#cheats for Pokemon Masters

[rosiespokemontwitterau]

LANCE NO. (ｷ｀ﾟДﾟ´)!!

[pinkiemeowstic89]

Oh come on, THE NPCs get to fight Team Skull but not the players?!

What DIDN'T you do?!

[books-are-my-life-stuff]

This Battle Rally thing is...kinda fun, I think...?

[tenaciousdecapitator]

Clair genuinely feels like a more interesting and fleshed out character since she has the fun character premise of “Cousin of a Champion who desperately wants to be the better Dragon Trainer and is a bratty smug failwoman about it”. Her neverending futile mission to defeat Lance is inherently more interesting than Lance being The Ultimate Dragon Master Champion. Even when they gave Lance his own spotlight in the Pokemon Masters Trainer Lodge, he had no standout personality traits besides “Good at battling” (which barely counts as a personality especially for a Champion) and “Insists on wearing the same stupid cape everywhere he goes”. He’s got no hobbies, no charm, no style. The only thing people remember about him is that time he told his Dragonite to Hyper Beam some Team Rocket accomplice. Compared to him, Diantha and pretty much every other Champion is a far more interesting and multifaceted character.

Honestly idk how people can think Diantha is the most forgettable champion when Lance is right there. At least Diantha has flavor and is somewhat interesting outside of her role as champion

[colorful-bees]

I love Pokemon Masters if only because they give us so much insight into the characters outside the setting we know them in. I feel like it really helps to expand up on them when they're not playing their parts in the stories they're originally from. My favorite example of this is in the Summer Nights & Wishing Stars event where we see Hilbert, Hilda and N in a very casual setting and it helps establish both what N is like in a more normal setting and also helps to expand upon the protag characters who otherwise are blank slates.

N immediately comes across as very out of his element and expressed not knowing how to have fun the right way and he doesn't know what cotton candy or candy apple are, which just speaks to his sheltered upbringing.

And one could assume these things just based on his background but it's a completely different thing to see it portrayed to us and show us just how much he doesn't know and what apprehensions he has about what is considered a pretty normal experience.

But it also establishes to us that N is very willing and very capable of playing dirty if someone is cheating first; he comes across as having a mischievous side to him and it's pretty obvious he's having fun doing this.

It's nice to see characters outside their usual setting, it gives you a better sense of their personality to see them in a situation you wouldn't normally.

[anderswelten]

Suspicious offerings

You may remember that I said in one of my past blog posts how important it is to inform yourself about methods for hacking etc. - obviously not, because I want to teach you how to cheat, but knowledge will always be the key and your trump card to prevent yourself from scammers.

Today, I stumpled over a suspicious offering. From time to time I check classifieds, because sometimes you can be lucky and dig out a little treasure. However, this time I found an offering of a used Pokemon Diamond card. In the description it was highlighted that a rare Pokemon is on the card, an Arceus which was only distributed in Japan and it was not „traded via a module“. To proof that the mentioned Arceus is on the card, some photos were shown. I‘m attaching them for you. Please take a minute and look for hints, why this Arceus might be suspicious:

Ok, you may have already an impression what is going on here. Let me summarise everything what seems wrong here:

Arceus was redeemed/received in January 2021. Pokemon Diamond is a Generation 4 game. All distributions took place around 2010 - to be fair, the redemption date is the date of the DS system, therefore 2021 is not completely impossible, but at least very strange and let‘s say „uncommon“

Every event Pokémon is a fateful encounter which is „Schicksalshafte Begegnung“ in German. This phrase is completely missing.

This Arceus was caught in a Master Ball - event Pokemon are usually (not all!) carried in a Cherish Ball

This Arceus is level 80, but all Arceus distributed in Generation 4 were level 100.

The OT and TID seem to be custom, I‘m pretty sure that this is the OT and the TID of the trainer himself - or rather the trainer who caught it.

There was only one Arceus distributed in Japan - the Cinema Arceus - and its data are different from this one (OT, TID, level, Poke Ball, …)

Now, we can guess what it is or where it was obtained. Actually, I do believe that this Arceus itself was not transfered with the help of any kind of module. And I‘m aware of two possibilities: it is either an Azure Flute Arceus or an Arceus obtained over the Void glitch - which is basically the Azure Flute Arceus as well. That this Arceus is really an Azure Flute Arceus can be confirmed by the find spot: „Halle d. Beginns“ which is „Hall of Origin“ in English.

