Featured Image Credit: Pokemon Company
There really was something intangibly cool about the GameCube era for Pokemon games, and for Nintendo more generally.
Even though they were highly limited in number, Pokémon Colosseum remains an all-time classic that's well worth booting up in 2025.
That said, its successor is arguably just as good, and it's certainly one of the most underrated Pokémon games of all time. Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness has a similar focus, asking players to fight and capture Pokémon using the Snag Machine, identically to Colosseum.
The base game comes with 83 to collect in total, but a new project is about to expand that, and the game more generally, considerably, and it's available to download for free right now.
The remarkable thing about being a gamer in 2025 is that it's easier than ever to play all of the games that defined our childhoods. Whilst emulation is a bit of a sticky subject for some, it does give us the opportunity to make old games playable in the modern day, and preserve them for the historical record.
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One step beyond that we have ROM hacks, where clever developers take the original ROMs for older games and transform them in some way, transforming the experience and removing outdated features that otherwise might stunt the enjoyment for modern players.
Pokémon XD: DX Director's Cut is one of the more exciting examples of that in recent years, transforming the gameplay experience whilst endeavouring to keep the story intact for the most part.
In the developer's own words, "Trainer teams have been completely reworked, nearly every Pokémon line is obtainable, and Pokemon Stats, Abilities and Movesets have been overhauled to keep battles fresh. DX embraces the Shadow Pokémon theme with a darker, stylized aesthetic and a stronger focus on variety and challenge. While not a "vanilla" replay, DX builds on the foundations of Gale of Darkness and XG: Next Gen to provide a more dynamic and enjoyable experience for long-time fans of the series."
The scale of the ROM hack is pretty astounding and, with over 5 years of work on the project from developer SuperPep, it's one of the most feature-complete and deeper fan-made experiences that you're ever likely to play.
To get it going, all you need to do is have a ROM copy of XD on your PC, which you can then patch with DX to get it to run this bespoke version.
