players move to pokemon Emerald and can talk to other people on the overworld

Aside from the traditional battle and overworld style,

players' pokemon Emerald are able to participate in pokemon Contests where they can try and win in five different contest categories: "Cool",

"Beauty", "Cute", "Smart", and "Tough" competitions. The players' characters are given a device early on called the pokéNav,

which allows players to view the world map, check their poké contest stats,

and make and receive phone calls with trainers that they have met with whom they can chat or plan a battle.

This replaces a function called "trainer's eyes", which allows players to register certain trainers and see when they are in the mood to battle.

This also allows players to rebattle Gym leaders, an ability not found in previous pokemon games. Emerald includes several other new features and changes.

It includes animations of pokemon in-battle (which was not present in ruby or sapphire) and an area called the battle frontier.

It is an expansion of the battle tower found in previous games.

A man whom players encounter several times throughout the game will eventually allow them to access the battle frontier after beating the pokémon league champion.

The battle frontier features the aforementioned battle tower in addition to six new areas.

Completing these areas awards players with "Battle Points" which can be spent on prizes to use in and out of battle.

The Japanese version featured compatibility with the s e-Reader; however, this was cut for the English release due to its lack of success.

Emerald features the trainer hill area which, in the Japen version, is compatible with the e-Reader.

Rare pokemon that originated from earlier pokemon Emerald games such as Mew, Lugia, and Ho-Oh were made available through an in-game event.