You may have already heard about the Azure Flute Arceus - it is the Arceus from Pokemon Brilliant Diamand & Shining Perl (BDSP) which all shiny hunters are after it, because shiny Arceus became accessible. And you also know that BDSP are the remakes of Pokemon Diamond & Perl, so it seems logical that the Azure Flute was also accessible in the original games, right? Unfortunately not.

The Azure Flute was meant to be distributed through an event in Japan, but it never happened. That the Azure Flute item was programmed into the game, it was already known, but after several years it was finally confirmed by Junichi Masuda that they have decided to not distribute the Azure Flute. So, literally, any Azure Flute Arceus from Generation 4 is somehow hacked, because the Wonder Card and the item have to be injected in your game, otherwise the in-game event would not be triggered. But even if no external module was used to inject the necessary things, a glitch has to be used. And just for those who are curious: you will not be able to port up this Arceus to a higher generation. Pokemon Bank will not accept it at the latest.

Here is the point what bothers me the most in this context:

The guy who offers this Pokemon Diamond card with a hacked Pokemon is advertising that it is a rare Pokemon.

Additionally, he is rising the price of this card, because of its „more value“ due to the „rare Pokemon“

If you are not that deep into the topics of event Pokemon, you may not have noticed it

It is the same like last time: it is absolutely fine if you do hacks and glitches just for yourself, but it is an absolute No-Go if you are trying to trade or sell it without telling its correct origin - whether consciously or unconsciously does not matter.

I‘m currently thinking about reporting this offer, but I have just little hopes, because this is such a niche - and most people care more about if the game itself is real of fake.

I can only recommend: keep continue to inform yourself and be suspicious every time and everywhere. And sadly, this was an easy case…

[kafus]

i did some ridiculous technical BS in pokemon again

NOTE: not only is this post a very very long infodump from yours truly, it is also specifically an infodump involving a lot of pokemon glitches and exploits. even though i don't tamper with my games and everything achieved here can be done on original hardware with no hacking or what-have-you, some people still may consider this Cheating based on their own personal standards of legitimate gameplay. i ask that you please don't try to start arguments with me about pokemon legality and just take it all as an interesting technical infodump about gen 3 pokemon okay thank you <3

SO. i decided that before pokemon bank eventually shuts down one day in the probably-not-so-distant future and makes old gen transfer impossible, i need more ribbon master pokemon (AKA a pokemon with all the ribbons it can possibly receive from its gen of origin to the most recent gen it can transfer to) from gens 3 and 4. i've been meaning to ribbon master a pokemon from gen 3 based on my favorite singer, KAF (you don't need to know anything about kaf for this story whatsoever but you should check her out LMAO) and while musing over what pokemon would suit her best, it came to me.

FARIGIRAF IS JUST KAF'S FURSONA!! the monster teeth hoodie with the eyes. even has the dangly bits. like come on it's perfect. AND girafarig is obviously available in gen 3 so i could RM a kaf girafarig and then evolve her once i got to SV. Cool! Awesome! but here's the problem. I CAN'T SETTLE FOR JUST A NORMAL GIRAFARIG. I HAVE TO GO ALL OUT!!

i started brainstorming my ideal gen 3 kaf girafarig, and came to the following conclusions:

i obviously want the girafarig to be shiny. i mean come on

i want her to be a girl for obvious reasons, and gentle nature to match her personality. just because Armor Tail is better on Farigiraf i also want it to have girafarig's second ability, Early Bird. i'm not concerned with IVs because i think random IVs add flavor and that would add more tedium than i was already dealing with

i want her to be japanese language origin since kaf is a japanese singer (i can nickname her かふ that way too!)

