A Nintendo DS-inspired companion OS for Pokémon Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal in Gen1Recomp.
Kanto Gear turns otherwise unused screen space into a live companion system. Version 3 replaces the old fixed tab bar with a customizable Home screen built from apps, shortcuts and widgets.
- Explorer combines the local map, current encounters, trainers, items and Itemfinder behavior without reducing the adventure to a spreadsheet. Available encounters are ordered by access and method, with uncaught species ahead of caught ones at the same availability. Gen 2 fishing entries require a bank. In Gold, Silver and Crystal, fruit markers show berry and apricorn trees. Tap a tree for its item name and whether it is ready or already picked today. Daily harvests do not change permanent item totals or Stamps progress. Options → Appearance → Map Motion lets you choose Quality or Performance for movement in both the local map and the Home Explorer widget.
- Party, Bag, Pokédex, Map, Trainer Card and Field Kit are dedicated bottom-screen apps with contextual touch flows. Pokédex habitats prioritize visited areas with matching encounter times and available methods, and show missing requirements or unvisited locations. This is catch planning: owned TMs/HMs and boxed partners can count toward a method. Explorer's Here Now still requires tools usable with your current party and bag.
- Silph Store explains and manages optional apps and widgets. Everything already ships inside Kanto Gear; the Store never downloads executable code.
- Achievements tracks trainers, items, hidden finds, and local wild Pokémon. Bronze marks a visited area; silver completes its trainer and item goals; gold also completes its local species list. Pokémon already registered as caught count wherever they were obtained. Gym trainers follow the game's completion flags, including trainers automatically cleared by a Gym Leader victory. One-shot battles that allow a loss are optional; missed regular goals and unverified progress remain explicit. Install it from Silph Store; it respects your research mode. Its full-width Stamps widget shows the current area, stamp tier and progress across all four categories. Tap it to open that area's details.
- Notes keeps personal notes and checklists for your playthrough, either general or attached to a route or area. Install it from the HGSS Silph Store. Create a note and choose Tasks → + Task to start a checklist.
- Team View puts all six party members on Home, with a tap into their details.
- HGSS Light, Dark and Auto provide the new high-resolution visual system. Auto follows Gen 2 night and uses the same 18:00 boundary in Gen 1.
- Vanilla, Enhanced and Spoilers let each player choose how much assistance Explorer and the battle interface reveal.
- Redesigned battle menus, Party selection, move learning, item use and PC storage still execute the original game actions and rules.
Long-press an app or widget to edit Home, then swap it with another compatible card or an empty slot. Layout, installed apps, widgets and settings persist across restarts. Legacy Kanto Gear themes remain available, but every 3.0 installation starts once in HGSS Light so Silph Link OS cannot be missed.
- Install the latest official Gen1Recomp release for your platform.
- Install Kanto Gear from the official Mod Index, or import
kanto_gear-*.zipfrom the latest release. - Enable Kanto Gear, start a supported game and select your display mode in the fixed Options app.
You need your own supported ROM. Kanto Gear contains no ROM, ROM-derived game data or save file. English, German, Spanish (Spain), French and partial Japanese are built in under Settings → Appearance → Language. Disable the old companion language packs; they are no longer needed. Only Kanto Gear's interface changes language; game text remains untouched. See language support.
Game translation mods can supply their own font through mod.content.font.
Kanto Gear uses that font when it covers text missing from its pixel fonts.
Bundled Japanese and Korean Fusion Pixel fonts also work without a game
translation mod and cover gaps in a game's font, including the numero sign.
They load only when needed; supported Latin text keeps the HGSS pixel fonts.
Measurement, truncation and centering use the same selected font.
Japanese currently covers the contributed core menu strings; missing entries
fall back to English. Korean Gear menu translations are not included yet.
Gear's own menu language is selected
separately; installing a game translation does not translate Gear's menus.
For type labels, Gear also reads contextual type|<name> entries from the
public strings registry. RBY packages need the generator's companion type
string addition; older packages retain their canonical type labels in Gear.
Notes also supports colored drawing, stroke erasing and undo on surfaces that provide continuous pointer input. Android secondary displays need a host that forwards pointer movement; without it, Gear shows HOST MISSING LIVE DRAWING INPUT. Text notes and checklists remain usable. Notes are saved separately for each playthrough.
Compatibility checks use packages from the translation mod generator. The eleven standard language/game packages have been checked with the mod loader across Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal, and with offscreen HGSS rendering. Device validation remains a separate step: enable Gear and one matching translation package, then check Party, Bag and a long translated name in both light and dark themes. Korean Crystal-specific dialogue remains English where the generator has no translation corpus. See the repeatable translation checks for exact coverage, commands and known integration gaps.
| Mode | Best for |
|---|---|
| Fullscreen Swap | Phones and small one-screen handhelds |
| Combined Screen | Steam Deck-style devices, tablets and large displays; optional bottom safe area for Android touch controls |
| Separate Screens | AYN Thor, RG DS, desktop windows and multi-monitor setups |
Swipe or use visible arrows inside paged Silph Link apps. Optional Trigger Tabs use L2/R2 where supported, while Home editing intentionally remains touch-only. Android touch-control positions belong to the host; use its Touch Controls editor if they overlap a combined layout. Combined Screen can also reserve a configurable Bottom Safe Area so the complete game and companion layout stays above fixed Android controls.
| Game | Minimum official host |
|---|---|
| Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow | Gen1Recomp 0.1.99 |
| Pokémon Gold | Gen1Recomp 0.1.99 |
| Pokémon Silver | Gen1Recomp 0.2.10 |
| Pokémon Crystal | Gen1Recomp 0.2.22 |
Android, Windows and Linux use the same Kanto Gear mod ZIP. The AYN Thor is the primary development device; combined layouts, independent displays and the desktop companion window are also supported.
Moving from the former Kanto Android host
The legacy and official Android hosts use separate app identities. Export your
save from the old host, then import the ROM, save and Kanto Gear into the
official app. Keep the old host until the migrated save has been verified.
Gen1Recomp cannot currently export Gold or Silver cartridge .sav files, so
those players should retain the legacy installation until an upstream transfer
path exists.
For Kanto Gear display, touch or companion-UI problems, open an issue with your device, operating system, host version, Kanto Gear version, display mode and installed mods. General startup and host problems belong to the Gen1Recomp issue tracker.
Kanto Gear is built on Gen1Recomp and released under the MIT License. Spanish was contributed by Desierto La Espada, French by Blastheaven2 and Japanese by Theeohn. Special thanks to @Rocky5150 for extensive device testing.
Font credits:
- Fusion Pixel and Ark Pixel by TakWolf.
- Misaki by Num Kadoma, Miseki Bitmap by Mark Li, Boutique Bitmap 7x7/9x9 by Cen-cyun Liu / Luke Liu, and Galmuri by Lee Minseo (quiple) contribute to the bundled Fusion fonts.
- The HGSS image fonts use BobsGame nD by Robert Matthew Pelloni and scientifica by Akshay Oppiliappan.
See font credits and license locations. The downloadable ZIP includes these credits and the complete font license notices. Font assets retain their respective licenses.
Pokémon and related names are trademarks of their respective owners. This fan project is not affiliated with Nintendo, Game Freak, The Pokémon Company or Gen1Recomp.