Manaphy, the “signature legendary” of sorts for the Pokémon Ranger series, can be transferred over into the main series games via an extra system accessible from Ranger’s main menu. This was an event distribution that required you to download the “mission” to unlock Manaphy way back in 2010. As is consistent with this blog, I did that back at the time. And recently, I was trying to actually complete the mission and send Manaphy over to Pearl so I could bring it forward (before my suspected eventual closure of Pokémon Bank).
I ran into a series of errors while trying to do that transfer, but did eventually fix it. (Manaphy is safe!)
Look how cute it is
I was playing Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs specifically. This exact set of errors and fixes might apply to all 3 Ranger games, but I can’t be 100% sure.
The Manaphy mission itself in Guardian Signs is very easy (it’s basically a cutscene). But transferring Manaphy over to Pearl was just hitting an error for me.
Everything would seem to go as planned. The Ranger game said it was transmitting and to start up Diamond or Pearl to connect to it. The dynamic menu item in Pearl’s main menu even appeared (at the bottom, before you select to continue your save), giving me the option to connect to Pokémon Ranger! But after confirming on both screens, the little wireless indicator remained red until one or both of the games timed out, saying no connection could be established.
I was caught off guard by this - I didn’t expect to have any trouble here. First I tried some other hardware combinations. Maybe this was some esoteric system that only worked on an actual DS and it didn’t work while I was using a 3DS to run one of the games? I then found that, sadly, my original DS phat’s screen is damaged.
RIP
However, it was just the screen, and you can sort of see what’s going on. And I only needed to navigate a few menus after the game started. It was enough for me to confirm that the same thing happened with two DS systems. So I went hunting on the internet, and did indeed find other people who had similar problems! What follows is a list of all of the distinct issues I’ve seen folks talk about online.
It’s a scourge. Region locking has caused me no end of grief across so many games. If you’re a developer, do not do it. It punishes paying customers.
For Ranger specifically, I knew about this one already. Manaphy can only be transferred from a copy of Ranger that is of the same region as the main series game it’s transferring to. (Or possibly same language, depending on who you ask. Without a whole battery of different region cartridges to test, I can’t be sure.)
Anyway, I had an elaborate import system so all of my games are US copies - so that wasn’t my problem here.
Here’s a map of Vivillon’s regional distribution, which I am significantly less angry about, from the folks at pocketmonsters.net
This one is easy enough to be sure about. Each copy of Ranger can only send a single Manaphy. And that’s copy, not save. Restarting the Ranger game doesn’t allow you to send a second Manaphy. The Ranger menu looks different if that’s the case though. If you’ve already sent Manaphy, it’ll look like this:
The notice pops up when you press the “Send a Manaphy Egg” button
Each copy of Diamond and Pearl can also only receive one Manaphy. Thankfully, the game will literally tell you this. If you try to send a Manaphy to a game that has already received one, you’ll get a much more informative and obvious error along the lines of “You have already received this”. (Once I eventually fixed my transfer error, I saw that exact screen with my copy of Diamond, which had already received a Manaphy from the original Pokémon Ranger.)
I knew I hadn’t sent enough Manaphies (is that the plural? Manaphys?) to lock out all of my Generation 4 games, so that wasn’t the problem.
Then I found this discussion. Thank you, random GameFAQs users from 2009. You helped me a lot, here in 2024.
Mr dt100 pointed out that they had the same problem - connectivity seemed to just drop. And it was caused by them being saved in a Poké Mart (where the messenger appears to give you the egg). They fixed it by moving their character out of the Poké Mart and saving there (they don’t say where they saved specifically).
I was not saved in a Poké Mart. And they’re talking about Shadows of Almia, the second Pokémon Ranger game, not Guardian Signs the third one (which is what I was trying to transfer from). But that did get me thinking - if save location mattered in the previous game, where am I saved?
Here was my problem. With all the transferring and trading shenanigans I’ve been doing recently, I was saved upstairs in a Pokémon Center, right in front of the Union Room.
The very spot
I simply walked downstairs and saved the game again.
The canonically correct location to stand while saving the game
And that fixed it.
Maybe dt100 and my problem were the same - maybe you have to be saved in the downstairs section of the Pokémon Center. I’ve seen some other transfer mechanics in other Pokémon games that required that. But I also didn’t see any specific mention of that requirement in or around Ranger either.
So I hope this helps at least one more person, one day! Just like all those folks on GameFAQs helped me, all these years later!
]]>There are 26 obvious Unown, one for each letter of the Roman alphabet.
This one is F
There are also 2 punctuation Unown (? and !), who are absolutely sick of this shit.
Question Mark | Exclamation Mark |
---|---|
Just look at how dissatisfied they are.
Getting the punctuation Unown is relatively involved. There are a bunch of guides about how to do that online.
I did this recently and I ran into a tiny quibble that none of the guides mentioned. (Setting aside that I caught 36 Shadow Pokémon and purified 41 of them in Pokémon Colosseum to get a Ho-oh for one of the puzzles - ANYWAY!)
This took so long! But now’s not the time to get distracted
The guides all talk about the 4 puzzles and the 4 secret rooms. (I also had to find a Water Stone by showing a Staryu to Bill’s grandfather, but he didn’t want to see the Staryu first, I had to find two other - ANYWAY!)
Guides like this one from Psypoke
I completed all 4 puzzles and all 4 secret rooms and then went and talked to the guy in the Research Center. He unlocked page 7 of the Unown report for me. All the guides say “complete the 4 puzzles and the 4 hidden rooms” and some of them specifically mention “and then you’ll get page 7 of the Unown report”, and then they tell you to go to the entrance of the Ruins of Alph, where a cutscene will play and the punctuation Unown will unlock.
But it didn’t work. I couldn’t trigger the cutscene that would allow me to catch the punctuation Unown in the entrance tunnel.
