Pokémon Crossroads’ Three Regions Already Put Winds & Waves To Shame

Pokémon Winds and Waves are coming in 2027, and in the meantime, there are a lot of Pokémon games to keep you busy, including ROM hacks that appeal to fans of the older classic games. This is really where fan-games like Pokémon Crossroads can come into play, offering fans a different experience that what we’ve seen in mainline games and official releases.

Pokémon Crossroads is available to play now, and while only two regions are playable at the moment, there will be a total of three once it’s all finished. That’s a pretty ambitious undertaking, and it’s one that theoretically could put the upcoming Gen 10 games to shame.

Pokémon Crossroads Brings Kanto, Johto, & Hoenn Together

Pokémon Crossroads features three fully explorable areas right now: Hoenn, Kanto, and the Sevii Islands. Gen 2’s Johto region will be added at a later date. Currently, you can attempt to get 8 Badges from Kanto, and 8 from Hoenn, and the game features seamless switching between regions via in-game Pokémon Centers.

You can also choose whether you’d like to start in Kanto’s Pallet Town or Hoenn’s Littleroot Town. Once Johto is added, it’ll be an even more massive game, featuring hundreds of Pokémon to catch and a total of 24 Badges to acquire. That kind of scale and scope is something official games have never done, and it could dwarf Winds and Waves‘ new region by comparison.

Can Pokémon Winds & Waves Compete With Three Regions?

Presumably, Winds and Waves‘ map will comprise a single region, even if future DLC adds additional areas like we saw in Scarlet and Violet and Sword and Shield. Leaks have suggested Gen 10 will include our biggest map yet, but it seems like those previous rumors of prodecurally-generated islands that are endless are not accurate anymore. So, while it’s a big world, it may not be quite as large as everyone initially expected.

The Gen 10 games are open-world, but it’ll still be hard to compete with the size of three regions, even if those regions are from the earliest Pokémon games. In fact, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a modern (and official) Pokémon game that lets us explore three regions so seamlessly.

So, it’s great that we have good ROM hacks like Pokémon Crossroads to scratch that itch. Until we see more of the region in Pokémon Winds and Waves, it’s hard to really compare Gen 10’s map to Kanto, Hoenn, and Johto. But it feels unlikely the new game will be as large as these three older regions combined. Regardless, give Pokémon Crossroads a try.