i want the original trainer (OT) name to be PPさん (PP-san) in reference to the person who scouted out kaf's talent in the first place - he goes by Piedpiper online and my friends and i call him PP as a joke sometimes

i want the trainer ID to be 02018 because 2018 is kaf's debut year

since girafarig only spawns in gen 3 in the ruby/sapphire/emerald safari zone, i wanted to hatch a girafarig egg in firered/leafgreen for the kanto origin, which is impossible otherwise. FRLG are also really important games to me, leafgreen being the first pokemon game i ever owned or played, so that's a bonus

now you may be looking at this entire list and being like. What the fuck. how do you intend to shiny hunt girafarig with all of these hyperspecific parameters, especially in FRLG where the everstone passing nature doesn't exist and flame body doesn't even exist to hatch eggs faster. you will be doing that long after bank shuts down. and you're intending on doing this on original hardware too??? WELL. that's where ACE and RNG manipulation comes in babey. i am GOING to attempt to make this comprehensible even if you've never touched ACE or RNG manip in your life, even tangentially, but sorry if this is a bit of a mess it's pretty technical LOL. the rest of this post is going below a cut cause it Goes Places!!

ACE and RNG manipulation explained (kinda)

first off a quick overview of ACE, ACE stands for arbitrary code execution, which is the ability to run your own (arbitrary!) code within the game. this can be set up with a series of elaborate glitches, that break open the gen 3 pokemon games into letting you run your PC box names as code, enabling you to do pretty much anything you want. to be upfront, i'm not an expert on ACE - i understand it in an overarching conceptual sense and am able to follow ACE guides just fine, but i cannot write my own ACE code, which essentially requires you to know some GBA assembly. doesn't really matter for the purpose of this story though.

you can see an example of a tiny snippet of a larger ACE code with the PC box name below. it looks like gibberish but that's because every character used in the name corresponds to a specific internal value, which when all run together, is code!

i need ACE in FRLG because resetting for, or RNG manipulating (more on that in a moment), trainer ID (and secret ID, also more on that later) is pretty much impossible. ACE will allow me to change my TID to 02018 by essentially just telling the game to do so with my PC boxes. this requires me to set up ACE in emerald first since that's the only game with a viable entrypoint, and then use emerald ACE to make glitch pokemon that can activate ACE in FRLG when traded over.

as for RNG manipulation, that's a bit more straightforward, especially if you've ever watched a speedrun of... pretty much anything with random chance in it. games with random chance are not actually fully random because computers can't really be fully random, and in the older pokemon games with unencrypted and less advanced RNG (random number generator) algorithms, this is pretty easy to exploit.

this is a heavy simplification, but whenever you encounter a wild pokemon in RSE or FRLG, the amount of frames that have passed since the game was turned on are compared to a number that was generated upon boot, called the RNG seed. if you've ever played minecraft you can compare this to world seeds - the pokemon RNG seed determines all possible wild encounters in that play session in a similar fashion as minecraft determining the infinite terrain layout. this comparison determines every aspect of an encountered pokemon; its species, nature, IVs, and so on. so, if you were able to time your wild encounter (or any other type of pokemon encounter) down to the 1/60th of a second frame, you can get the game to spit out whatever pokemon you want at you! you just need a bit of typically invisible information first - the RNG seed, and if you're RNGing a shiny, your secret ID aka SID, which is like an invisible second trainer ID generated alongside your TID that is paired up with the TID and compared against any pokemon you encounter to determine if it should be shiny or not. both of these things can be figured out without hacking or tampering with games/save files.

the most common program used for all things RNG manipulation is called pokefinder and you can see an example of it spitting out what shinies are available on hoenn's first route in the first 100000 frames of the game being on with an RNG seed of 0 and my old TID/SID combo below. it's pretty damn cool to me tbh, i love RNG manipulation and i'm way more versed on it/experienced than i am with ACE

TLDR; rng manipulation is essentially a frame perfect, speedrunning-adjacent trick to get the game to roll the RNG in your favor, including for perfect IVs or shininess. for reasons that will become clear later, this is much easier to do in emerald than any other gen 3 game, so i will be using emerald for the RNG manipulation of the girafarig egg

with ALL of that context out of the way, this was the gameplan:

play through a fresh file of japanese firered (i don't own japanese leafgreen, RIP) all the way through the postgame to unlock trading with hoenn with the name PPさん, not worrying about TID for now. the guide i was following did not have a code for changing name with ACE in japanese FRLG specifically, so i figured playing the game again real quick would be a better alternative to trying to teach myself assembly in an afternoon LOL