I, who was reading from guides online and had not seen this completed before, didn’t know that the researcher had only given me the first half of page 7 of the Unown report.
Because it turns out that you don’t only have to complete the 4 puzzles and enter the 4 secret rooms. You also have to drop down the hole at the back of every secret room.
Yes, the layout of the room clearly suggests you do this
One of the rooms was quite close to the start of the Ruins of Alph, and after completing the room, I knew how to get to the other one. So rather than walk through the underground section of the ruins and fend off a bunch of Unown along the way, I backed out and walked to the next secret room after only picking up the items.
Thankfully I worked this out by dropping through each of them in sequence. (The text on the Unown report actually was quite helpful here.)
Hint: go look at the letters on the floor
The “letters on the floor” are what you see when you drop through the hole at the back of each secret room (which you can see in the Psypoke screenshot farther up).
So there you have it! In addition to completing the 4 puzzles and entering the 4 secret rooms, you must also drop from each of the secret rooms into the Ruins in order to unlock the final part of page 7 of the Unown Report, which allows you to trigger the cutscene that causes the punctuation Unown to appear at the Ruins entrance.
Now you, and the internet, know that. Because I panicked back before it did.
Seriously, because it happened to be a Thursday, Genzo the photographer character happened to be in that room in the Ruins and I took a completely unnecessary team photo thinking maybe he was blocking the cutscene. But isn’t it nice to have something to commemorate the moment by?
This was clearly what fixed it (it wasn’t)
]]>Winding it back a second - why am I back now? Why is this the “Eleventh Hour”?
On April 8th 2024, the 3DS online services are scheduled to be shut down. Nintendo have said that Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter are going to continue to work, while all other online services for that console are going to stop.
They’re very specific about that (this screenshot is from the site at the above link): A much more humorous earlier version of this site presented it as a list with Bank as the only item
Pokémon Home is the clear replacement successor to Bank. There is no scheduled end date for Pokémon Bank (at time of writing, 10th March 2024). So maybe it will continue quasi-indefinitely. I suspect it’s a cheap service to run physical cost wise. It’ll probably be about maintenance and security breaches, but I’m not here to conjecture about the cause. I’m here to conjecture about the timing.
I suspect Bank won’t live quasi-indefinitely, with the rest of the 3DS online coming down around it and especially with Home already up and running. But then again, are they really going to make all of those challenges unobtainable?
Still, things like this give me pause: “At their earliest convenience” eh?
It’s important to note that this isn’t the main official Pokémon or Nintendo Twitter. “Play! Pokémon” are the folks who organize the official online tournaments and the like. And on top of that, it’s not confirmation of any date or even an intent.
But it makes me feel a deadline. A sense of impending doom, when all of Pokémon’s past will be cut off from its future forever. (None of this should be a cloud service *grumble* *grumble* but we don’t get what I want!)
However! I do love a good deadline for getting things done.
So I’ve been back in Pokémon land, digging up old secrets and finding what nooks and crannies I left unexplored in the old games, before it’s too late.
I don’t know how many more blog posts I’ll get out of this run through, and it’ll be a little different from the “bizarre data sets” theme from before. But I hope if you enjoyed the old series, you’ll enjoy this one too.
]]>I’ve mentioned before that some of the edge cases I find are things that are difficult or unusual to represent from a data structure point of view and others are simple data wise, but really complicated for players to actually do. As a demonstration of the lengths one can have to go to for the “complicated for players” angle, this week I’ll be taking you through the process of actually breeding a Munchlax that knows Self-destruct in Ultra Moon.
The first thing we need to do is make sure I have all the hardware we need to get all the way from Generation 3 (Ruby & Sapphire) and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness up to Ultra Moon. What do we need for that?
This is actually my first GameCube controller than came with my original GameCube
The Wii thankfully plays GameCube games as well as Wii ones! My GameCube is in a box somewhere at my parents’ house, so the Wii is going to stand in for it. Thankfully (again), the Wii’s GameCube controller ports support the GameCube to GameBoy Advance link cable as well:
I did not think I would be using this particular cable ever again
Next up I need a copy of Gale of Darkness!
My elaborate filing system for games and unwillingness to throw any of it away has never been more useful than it was when doing this
I also need my Generation 3 GameBoy Advance games
Easily retrieved from a nearby drawer
And several of the DS games as well:
This is my case of Pokémon games, I have a separate case for all of my other DS games
If you take a look at the GameCube to GameBoy Advance link cable, you’ll notice that it’s sized to fit a GameBoy Advance specifically, not a DS. So even with a DS that can play GBA games, I still need an actual GBA to trade between any of the Generation 3 games and Gale of Darkness. So off to another drawer and I find:
With actual front-lit (bottom-lit?) screen
And to import from Generation 3 to Generation 4 (Diamond & Pearl), I need either a DS Phat or DS Lite (either of which have a GBA slot):
And finally, I need a 3DS (or a 2DS in my case) to do the Generation 4 to Generation 5 (Black & White) import. And of course to use Pokémon Bank and Ultra Moon.
On theme and everything
That’s all the hardware we need to take a Snorlax on a journey from 2005 to 2017!
Next, I need a Snorlax. Since Munchlax wasn’t introduced until Generation 4, it obviously doesn’t exist in Generation 3. Munchlax learns Self-destruct as an egg move and a Snorlax holding a Full Incense can be bred into Munchlax in the later games. So it’s Snorlax that we need in Generation 3. We can teach it Self-destruct and then begin the import journey.
Here is the first place that things got dicey. In Generation 3, Snorlax isn’t like most wild Pokémon. There’s no location in the game where you can repeatably find wild Snorlax roaming around in tall grass. In fact, Snorlax isn’t catchable at all in Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald. Snorlax can be caught in Fire Red & Leaf Green, but there are only two in each game and once you’ve caught or defeated both of them, that’s it.
