, exactly as they were: their stats, their abilities, their forms.
• The prep chamber: before the gauntlet, each player gets a war chest of 100,000 and a shopping arcade: full Mega Stone and Z-Crystal coverage, held items, and deep healing stock including PP restores. Budget it: 84 enemy Pokémon are waiting.
• The gauntlet: 14 champions, back to back, in one continuous chain: Blue, Steven, Alder, Diantha, Iris, Nemona, Hau, Kukui, Geeta, Leon, Cynthia, Kieran, Lance, and Red, at levels 92 to 100, each with their canonical 6-mon team and their era's battle gimmick (Mega, Tera, Z-Moves, or Dynamax), usable by them and by you, once per champion (Dynamax is one per team per champion: at Leon, only one of you gets it). Era-authentic champion themes play through the whole chain, and a cutscene bridges each handoff.
• Fainting here is switching: a downed mon sends out your next. Only a full wipe of both players' teams ends it, as a loss.
• Stakes: clear the chain and the run is a win, but the 3 winning records that got you in are consumed: re-entry costs 3 fresh victories. A wipe consumes nothing; retry when ready.

13. The tracker

An Ironmon tracker is built into the play page: your instrument panel, live at all times, shared with your partner.

• Cards by role: YOU (green), PARTNER (amber), and in battle ENEMY (red), plus an ALLY card for your partner's mon in co-op battles. Desktop shows everything at once in a sidebar; mobile is a swipeable carousel.
• Your card shows everything: live stats with boost chevrons and nature coloring, moves with type, PP, power, accuracy and live effectiveness against the watched enemy, ability, held item, IVs, money, a bag-heals summary, and a coverage readout (how many of the 18 types you hit super effectively, tappable to see the gaps).
• Enemy cards make you do the scouting. Exact enemy stats are hidden: instead you mark each stat with your own read (+, −, or unknown) and write free-text notes per species. Enemy moves start hidden and reveal as they are used. Marks, notes, and reveals persist for the whole run and sync live to your partner. In doubles, tap an enemy to point your effectiveness readout at it.
• Run info rides along: score, badges, heal count, level cap, evolution method, and learnset progress (the moves header opens the full learnset).
• 18 color themes, all legibility-checked, picked from the dot in the badge bar. Card size is adjustable in Settings.

The overlay only ever shows enemy data in battle: no wallhacks in the overworld.

14. Scoring, seasons, and the leaderboard

Every trainer you defeat is worth points inside a scored zone, and clearing every trainer in a zone pays its completion bonus. Boss pairs count once (the phantom never scores). Gym and dungeon zones score once for the team; routes score per player, so both of you walking a route is worth double.

A zone-progress overlay tracks the current zone as you walk it. At game over you get the full per-zone breakdown. Scores are resilient: kills queue through disconnects and pauses and never get lost to a network blip.

Zone completion bonuses climb with the run, from 50-point early routes through 100 to 180 across the gyms, dungeons, and the Elite Four, to three peaks: Mt. Pyre's 200 (the optional-dungeon crown), the Champion's 1,000, and The Summit's 1,500 for Lucy, the largest prize in the game.

• In co-op, the final run score is shared: one team score, written to both players.
• Rankings track total score, best run, and run count per season, sorted live by total. The leaderboard shows the top 100 (top 3 in gold, silver, bronze), a Friends filter with presence dots, and your own sticky rank footer. Attempts are counted per season (the counter sits in the game toolbar).
• Run history lives on your profile: every run with its final mon, points, duration, death cause, and CLEARED or FAINTED verdict, expandable to the full score breakdown.

15. Collectibles and customization

• Character skins: 11 protagonist skins from across the series (Brendan and May in three eras each, Dawn, Lucas, Gold, Lance, and Red). All are free to equip except Red, which is earned: defeat RED atop Mt. Pyre in co-op. Equip from Profile → Customize with animated walk and run previews plus battle front and back sprites. Your partner sees your skin in-game.
• The trainer card: your public face on the leaderboard and to friends: name, best run, attempts, rank, equipped skin, and eggs hatched. You can display one of your hatched Pokémon beside your skin as your profile partner.
• Friends: friend requests, presence (online, in a run), direct co-op invites from the lobby, and a friends-only leaderboard view.
• Patch notes and play notes: the version timeline lives on the Patch Notes page; the bell icon on the play page carries current advisories.
• Your account is yours: linked Discord earns the verified role on the community server; account deletion (Settings → Danger Zone) is permanent and erases everything.

16. The story, without spoilers

Hoenn is not well. The world you walk is one of countless unstable versions of itself, and every run is another roll of reality's dice. Most people notice nothing. A few remember everything: every attempt, every fall, every version of you that came before. The gym leaders fight beside dark Phantoms of themselves. Somewhere behind the map, something wants the dice to stop.

You and your partner are the anomaly: two worlds, synchronized. That should not be possible, and it is the only thing that scares them.

Talk to people. Fight everything. There is a truth to unveil, and it starts on a volcano.

17. Quick reference

UltraKaizo is in alpha and evolves fast: check the Patch Notes page for what changed this week. Found a bug? The Discord #bug-reports forum is where runs get avenged.