set up ACE in my new emerald file i completed recently

use ACE in emerald to generate the glitch pokemon needed to run ACE in FRLG and trade them over. finalize the setup process over in FRLG too

look up possible gentle, ability 2, female, and shiny egg frames, and pick one that looks good to RNG manipulate in emerald, noting its PID (an encounter-specific ID number, pretty much)

figure out what SID, when combined with a TID of 02018, will cause that egg frame to be shiny - that way when the egg is traded over and hatched in firered, it will be shiny

do the RNG in emerald, trade over the to-be-shiny egg to firered, and hatch it after changing the TID/SID with ACE appropriately!! bam female, gentle, early bird, shiny, JP origin girafarig with an OT of PPさん and a visible TID of 02018. Pog!!

to execute that gameplan would take me an entire day, though...

step 1: play through firered

ok gonna be honest this is the ONE part of this entire process that i did not play on original hardware. i wanted to get to the Cool Parts of this process so i decided to play through firered on emulator. absolutely terrible picture sorry but i do actually own japanese firered, so i could dump the game legally to my computer to use speedup in mGBA with a little device called the Joey JR which connects the cart to my computer by USB like so

after that it was pretty much a relatively normal playthrough but obviously with emulator speedup. i used solely my starter blastoise to, well, blast through the rest of the game LMAO. after just a couple of hours or so i was right before the elite four, which i completed while in the car after moving the save file back to my cartridge with the same device, since i had to leave the house to go to a doctor appointment. i tried to take pictures of me beating the game but the sun was not doing the photos any favors lol. blastoise ended up being level 76 by the end. was easy with surf and an ice beam TM from the game corner (i just bought the coins)

unfortunately beating the game isn't the only requirement for trading with the hoenn games, so i also had to complete the whole sevii islands postgame quest... which required me to have 60 registered owned entries in the pokedex, which i wasn't really doing while speeding through the game initially, so i had a lot of mons to catch. i was still out of the house at this point (and playing at normal speed lol) so i wasn't really taking pictures, but i did make a stop at the power plant to look for an electabuzz despite it being an inefficient 5% since i needed a spare anyways for my leafgreen file unrelated to this story lmao. took a pic of it since it took a while to show up. anyway soon enough the dex had 60+ entries! i've played FRLG so many times that the encounter locations are memorized in my mind... i did all of this with no googling asdfkasfd

at this point i got home and was able to do the ruby/sapphire postgame quest on emulator with speedup again, so it was pretty easy. moved the save back to cart and i was done with step 1! obviously this didn't actually take me 21 hours of playtime, that was the emulator speedup's fault loool. from here on out i didn't touch any emulators again!

step 2: set up ACE in emerald

ACE time! i've actually set up ACE in an old emerald file before but i wanted to do it again fresh. i was following a guide pretty much to a T so i'm actually going to skip over the details of some of the steps since you can read about those more in depth over at the guide i was using if you want

TLDR; you have to trade for the NPC trade pokemon, DOTS the seedot and PLUSES the plusle, then EV train DOTS a specific way. these EV values cause DOTS to turn into a glitch pokemon egg 0x0611 when corrupted with the pomeg glitch (more on that in a bit), which, when hatched, runs the PC box names as code, aka ACE! why does it work? if you really want to know, there's plenty of stuff online about it, i'm not the best person to ask haha

it's worth noting that volbeat is really annoying to capture in emerald as it's literally only available as a 1% in one patch of grass, so i caught an illumise instead and bred them until a volbeat hatched lol. was much more efficient

also lol "Take good care of DOTS!" sorry i will be corrupting your son into demonspawn that lets me wield godlike control over your universe

after getting the necessary NPC trade pokemon all ready and moving them into a specific pattern in box 2 (i cloned them with the emerald tower cloning glitch) i had to perform the pomeg glitch. this involves using a pomeg berry to decrease a pokemon's health to 0 without causing a whiteout. this is achieved by getting a pokemon with at least 8 HP EVs to 1 HP and then using the pomeg berry on it, decreasing the EVs and taking off a point of health in the process (it's slightly more steps than this but whatever). i decided to use the camerupt i had during my playthrough of the game for this purpose. just took him to fiery path to get poisoned and walked until he was on 1 HP and healed him with an antidote lol