There is also one Snorlax in Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness itself. The way Gale of Darkness works, there are no wild Pokémon. Instead, some opposing trainers use Shadow Pokémon which have been corrupted and turned evil. The player character has a device that allows them to catch Shadow Pokémon used by other trainers and then later purify them into normal Pokémon.
Shadow Lugia, posing for the box art
Between all of the above, that means there are five Snorlax available in total in Generation 3. (Snorlax can’t be caught in Pokémon Colosseum either.) Years ago, as the import mechanisms were available for moving my Pokémon over from older games, I emptied out all of the Pokémon I had caught in those old games into the newer ones. So in my Pokémon Bank there are 15 years of historical Pokémon from all of my different Pokémon games. (And if Nintendo ever deletes them because I forget to pay my $5 per year in the two week window before my subscription expires, I may actually die.)
The import process is one way, always going forward, never back to the older games. So I’ve potentially imported all five possible Snorlax from Generation 3 into my newer games, where they’re inaccessible to Gale of Darkness. If so, I need to restart either Fire Red, Leaf Green, or Gale of Darkness. Snorlax in Fire Red or Leaf Green is available relatively early, but I’d need to delete my original save and overwrite it with a new one to do that. Being the sentimental person I am, I’d prefer not to do that. (I considered playing through the game up to the point where you could catch Snorlax without saving to circumvent this, but unfortunately you need to save in order to trade.)
The other alternative would be to restart Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. Being a GameCube game, it saves to memory cards, so I can just start a new game on a new memory card. But you can only trade with the other Generation 3 games from Gale of Darkness after finishing the game. (Not to mention the one Snorlax in Gale of Darkness is on Citadark Isle, the final level, anyway.)
Cue frantic search:
Let’s see if we can do this with no trading at all to start with
I’ve replaced almost all of my Pokémon with Natu and Oddish
We’ll check here next, I played Leaf Green more than Fire Red, so Snorlax might have been skipped here
There was once a Snorlax in this location
And this one
I played a lot of Leaf Green, this seems unlikely to work
Crap
Victory!
Through some prescient series of decisions over a decade ago, in my copy of Leaf Green I never disturbed the Snorlax blocking the way to the Bike Path west of Celadon City. Despite training my team up to the high 80s in Leaf Green, apparently I didn’t feel the need to fight the Bikers and their Koffing.
Phew! We have a Snorlax!
Well, we have a wild Snorlax.
Next problem:
I said I emptied the games out, right?
Snorlax is thankfully not very high level. It’s only level 30. I’ll assemble a crackpot team of Pokémon from what remains in my copy of Leaf Green to capture it!
Yes, that’s a level 3 Pidgey.
And we’re in luck! That Bellsprout, at level 31 and one of my strongest Pokémon left (what am I even doing), knows Stun Spore! Paralysis will make Snorlax easier to catch and help me out in the battle. But there’s a relatively predictable issue with that:
Of course Snorlax knows Rest
Rest restores all of a Pokémon’s HP and puts it to sleep. The sleep status replaces any existing status, including paralysis. And then the Pokémon wakes up 2 or 3 turns later (depending on how much HP it regained), so the sleep status is gone as well. And to top it all off, the wild Snorlax in Leaf Green is holding a Chesto Berry! So it eats that berry the first time it falls asleep and immediately wakes back up. Perfect.
Cue montage:
We did it!
Success! So I walked back to the Pokémon Center and found Snorlax tucked away in Bill’s PC. I swapped him into my party because you can only trade from your party, not directly from the PC, until Generation 5 (Black & White). I moved into the middle of the Pokéball symbol in the floor on the Pokémon Center to save the game (because that’s the place where sane people stand when saving the game).
Right in this spot
Then I put the DS down to take a picture. And apparently I put it down too hard, because the whole thing shut off.
After I’d been kicked back to the system menu, I realized it thought the game cart had been removed. This hardware is all pretty old, so the game carts are struggling a bit by this point. A bit of fiddling and the game came back on again.
But of course, I hadn’t saved. So I needed to catch Snorlax again.
Success again! I very gingerly set down the DS to take this picture:
I won’t
And we have the Snorlax we need!
Above, while finding and catching Snorlax in Leaf Green, I was playing the GameBoy Advance game on my DS, because my DS is in good condition and still works (I’m inclined to blame the game cart for the episode with it all shutting off). Now, trading to Gale of Darkness, I need to rely on the GameBoy Advance SP.
Ol’ faithful
My GameBoy Advance SP is 15 years old (soon it’ll be old enough to vote). It has traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to get here. And it’s using a stock rechargeable 700mAh lithium ion battery that it shipped with on day one.
Predictably, that battery doesn’t hold charge very well. In fact, it barely holds charge at all.
At least it does power on
I only need it to work for a few minutes at a time to actually make the trade. But helpfully, most of that time is spent on screens that say things like “Don’t turn off the power”.
It’s not like there’s 15 years of Pokémon history on the line or anything
Despite the GameBoy Advance SP not turning on at all several times (even though it seemingly had full charge), it did work!
Futuristic 2005 graphics and everything
Now Snorlax is over in Gale of Darkness, so I can teach him Self-destruct!
Here’s an interesting tidbit of information. As I mentioned last week, Snorlax learns Self-destruct from a Move Tutor in Gale of Darkness. Move Tutors are a frequent occurrence in the Pokémon games: an NPC that will teach your Pokémon specific moves in exchange for some in-game currency or sometimes for free.
For reasons passing understanding, the move tutor in Gale of Darkness can only teach each specific move that she teaches overall once each. Once she teaches any Pokémon Self-destruct she can’t teach any more Pokémon Self-destruct in that save file.
