You're standing there in front of a Gym Leader. You've got your team ready. Then, suddenly, a Pokemon appears that has like... five different types? It’s a mess. Honestly, it’s a chaotic, beautiful mess. If you've spent any time in the ROM hacking community lately, you’ve probably run into the phenomenon of Pokemon too many types cheats and the fan games built entirely around this concept. We aren't just talking about Fire/Flying or Water/Ground anymore. We are talking about Pokemon that possess every single elemental affinity in the game simultaneously.
It changes everything.
The traditional "Rock, Paper, Scissors" logic of Pokemon gets tossed out the window. Usually, you’re thinking about 2x or 4x weaknesses. When you start messing with cheats or custom engines that allow for ten or eighteen types on a single creature, the math goes haywire. Most people think it just makes a Pokemon invincible. That's a huge misconception. In reality, it creates a very weird, very specific set of defensive vulnerabilities that can actually make a Pokemon weaker if you don't know what you're doing.
Why People Search for Pokemon Too Many Types Cheats
The urge to break the game is as old as the MissingNo glitch in Red and Blue. People want to see what happens at the edge of the code. Most players looking for Pokemon too many types cheats are actually looking for one of two things: actual GameShark/Action Replay codes for emulators, or specific fan-made ROM hacks like Pokemon Too Many Types created by developers like Blue_S_G.
In the case of the ROM hack, it isn't even a "cheat" in the traditional sense—it's the entire point of the game. Every Pokemon has been modified to have an absurd number of types. We're talking about a Pikachu that is Electric, Normal, Flying, and whatever else the creator felt like throwing in there.
Why do this? It's about the puzzle. How do you even damage something that is resistant to almost everything?
The Math Behind the Madness
Let’s talk about how the damage calculation works when you have "too many types." In a standard game, if a move is super effective against both of a Pokemon's types, it does 4x damage. If you have a Pokemon with 18 types, and a move is super effective against 5 of them but resisted by 10 of them, you’re looking at a tiny fraction of damage.
But here is the kicker.
If a move is super effective against even more of those types, the multiplier keeps climbing. Mathematically, it's possible to hit a Pokemon for 64x or 128x damage if the type matchups align perfectly. That's not a fight; that's an execution.
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The Invincibility Myth
A common "cheat" involves giving a Pokemon every type to make it "perfect." If a Pokemon has every type from the standard 18-type chart (including Fairy), it actually still has weaknesses. For example, Rock-type moves would be neutral because the resistances and weaknesses across all 18 types eventually cancel each other out—mostly.
However, many Pokemon too many types cheats also include "Custom Types." In some modded versions, you’ll see "Dream" type, "Nuclear" type, or "Chaos" type. These don't follow the standard rules. If you're using a cheat engine like PKHeX to manually inject types into a save file, the game might not even know how to display the UI. You'll see a garbled mess of icons where the type symbols should be. It’s hilarious. It’s also prone to crashing your save file if the hex values don't align with what the ROM expects.
How to Access These "Too Many Types" Features
If you're looking to actually play this way, you have a few distinct paths.
- The Fan Games: This is the safest way. Games like Pokemon Too Many Types are built from the ground up to handle the UI. You won't crash your computer. You get to experience the intentional balance (or lack thereof) that the creator intended.
- Cheat Engines (PKHeX): If you are playing on an emulator (like Desmume or Citra), you can use a save editor. You open your
.savfile, find your Charizard, and manually check every single type box. Note: most base games (like Emerald or Platinum) are hardcoded to only recognize two types. Checking more boxes in a standard save editor often does nothing or just defaults to the first two. - RAM Injection: This is the "real" cheating. Using a tool like Cheat Engine on a PC running an emulator to find the memory address for a Pokemon's type and forcing it to a value that represents "All." This is how you get the legendary "Glitch Type" Pokemon.
The Impact on Competitive Strategy
Believe it or not, there is a small community that theory-crafts about "Multi-Type" battles. It's a nightmare. Stealth Rock, for instance, becomes the most broken move in history. Since Stealth Rock deals damage based on weakness to Rock, a Pokemon with 8 types that are all weak to Rock would essentially faint the moment it switches into the battle.
It turns the game into a glass-cannon meta.
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Everything can kill everything in one hit. You'd think 18 types would make you a tank. Nope. It just means there are 18 different ways for the game's math to find a hole in your defense.
Does it Ruin the Fun?
Kinda. For a while.
The novelty of Pokemon too many types cheats wears off once you realize that the strategy is gone. Pokemon is a game of limits. When you remove the limits, you're just clicking buttons to see big numbers. But as a technical experiment? It's fascinating. It shows how robust (or fragile) the original Game Freak coding really was.
Technical Risks of Forcing Multi-Types
Don't just go checking boxes in a cheat menu without a backup. Seriously. I've seen dozens of people lose 100-hour save files because they tried to give their Arceus "all types" using a buggy Action Replay code.
What happens is a "Buffer Overflow." The game expects two bytes of data for types. You try to shove eighteen in there. The data spills over into the next section of the code—which might be your "Items" list or, worse, your "Location Data." Suddenly, you're standing in the middle of a black void, your bag is full of "TM7b," and your game crashes every time you open the menu.
- Always backup your save.
- Use separate save slots.
- Don't try to trade "cheat" Pokemon. The legality checkers in modern games will flag them instantly, and you might get a ban if you try to take them online in official titles like Scarlet or Violet.
Actionable Steps for Players
If you want to experience this without destroying your hardware, start with the ROM hacks. Search for the specific project titled Pokemon Too Many Types. It’s a complete overhaul where the UI is actually designed to show you all the icons. It's a blast to see a screen filled with 15 different tiny elemental symbols.
For those determined to use Pokemon too many types cheats on original hardware or vanilla ROMs:
- Download PKHeX: It's the gold standard for save editing. It's much cleaner than using raw hex codes.
- Check Compatibility: Ensure your ROM version matches the cheat database. A version 1.0 code won't work on a version 1.1 ROM.
- Focus on Resistances: If you're manually picking types, don't just pick everything. Pick types that negate each other's weaknesses. A Steel/Fairy/Ghost/Electric combo is significantly harder to kill than a Pokemon with every single type enabled.
The world of Pokemon modding is deep. Whether you're doing it for the memes or to test the limits of the battle engine, adding "too many types" is a rite of passage for any hardcore fan who has grown bored of the standard eight-gym circuit. Just remember that with great power comes a very high chance of your game freezing at the Elite Four.
Next Steps for Your Journey:
To get started safely, download a clean ROM of Pokemon Emerald and apply the Too Many Types patch using a web-based UPS patcher. This ensures the game logic is pre-configured to handle multiple type resistances without crashing. If you prefer manual editing, use PKHeX on a secondary save file to experiment with "Type 3" and "Type 4" flags, but keep your primary "living dex" save far away from these experiments to avoid data corruption.