by doing the pomeg glitch and entering a wild battle, the game gets a bit confused since all the pokemon in your party are fainted and just sends out some sort of glitch decamark pokemon. in this situation, after viewing my camerupt's summary in battle and exiting back out of the summary screen, i was able to corrupt the DOTS and PLUSES sitting in my PC by scrolling up above the usual limit of the party menu, which reaches into data used by the first two PC boxes and fucks them up, ending up with, assuming that i EV trained correctly, a glitched egg that is about to hatch in a nest ball named DOTS with pokerus. this will run ACE when hatched! (if you want more info on this corruption pomeg stuff, check out the bulbapedia article for glitzer popping. yes that's what they named it)

step 3: use emerald ACE to set up firered ACE

so once again you can find a lot more detail on this process over at the guide i was using, but the TLDR of the matter was, i needed to put a bunch of codes into my PC box names to generate a few different glitch mons. specifically, i needed a egg that would hatch into a crobat (yes, fully evolved lol) with a singular glitched out move, that when used in battle in firered, would cause ACE to happen similar to how hatching the corrupted DOTS egg causes ACE to happen in emerald. i also needed a specific buggy shiny umbreon and a very strange glitchy egg.

even though this step was mostly a lot of tedious typing on the gen 3 keyboard (+ i had to redo things once because i made a typo at one point in the process LOL) it was so much fun! the game breaks in so many ways that you would just... never see during normal gameplay and it makes for some really good pictures and whatnot

first of all, when you hatch the 0x0611 egg, it hatches into a decamark of varying colors, in the case of the picture below it's almost imperceptible because the whole sprite is just a black circle, blending in with the background (sorry for the quality on this one, it's a screencap of a video clip i took).

additionally, trying to scroll over the hatched decamark in the PC or viewing its summary screen will crash the game, so to get rid of it, it has to be moved to the front of your party in the party menu, and then you go to the PC to release it through the deposit menu. since the cursor just defaults to the first position of the party and you don't have to scroll over to it, it's possible to release it from here.

oh yes and the umbreon/other glitch egg? similarly screwy - actually after generating them, their sprites are glitched out until you reset the game, so they look like this. behold their nonsense summaries:

after i had all i needed to trade to FRLG, i cloned an extra set of them with the emerald tower glitch again just in case i messed something up and got to trading! here's me receiving them on the firered side:

and last but not least, i'm a little obsessed with the way the glitch move looks in FRLG on the hatched crobat, absolute nonsense:

i finalized setting up the FRLG ACE (check out the guide i linked earlier for more info) and put everything into their proper positions, but before i could actually execute any code... i needed to know what SID i was going for!

step 4 + 5: look up potential egg frames in emerald and find an SID

soo now for looking at potential girafarig eggs. instead of using the program pokefinder which i mentioned earlier, i used a program called pokenav egg rng tool, which is exactly what it sounds like, a tool specialized for rng manipulating eggs with the pokenav in emerald. using it, i was quickly able to generate a whole list of gentle, female, ability 2 (early bird) eggs, and i picked one that was around 1300 frames in since that made for quick resetting attempts, but not so quick that i could barely make my inputs in time. the one i picked was frame 1381. with a TID of 02018, the PID D2C5EF55 would be shiny with an SID of 14962, so i noted that for later in firered. (i figured this out using an old program called RNG Reporter which is what i'm familiar with but i don't recommend using lmao. it's the "Pandora's Box" feature of that software though if you happen to look it up)

i won't make an entire guide on how to do emerald egg RNG here because it's a lot of steps, but i might at some point because the most up to date method isn't super well documented. anyways, here's a very paraphrased version of the process (this is also assuming that you aren't dealing with "redraws", which i wasn't... like i said very paraphrased):

get a pokemon with the ability lightningrod in the front of your party (i used electrike) to make pokenav calls happen more frequently, and a pokemon with flame body or magma armor (i used slugma) to make eggs hatch faster

get a male and a female of the pokemon you want to hatch, in my case girafarig. if you were RNGing IVs, the parent's IVs would be relevant, but i am not RNGing IVs so i didn't care and just caught the first girafarig i could in the safari zone