Why do you do this to me, Game Freak?
So, I had my Snorlax in Gale of Darkness and needed to check if the move tutor will still teach Self-destruct. I checked online where the move tutor is in the game, and I found out she’s in Agate Village. The first site I checked didn’t say specifically where in Agate Village, but I figured the level isn’t that big, so I’ll just search. I talked to one of the first NPCs that I encountered in the village.
Crap. Wasn’t prepared for this.
Thankfully my unintentional opponent was using Bug type Pokémon and my pared down Gale of Darkness party happened to include a Dodrio that knew Drill Peck. Dodrio, despite being only at level 25 and its opponents at level 30, defeated them handily.
Then I went back to the internet and looked up precisely where the move tutor was in Agate Village. Because if I talked to anyone else I’d end up fighting a level 70 Blaziken or something and get thrown back to the Pokémon center when it destroyed me.
In a cave on the west side of the village. Good!
Strange place to live, but sure
Thankfully. Mercifully. Self-destruct was still in the list of moves that could be taught. No need to restart Gale of Darkness to re-enable that move tutor move! Actually learning the move is just picking from a menu then!
And we have Snorlax with Self-destruct, called SELFDESTRUCT at the time, because the old games were always shouting at you
Another run in with the dicey GameBoy Advance SP’s battery was needed:
Please don’t turn off, please don’t turn off, please don’t turn off…
And Snorlax was back in Leaf Green, ready for the journey forward in time.
Now we’re back to the DS Lite to import Snorlax from Leaf Green to Diamond. You can only import Pokémon from Generation 3 to Generation 4 once every 24 hours. It had at least 8 years since I last imported into my Generation 4 games, so we were ok on that front. Pokémon also have to be imported in a group of 6. Snorlax was the only one that I really needed to bring over, but I thought the brave Bellsprout that helped me catch Snorlax also deserved a place in the future Pokémon games, so he went along as well.
It’s been a long time since I saw this screen
The import mechanism is a bit weird. You go to Pal Park in Diamond while Leaf Green is in the DS’s GBA slot. You pick the Pokémon to bring over and then you play a “catching show” where you go and catch those 6 Pokémon.
The 6 Pokémon you choose are the only ones in Pal Park each time you enter
You’re given 6 100% catch rate Pokéballs called Park Balls. (Makes you wonder why the Master Ball is limited to one per game.) It recognizes the trainer name from your old game when catching the Pokémon.
I used to name all of my characters Ash after the show, but my character in Leaf Green is female. So Ashelin, obviously.
After some wandering around, Snorlax!
Here we are
Then I needed both my DS and 3DS to do the import from Diamond to White:
It’s also been a long time since I saw this
The import into Generation 5 is also bizarre. It uses the DS’s Download Play mechanic to download a minigame onto the DS you’re importing from. There, you have a kind of Pokéball slingshot that you use to catch the 6 Pokémon you’re importing as they jump between some bushes.
I don’t know why this isn’t just a menu
Now Snorlax is in a Generation 5 DS game! That means I can use the Poké Transporter application on the 3DS to import it into Pokémon Bank!
After installing all of the updates since I last used the Poké Transporter in 2014
And then from Bank, it’s a simple download into Ultra Moon!
The newer title screen looks much fancier when you’ve just seen the old ones
I’ve yet to do much competitive battling in Generation 7 (Sun & Moon), so I haven’t gone through and found all the generally useful items and abilities for breeding yet. Snorlax needs to be holding a Full Incense to evolve, which I needed to find a merchant for and purchase:
I needed to grab a Ditto from my boxes in Pokémon Bank to act as the other parent.
Ditto is all things to all Pokémon
And then I put them together in the Pokémon Nursery on Akala Island. An egg has a chance of appearing every 257 steps you take in-game. And the fastest way to do that is, of course, to run around in a circle on a Tauros.
It only makes sense if you don’t think about it
And after a while, the egg appears!
We have come so far for this
Having a Pokémon in your party that has the ability Flame Body or Magma Armor makes Pokémon eggs hatch faster. (Lore wise, it’s presumably because it keeps them warm.) I didn’t have any Pokémon with those abilities to hand, so I had to run around on Tauros for longer.
And then…
It begins
Munchlax. Munchlax will be glorious.
There it is! Isn’t it cute?
We have it! And what moves does it know!?
It worked! Not that I doubted it until this very moment or anything
And now we’ve done it! We’ve exercised the ridiculous Pokémon egg move edge case that is Munchlax with Self-destruct. It’s been a journey and I hope you’ve enjoyed every step!
]]>So who are the players in this elaborate game? Munchlax, its evolved form Snorlax, and the move Self-destruct. Snorlax is a classic Pokémon I’m sure many of you recognize from all the way back in Generation 1 (Red & Blue). Its laziness and penchant for sleeping all the time are well known:
It also has an amazing exclusive Z-Move
Munchlax is the baby version of Snorlax, introduced as a pre-evolutionary form to Snorlax in Generation 4 (Diamond & Pearl). Like Snorlax, Munchlax is known for eating a lot of food, though it’s not usually characterized as being quite as lazy:
Its eyes look into your soul
Self-destruct is a classic Pokémon move, introduced in Generation 1. The user of the move explodes, doing a lot of damage to its opponent(s) (and ally if it has one), unless, since it’s a Normal type move, the targets are Ghost Pokémon, which will take no damage. Then, the user of Self-destruct faints. All fairly self-explanatory. There’s even a souped up version of Self-destruct called Explosion, also introduced in Generation 1, but Munchlax and Snorlax can’t learn that one.
Why is Self-destruct on Munchlax so special? Munchlax, in every game since it has been introduced, has been able to learn Self-destruct as an egg move. I’ve talked about egg moves before, where a newly hatched Pokémon can emerge from its egg knowing that move if one of its parents knows it.
