This is a rom hack of Pokemon Emerald that replaces all the pokemon with 151 Mario characters, mostly Bowser's minions, as well as crafting an entirely new map to explore set around the Mushroom Kingdom populated with even more Mario characters. You might be thinking, are there enough Marios to populate a pokedex, especially if most of the named characters are NPCs? But once you bring in the bestiaries of every Mario platformer and RPG, then yeah actually, if anything 151 is too limiting! Gotta balance the classics with Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, Luigi's Mansion, Galaxy, Odyssey, Sunshine, 64, World, Yoshi's Island, and a dash of a few other things. But I think the game struck a pretty good balance of creatures, and some of my favorites like Swoop and Chargin' Chuck and Rex made the cut so I can't complain. Yes these are all from World, sorry but that's one of the first games I ever remember even seeing so it's got a big reservation in my heart.
Not that it was an unblemished production for me... Now, in recent Pokemon generations I've been pretty unenthused about the starter selection and have taken to boxing them once they invariably evolve into something kinda lame when they are far better grass/water/fire types running around. Mariomon's starter selection is a strong one, Piranha Plant for grass, Blooper for water, and Bob-omb for fire, and I picked the plant because y'know, Piranha Plant's my guy. This was a gamble, but I was hoping it would maybe evolve into Naval Piranha from Yoshi's Island or maybe the similiar Lava Piranha from Paper Mario. But nope, my worst fears were realized when my guy grew stumpy legs and put a diaper on. Man. Fuck Petey Piranha. I also felt like the type distribution of mons across the game was a little wonky. Not so much in the dex itself but in terms of what mons enemy trainers often use, you end up seeing a lot of steel types, and physical attackers in general. I also wasn't really a huge fan of how many Mariomon pokemon were just copies of regular pokemon. Yoshi is Eevee, Hammer Bro is Castform, Fang and Swoop are Zubat and Golbat, Fuzzy is Wishiwashi, and my least favorite, my beloved Dry Bones is a Shedinja with worse typing. Dark/Ground?? I also wasn't really a fan of the Captain Toad partner segment in World 5, it's a cool concept but drags on too long and Hammer Bro is a tedious pokemon to battle with when you don't have a weather setter. Also, we gotta talk about the Happy Moon sprite, that thing is hideous.
That's about it for the negatives, though! I loved the world structure letting you sample a wide variety of locales without much of a disconnect; they're basically themed after their gym leaders so you get Wario World and DK World and Rosalina World. Each "level" felt like a Mario level as well as a Pokemon route, turning World 8 into one big castle dungeon and Victory Road into a kart-themed Rainbow Road were both pretty inspired decisions. I also loved Bowser being bad at the rules of the competition and always using himself as an unobtainable pokemon because he keeps getting fed up with losing. You've got some community standard QoL implements like items as HMs and early Exp Share and easy access to the PC, but also some neat stuff I hadn't seen before like infinite use Escape Rope and Repel. The Pokedex in particular is insane, so much useful information that puts the mainline Pokedex to shame. I'm always saying, let players see what moves a pokemon can learn or log their abilities and evolution methods or see their base stat spread. Sure I get the Pokemon developers don't want to inundate their core audience of children with too much information, but even the original anime shows off a pokedex that tells you what moves a pokemon can learn. Fan games of course have the leeway to tell you even the real nitty gritty like experience gain rates, egg hatching rate, EVs granted, all that bologna, and I appreciate it.
Every pokemon rom hack I've played the last few years has been incredibly impressive and this one is no exception, the scene is in such a great place these days. Mariomon was apparently produced by a big name Youtuber/streamer I guess but idk anything about him, I certainly wouldn't complain if they pursue more projects like this, though. I'm kind of surprised the team hasn't received a cease and desist from Nintendo, but I guess they're busy with the Switch 2 launch. I'd love to see a Paper Mariomon, or a Zeldamon, or a Sonicmon that has some effort put into it.
Game Number: 45
Year Played: 2025
Platform: GBA