an egg is attempted to be generated every 255 steps after the parents are deposited in the daycare together, so by timing the usage of a max repel in such a way, it's easy to save the game exactly 10 steps before an egg is generated. do this

using a timer such as eontimer, soft reset and try to take that last 10th step on your target frame. this will also trigger a pokenav call (or lack thereof) and by looking for the phone call you got in the call column of the egg rng tool and whether or not an egg generated at the daycare, you can tell what frame you hit. didn't hit your target? just soft reset and try again, calibrating the timer for your own human error. this can take a while since the timing is precise to 1/60th of a second

once you hit your target frame, woohoo you did it just take the egg and hatch it! if you're RNGing IVs you would actually save before taking the egg and then RNG the IVs separately but that's a whole different thing i'm not explaining here since i wasn't RNGing IVs

i've avoided mentioning it this entire time till now, but emerald is particularly easy to do rng manipulation in because due to a programming error, the rng seed is always 0 - all encounters are predictable and you don't have to dedicate a frame perfect input to getting the right seed, making emerald rng a matter of one frame perfect input instead of two (there ARE ways to get emerald to generate a proper rng seed but that's unrelated here). additionally, its pokenav system means you can see if you got the right egg BEFORE taking it and hatching it... doing egg RNG in any other gen 3 game is basically a death sentence due to multiple untelegraphed frame perfect inputs that have to be executed in a row, plus really long wait times due to hatching eggs on a slower bike without flame body. there's a reason i was not doing this on four island in frlg.

but yeah now i knew what egg frame i was going for and was all prepared to do the RNG, so now it was onto actually executing it all:

step 6: getting kaf girafarig babey!!

before doing the RNG manipulation in emerald, i needed to change my SID and TID in firered finally! this required me to run two different codes, one for SID and one for TID. it was actually pretty painless since the code is nearly identical for both, you just swap out the values of each ID and one character changes in one box name to decide whether you're changing TID or SID. you can find the list of codes i was referencing here.

i was saving my one allotted video clip in this post for changing the TID with the glitched crobat move though because LMAO

^ shoutout to my qpp @/spikyearr for this one i fucking chokedSKFDDSFK

anyway, after doing that i went through the process of the egg rng in emerald (unfortunately no pictures because it's kind of hard to take pics mid-rng) and actually saved before taking the egg so that i'd be able to soft reset after hatching it - i just needed to check to make sure it was gentle and everything, and then i could soft reset, take the egg again, bike around to decrease the egg cycles in emerald since hatching in firered is super slow, and then trade it off before hatching it to go be hatched in firered. i knew it wouldn't be shiny in emerald, so i wasn't concerned with that. it only took 40 or so minutes of attempts before i got her!

and then AT LAST after spending my ENTIRE DAY ON THIS SHIT (like 10x the amount of time on the ACE stuff for the TID instead of the actual RNG itself LOOOL) i just had to trade the egg to firered and hatch it and i was golden!!!!! AAAGH here she is next to my kaf plushies!!!

also a picture of her summary screen after being traded to my english leafgreen!! i am assuming this will be easier to read for most of the people reading this post LOL

THAT'S IT. POST OVER THIS WAS SO LONG. IF YOU MADE IT THROUGH MY RAMBLING GOOD JOB. I HIT THE PHOTO LIMIT HELP ME

anyways yeah i'm gonna be ribbon mastering her and idk i might post about the process as i go. not immediately though i have a platinum playthrough to finish teehee. also if any of this was interesting to you i highly recommend trying out RNG manipulation, it's a really fun way to play pokemon games! gen 5, BW specifically and not their sequels, is REALLY beginner friendly for RNG manipulation as the timing is a lot less precise. check it out, there's plenty of guides online!!

[crystalelemental]

What do you wanna see the postgame in Pokemon you want? I feel like it's kinda tricky to figure out myself when I replay the postgame content in numerous times.

Okay this might go for a while, because the short answer is "I don't think I know anymore."

Part of the issue is defining what count as "postgame." Like, is Kanto Redux in Gen 2 postgame because the League is the finish point, and Red is optional superboss content, or is that part of main game? Is the second half of Unova optional postgame content, or is it main game because you technically never finished your League quest? Some situations, like the Emma and Anabel quests in Gens 6 and 7, feel pretty decisively postgame, as do things like Delta Episode. But what counts and what doesn't is up for some debate, and I'm...not really sure where I draw the line. I've referred to everything in the second half of Unova as postgame, but now I question that decision.