Like most other baby Pokémon (such as Cleffa, Magby, and others), breeding a Snorlax to get a Munchlax isn’t just a case of putting Snorlax in the daycare like most others. Presumably since it used to be possible to hatch Snorlax out of an egg, Game Freak wanted to keep that consistent. So by default you’ll just get a level 1 Snorlax. But if the Snorlax is holding a Full Incense (not a Lax Incense, despite the name) then Munchlax will hatch out of the egg instead of Snorlax.
You might say it was incensed
When PokémonCompDB is processing egg moves, it explores how each of the possible parents that can know that move learn it. I’ve mentioned in the depths of the PokémonCompDB page that the application’s database is built up by parsing fan websites that list this data, mostly Serebii. I first encountered an issue with Munchlax when trying to parse which Pokémon could be a parent to teach it Self-destruct. PokémonCompDB wasn’t finding any parents. I’ve learned from working on this application for a while that my first response should always be to just look at the web page I’m trying to parse, because some problems are quite obvious to a human eye:
Screenshot taken from this page, in case Serebii updates it and makes this post confusing
Well, there’s your problem. No parents listed means no parents can be found. So I dug manually - why is the above blank? Well, it’s blank because the parent for Munchlax that can know Self-destruct is Snorlax, but the way it learns it doesn’t fall into any of those categories.
Snorlax can learn Self-destruct one way: from the move tutor in Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness on the GameCube.
Note the copyright year
There are a lot of games between Pokémon XD and Pokémon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon. There is a lot of hardware between those two games. Gale of Darkness came out in 2005, Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon at the end of last year, 2017. And yet, Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon still have that entry in Munchlax’s egg move table to allow Self-destruct to be passed down from that one game twelve years ago where Snorlax could learn it. Did I mention that the move tutor in Pokémon XD, unlike its newer counterparts in later generations, can only teach each move once? So you can only teach Self-destruct to one Pokémon that way in each save you have in Pokémon XD.
The process of getting from XD to Ultra Moon involves a GameCube (or Wii), the GameBoy Advance to GameCube link cable, a copy of Pokémon XD, a GameBoy Advance (not a DS with a GBA slot - the link cable only fits into the GBA itself), a Generation 3 game (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Fire Red, or Leaf Green), a Generation 4 game (Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Heart Gold, or Soul Silver), a DS with a GBA slot (so either the original DS phat or DS Lite), a Generation 5 game (Black, White, Black 2, or White 2), a 3DS, and a copy of Pokémon Ultra Moon. Nintendo stopped making a significant amount of that hardware years ago.
Still the best
It’s worth noting that since I originally discovered this particular edge case, another way to teach Snorlax Self-destruct has become available. Self-destruct is a TM in Generation 1 (Red & Blue), TM36, so with the Virtual Console releases of Red & Blue, one could teach a Snorlax Self-destruct there and import it over. That method only requires a 3DS and two games!
But you know what? Where’s the fun in that? From years of being a Pokémon fanatic, I actually have the hardware needed to take the Pokémon XD route. So next week, I’m going to take you through obtaining the elusive Munchlax with Self-destruct!
]]>Not quite the lightest Pokémon (that prize goes to Gastly), but close!
Hoppip hasn’t been able to learn Pay Day since Generation 2, so the wrinkle of how one would teach Hoppip Pay Day wasn’t a problem for PokémonCompDB back in Generation 6 (X & Y) because the import mechanism for bringing Pokémon over from previous games only starts in Generation 3 (Ruby & Sapphire). However, with Generation 7 (Sun & Moon), Game Freak also re-released Generations 1 and 2 (Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, & Crystal) on the 3DS Virtual Console. And they made it possible to import Pokémon from those digital versions of the classic games into Generation 7.
This introduced a bunch of new combinations of importable moves to the latest games that hadn’t existed before. Some were challenging from a data perspective, but others were just particularly difficult for players to do. Today, I’m focusing on one of the latter.
So, Hoppip and Pay Day. Pay Day is the signature move of Meowth, the visuals of the move itself mimicking the coin Meowth has on its head.
Also known as Team Rocket’s mascot
As I’ve discussed before, some Pokémon learn moves exclusively as egg moves, meaning one of their parents needs to know the move when the Pokémon is bred and then the new baby Pokémon will know the move straight away. Each species of Pokémon can only learn certain moves this way. Throughout all of the main series Pokémon games, if you breed two Pokémon together, the child will be of the same species as the mother (except Ditto, which follows its own rules). So if you breed a female Bulbasaur with a male Snorlax, you’ll get a baby Bulbasaur.
As an additional complexity, back in Generations 1 and 2, egg moves could only be passed down by the father. So you needed a female of the species you wanted and a male that knew the move you wanted the new Pokémon to learn. Pokémon are divided up into 15 egg groups. Each species belongs to one or two egg groups, and any two Pokémon that share an egg group can breed.
The true meaning of Pokémon
So, in Generation 2 Hoppip was introduced and it was able to learn Pay Day as an egg move. Hoppips are 50% female and 50% male, so catching a female Hoppip isn’t particularly difficult. Hoppip is in the Fairy and Grass egg groups, so to teach a Hoppip Pay Day, we need a male Pokémon in either the Fairy or Grass egg group that knows Pay Day.
Here’s where things get fun. Meowth and its evolution Persian are the only Pokémon that learn Pay Day by level up in Generation 2, and they’re in the Field egg group, which has no overlap with Hoppip.
There aren’t any other Pokémon that learn Pay Day in Generation 2, so you might think we’re just stuffed then. But in Generation 2, 24 hours after you meet Bill in Ecruteak City (that’s 24 hours of real time, Gold, Silver, & Crystal had internal clocks and the real-world-matching day/night cycle was one of the major new features), you gain access to the Time Capsule in Pokémon Centers throughout the game. The Time Capsule, presumably as a precursor to the import mechanisms we have seen in all of the games since Generation 3, is a mechanic that allows players to import Pokémon from Generation 1 into your Generation 2 games.
This feature is still available in the Virtual Console versions of the classic games and in classic Nintendo style, you’ll need two 3DS consoles to be able to use the Time Capsule in the Virtual Console Generation 2 game. And because games are tied to hardware, not your account, even though your account can only be associated with one console at a time, you’ll need to make a whole separate account and save and play through one of the two games on the other system for this to work.
Or you could have a friend help out, but that seems dramatically unlikely
Why does this help us? In Generation 1, Pay Day was a TM (TM16 specifically) which can be used exactly once per playthrough of the game, because TMs were single use until Generation 5 (Black & White). And of the 18 Pokémon that can learn Pay Day from TM16 (including Mewtwo, who can only learn Pay Day from that TM in Red & Blue, not in Yellow, for whatever reason), Pikachu and Raichu are in the Field and Fairy group, so they do overlap with Hoppip.
So you want a Hoppip with Pay Day in Ultra Moon? I’m sure you see the process now. You catch a female Hoppip in the Virtual Console Gold, Silver, or Crystal. You catch a male Pikachu (also 50%/50%) in the Virtual Console Red, Blue, or Yellow. You use your only TM16 in Red, Blue, or Yellow to teach Pikachu Pay Day. You import the Pikachu with Pay Day into your Gold, Silver, or Crystal game and then breed it with the Hoppip you caught before, to get a Hoppip that knows Pay Day. Then you use the Virtual Console import to bring it over from Gold, Silver, or Crystal into the modern Generation 7 game of your choice.
This chart comes up a lot
Simple! Why would you do this? Honestly, probably if you read this blog and wanted to try it out. If you wanted to bring a Jumpluff with Pay Day to a tournament to create a blip in the stats. Pay Day is not particularly useful on Hoppip. It’s not that strong to begin with - its primary defining trait being that you get more money in-game after using it, which doesn’t apply to tournaments, online battles, or post-game Battle-Frontier-style arenas.
But if you do choose to create a set in PokémonCompDB that has a Hoppip, Skiploom, or Jumpluff with Pay Day, then you will be dutifully told that you’ll need to go out and grab some more digital games to be able to do so!
Seemingly in an attempt to trick anyone who didn’t dig into the encoded egg move tables in the game, Pay Day did have another day in the sun in Generation 3. There was a Skitty that one could obtain from Pokémon Box on the GameCube that knew Pay Day. Skitty is even in the Field and Fairy egg groups, so it overlaps with Hoppip! Unfortunately Skitty was introduced in Generation 3, and by that time Pay Day had already been removed from Hoppip’s list of possible egg moves.
Could Skitty ever really let us down though?
]]>Mega evolution is the most common temporary form change, available on 46 different Pokémon. It’s activated by the player during battle and is only available when the Pokémon is holding the correct mega stone for its species. Also each team can only have one Pokémon mega evolve per battle. (So even if I have Gengar holding Gengarite, if my Blaziken holding Blazikenite has already mega evolved this battle, then Gengar can’t.) In PokémonCompDB, a set holding a mega stone is represented by the icon for its mega evolution so it’s easy to pick your intended megas out of the lineup:
Mega Blastoise on the small team preview of a single team in PokémonCompDB
This is a fairly effective way of representing a temporary form changes to the user. However, there are other Pokémon that undergo temporary form changes that I don’t necessarily want to represent the same way.
Let’s take a look at Darmanitan.
Because who wouldn’t want to look at this cuddly ball of fire?
Some Darmanitan can change form mid battle (specifically the ones that have the Zen Mode ability). You find Darmanitan with Zen Mode in Generation 5 (Black & White). All of the other Darmanitan you find will usually have the ability Sheer Force instead. Zen Mode activates when Darmanitan has less than 50% of its HP remaining, at which time it turns into the Fire/Psychic Zen Darmanitan:
Clearly
In a coincidence with how mega evolutions work, Darmanitan that have the Zen Mode ability are represented in PokémonCompDB by their Zen Mode sprite:
One of each, forming the greatest team anyone has ever seen
This is… reasonable, I’d say. It wouldn’t necessarily have been my first instinct were I designing for Darmanitan directly, but it does allow the user to tell apart Zen Mode and Sheer Force Darmanitan at a glance, and they perform quite different roles. (Though the same could be said about many different sets of Latios, of which you can only differentiate the mega ones.)
As a quick interlude, you might be thinking that these tiny little sprite images seem like they wouldn’t take up much space and why is a whole team represented like that when there’s so much screen space to use. The answer is that these are small team previews shown when listing all of your teams. If you click on any and get the full team page, you’ll see something more like this:
And clicking through a single one gives you even more information
However, there are some other Pokémon with temporary form changes that it makes less sense to represent by their temporary form. Aegislash and Cherrim are two of the first that come to mind. Aegislash changes back and forth between Shield and Blade forms during battle - into Blade form when it uses an attack that does damage and back into Shield form when it uses King’s Shield. Aegislash starts in Shield form and is generally represented in the games by its Shield form sprite. But PokémonCompDB uses the Blade form sprite, because it has a temporary form change (caused by its ability), just like Darmanitan and all those mega evolutions are temporary form changes.
This annoys me more than I can say
This makes less sense. All Aegislash use the Stance Change ability to change back and forth - the presence of Blade form isn’t something the user really cares about. Likewise with Cherrim, it changes into its Sunshine form when the Strong Sunlight weather is in play, through its Flower Gift ability. Like Aegislash, all Cherrim do this - so representing it with its Sunshine form isn’t particularly expected. But that’s what I’ve ended up doing.
Overcast and Sunshine Cherrim, because even changes to the weather affect Pokémon
Then there’s Castform. Castform changes form based on the weather - a temporary form change - but it has four different forms: Normal, Sunny, Rainy, and Snowy. With Cherrim and Darmanitan and all the mega evolutions, PokémonCompDB can assess the user’s intent to use one of the forms by which item or ability they’ve selected. Castform itself may have Rain Dance, which would suggest Rainy form. Or you might have another Pokémon on the same team with Drought (Groudon, Torkoal, Mega Charizard Y, or Ninetales), which would suggest Sunny Form. You might use both and be changing Castform back and forth! Your opponent might use a Pokémon with Snow Warning and turn your Castform into Snowy form!
Normal | Sunny | Rainy | Snowy |
---|---|---|---|
Which one do I choose!? The answer is, of course, I don’t. Castform remains represented by his normal form, because figuring out all of the above would be crazy.
]]>To start with, Ultra Necrozma:
Its ability to control light allows it to blend into web pages like this one
What forms does Necrozma have, then? It has 4 in total as of Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon. The base form, just “Necrozma,” was introduced in Sun & Moon. Then in Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon came Dawn Wings Necrozma and Dusk Mane Necrozma.
Necrozma | Dusk Mane | Dawn Wings |
---|---|---|
The base Necrozma is very normal. It is a Pokémon with a type and moves and everything you’d expect. You get Dusk Mane Necrozma by fusing normal Necrozma with Solgaleo (the legendary mascot of Pokémon Sun) and you get Dawn Wings Necrozma by fusing Necrozma with Lunala (the legendary mascot of Pokémon Moon).
This isn’t too bad, there’s already a Pokémon quite similar to that actually! Kyurem, introduced in Generation 5 (Black & White) can be fused with either Reshiram or Zekrom to make White Kyurem or Black Kyurem respectively. From PokémonCompDB’s perspective this is a pretty normal form change.
Similar to Kyurem, Necrozma learns the signature move of the Pokémon it’s fusing with when changing form. (Similar, not the same, because Kyurem learns those moves by leveling up in that form, not upon changing into the form.)
Ultra Necrozma is where things start to go sideways. Dusk Mane or Dawn Wings Necrozma can transform into Ultra Necrozma during battle if they’re holding Ultranecrozium Z (which has a mouthful of a name, even after dropping a few syllables from its constituent words).
A nice, simple chart
Pokémon that change form mid battle due to holding an item are not new. In fact, they’ve been around for a while and I’ve dealt with them before. All mega evolutions are like this. Giratina and the Griseous Orb is like this. And so is Arceus and the various plates (and now non-specific Z crystals as well).
The difference here is that base, non-fused Necrozma can’t become Ultra Necrozma. But you could totally give a normal Necrozma an Ultranecrozium Z to hold. It wouldn’t do anything, but maybe you want to test the limits of my patience.
I outlined the different kinds of form changes back when I was talking about Rotom. Now Necrozma is the first Pokémon I’ve run into that has both a temporary form change and repeatable form changes. And the temporary change is only available for some of the repeatable ones.
But wait, there’s more
I also mentioned that Necrozma learns a move in its Dusk Mane and Dawn Wings forms - Sunsteel Strike and Moongeist Beam respectively. An interesting side effect of that is that Ultra Necrozma, as a temporary form change, retains the moves of the form it comes from. So Ultra Necrozma can learn Sunsteel Strike. Ultra Necrozma can also learn Moongeist Beam.
But it can’t know both at the same time.
]]>Because why wouldn’t you want one of these guys in a Master Ball?
The first thing I should point out is how you catch Shedinja, which is super bizarre to begin with. Shedinja is a part of the evolutionary line of Nincada and Ninjask. You obtain Shedinja by evolving a Nincada (which happens when it levels up to level 20). But Nincada evolves into Ninjask. If you have a spare slot in your party of 6 Pokémon and a spare pokéball in your bag, then Shedinja appears in that empty slot and consumes that pokéball. It just *appears* out of nowhere.
You might see some visual similarities between Ninjask (on the right) and Shedinja that give you some clues about why
The lore explanation for why this happens is sensible enough (in that it does actually explain why it’s different from all other evolutions before or since). Shedinja is the animated cocoon of Nincada’s evolution into Ninjask. This is why Shedinja and Ninjask have a similar silhouette and why Shedinja has an opening on its back, presumably where Ninjask emerged from after evolving.
From a data perspective, this is bonkers. It’s notable that in order to get Shedinja from Generation 4 (Diamond & Pearl) onwards, you need to have a Poké Ball in your bag. Not an Ultra Ball, not a Quick Ball, not any of the other non-default pokéballs, an actual default Poké Ball like you get at the beginning of the game. If you don’t have one (even if you do have other pokéballs), then you don’t get Shedinja.
But what if you wanted a Shedinja in a Master Ball, because you’re a crazy person? (Like me.) For anyone who doesn’t know, the Master Ball is a 100% success rate pokéball that always catches its target. You usually get one Master Ball per game. (So if you’ve played all of the games you can accumulate many Master Balls over many playthroughs.)
The ultimate Pokémon catching device
Shedinja is never found in the wild, so you never have a chance to throw your one Master Ball at it to catch it in a Master Ball. Shedinja will only consume a Poké Ball from your bag, so even if you leave yourself with just a Master Ball in your bag when you evolve Nincada, you just won’t get Shedinja.
But eagle-eyed readers will notice that I said Shedinja consumes a Poké Ball from your bag from Generation 4 (Diamond & Pearl) onwards. Shedinja was introduced in Generation 3 (Ruby & Sapphire). In Generation 3, Shedinja copied the pokéball that you used on Nincada, which can be found in the wild.
I’m sure you follow how we get a Shedinja in a Master Ball in Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon now. You go back to Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald on the GBA and catch a Nincada in the one Master Ball from one of those games. You level up Nincada in that game until it evolves and gives you your Shedinja in a Master Ball. Then you use the original DS or DS Lite (not the newer ones like the DSi, which lack a GBA slot) to transfer that Shedinja over to Generation 4. And then you use either a second DS or a 3DS to transfer to Generation 5 (Black & White). And finally you use the Poké Transporter app on the 3DS (that comes with Pokémon Bank) to transfer from Generation 5 into Bank, where it can be withdrawn into any of the modern 3DS games. Simple!
Slightly older chart made by a fan of where you can transfer your Pokémon between the games
Truly simple, right? But why would anyone bother to do this? And why would I care whether a given pokéball combination for a given Pokémon is actually obtainable in the games?
For why folks would bother, it’s simply a collector thing. Some combinations of Pokémon and a specific pokéball are very rare, so people covet them. As for why I would care in PokémonCompDB, it’s because certain Pokémon and pokéball combinations are actually impossible. So if you run into them, you know your opponent has hacked their game. And you can be warned up front if your intended choice of pokéball is actually impossible to do, so you don’t waste your time trying to figure out how to do it.
Of course, the pokéball legality checking in PokémonCompDB isn’t implemented yet. That’s because of an excess of ridiculously special cases like Shedinja that mean I’ll be digging back into all of the games and timed-exclusive events back to Generation 3 in 2003. But it will happen!
]]>They tend to get more elaborate when they mega evolve
When I first put mega evolutions into PokémonCompDB, I made them their own feature. Mega evolutions were recognized by the application and when the user gave a given Pokémon set the correct mega stone, the type and visual information updated to show the mega form. I realized some time later that mega evolutions are actually just a variant of form changes, which I’ve talked about quite a bit before.
The things that caught me out about mega evolutions were, inevitably, almost all of them work the same way. You give a Blastoise a Blastoisinite and it can turn into Mega Blastoise during battle. But there are a couple of legendary exceptions that have mega evolutions that act a bit different:
Rayquaza | Groudon | Kyogre |
---|---|---|
Unlike all other mega evolutions, Rayquaza can mega evolve as long as it knows the move Dragon Ascent (which only it can learn). This means that PokémonCompDB now needed to be aware that changes to the moves known by a given set may cause mega evolutions to become available (and likewise removing a move may remove the availability of a mega evolution).
At one point in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, you ride Mega Rayquaza into space to fight Deoxys and it is awesome
When I generalized mega evolutions into forms, Rayquaza turned out to not be the only instance of this kind of form change. Meloetta changes between its Aria and Pirouette forms (during battle and everything) based on whether it knows Relic Song, which is an exact analogue for Rayquaza’s mega evolution behavior.
Next up are Groudon and Kyogre, which both behave in a similar manner, differently to other mega evolutions. There’s certainly a canonical argument that Groudon and Kyogre are not undergoing mega evolution at all, but instead “Primal Reversion”, which is a special kind of form change. I chose to add them in when adding mega evolutions. Since Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire put these forms front and center, at the time I felt leaving them out wasn’t sensible. Similar to mega evolutions, the primal reversions include type changes (in Groudon’s case adding the Fire type), ability changes, and stat boosts.
Primal Groudon | Primal Kyogre |
---|---|
Groudon and Kyogre become Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre while holding the Red Orb or Blue Orb, respectively. Unlike mega evolutions, these primal reversions happen as soon as they are sent into battle. So unlike Rayquaza, you (the player) don’t need to choose to mega evolve them at the start of any given turn.
Of course, in an effort to make things more confusing, entry hazard attacks (like Stealth Rock and Spikes), which deal damage to new Pokémon when they are sent out, hit Groudon and Kyogre before they change into their primal form. This means that Groudon holding a Red Orb is not weak to Stealth Rock (the damage is Rock type) the first time it is sent out in a given battle, because it only becomes a Fire type after taking the damage.
Stealth Rock is out to get us all
Since normal mega evolution Pokémon go into battle in their non-mega-evolved form, PokémonCompDB displays their non-mega ability as well. That’s because it may be important to your strategy that the original ability is active when the Pokémon is first used. Take Salamence for example, who has Intimidate as one of its non-mega abilities, which will activate as soon as Salamence is sent out and then doesn’t do anything more (from a competitive battling point of view) for the rest of the battle. But you can then mega evolve Salamence and take advantage of Mega Salamence’s Aerilate ability for that time instead.
But in Groudon and Kyogre’s case, they transform as soon as they are sent out, before their base form’s ability activates. So Groudon’s Drought and Kyogre’s Drizzle don’t come into play (instead it’s Primal Groudon’s Desolate Land and Primal Kyogre’s Primordial Sea). PokémonCompDB displays this distinction by not displaying the non-mega ability in this case.
And again, like Rayquaza, when I generalized mega evolutions to support all form changes, I found another Pokémon, Giratina, that behaves very similarly! Giratina changes into its Origin form while holding a Griseous Orb. Unlike Groudon and Kyogre this happens immediately upon being given the item, but for PokémonCompDB these two behaviors are the same (for now!).
Giratina also becomes spidery and terrifying while holding the Griseous Orb
I’m continually impressed by how the Pokémon data set rewards “correctness” in this way. I keep finding new variants of form changes and Pokémon behavior the longer I work on PokémonCompDB, but I also often find other Pokémon that I hadn’t considered fit very well into new boxes that I come up with to classify those changes!
Update: An earlier version of this post claimed that Primal Groudon’s and Primal Kyogre’s form changes were active as long as they were holding their respective orb, but they actually transform immediately upon entering battle. This post has been updated and corrected! (And some new related content added.) I apologize for the error!
]]>