More to the point, postgame runs into two specific problems in both story and gameplay areas.

Gameplay is probably best explained by Bopper's Gen 2 video. In it, he expresses that a major selling point of Pokemon is the emphasis on continued growth and development, talking about how moves being learned late or late appearing Pokemon give players something to work toward, and keep the game fresh and interesting. And to be honest, this tracks. As someone who's owned cheat devices most of his Pokemon career, you do try to hack in final teams right at the start and they get stale really fast. Having something to work toward is part of the fun.

Postgames tend to run into the problem of not having anything left to specifically work toward. The difference between Crystal's Kanto Redux and Platinum's battle island is that in Platinum, my team is done and has learned everything. As a result, that island doesn't really offer anything particularly fun. While I've been a proponent of Gym Leader and League rematches in the past, they also have the issue of...not doing anything different. Red as a new final conflict requires a different approach from facing off against Lance and the League, but Cynthia 1 and Cynthia 2 go down to exactly the same strategy. There's less to work toward, so the island feels entirely boring to me. It's a complete slog.

While there are opportunities to switch up the team, sometimes that comes a bit late, and isn't exactly...engaging. It works in a game like Crystal because of how type matchups work, where Misdreavus can be caught and immediately blank Red's Snorlax, or Tyranitar countering half of Red's team. Or in Emerald, Mawile can hard counter Steven's entire team with careful play. But later games don't have that opportunity. It's just lower level stuff, sometimes weaker stuff, with no real gameplay benefit.

Which leads to the main thing. This is a Monster Collecting game. Its postgame is effectively completion of the dex. Which is something Pokemon is uniquely terrible at. A game like Nexomon (which is excellent and should be played) lets your postgame be hunting down everything, which is all available in that one playthrough. But Pokemon has version exclusives that demand two games, and internet connection, and with Switch paying for online connectivity. In addition, while Nexomon has a ton of Legendary status mons, it also gives a ton of Golden Nexotraps for assured captures to simplify the process. Meanwhile, Pokemon gives you one (1) Master Ball, then gives you a gauntlet of like a dozen Legendary Pokemon that are wretched to catch because of how annoying their systems are. Monster collecting in the most popular Monster Collecting Videogame is terrible by design. It's never been good, and they're never going to make it good. Though I guess they tried with Galar's Dynamax Adventures and Paldea's fights with main legends. Though they both still do the stupid catching thing in other ways, like the Galar birds and Treasures of Ruin.

I think ideal gameplay actually gives you something to work toward, but also Pokemon really just needs to improve how it operates with catching everything. Which I think it has. To its credit, Galar and Paldea do make it easier to complete the dex by making near everything available. But that's also predicated on dealing with the awful raids and dens, which is somehow worse.

The other element, story, is where things get dicey, and I'll use a comparison to explain. In Nexomon, your postgame events are...honestly the most story intensive segments. They're really good, and my personal favorite parts. More critically, they're continuations. Nexomon 1 follows up the main story of defeating Omnicron with your story of destroying his soul so he can't regenerate (spoilers I guess). Neoxmon 2 follows up all the heavy stuff that happens with a bit of a departure, but only in the sense of setting up the connection between things that happened and things that are about to happen. It's all excellent, and the postgame story is the hook. Granted, alongside new boss fights and challenges and developments that are engaging too. Shame about how the hunt for Tyrants goes, but I digress.

Gen 2 and Gen 5, while they offer postgame, tends to be very light and disconnected on story. There's not as much relevance. Even with things like XY and SuMo and the Paldea DLC, which are much heavier on story, they have...literally no significance to the main event. Like okay, you can argue the thematic relevance of Emma as a character, or that the UB hunt is related to Lusamine's actions, but like...it's really not that connected to what was going on before. Teal Mask is just 100% disconnected, and when they do connect in the Mochi Madness thing, it kinda sucks ass and they wrote Carmine out of it entirely like assholes. I will never forgive that.

I can't say Pokemon's ever really had a great story-centric postgame. It completely lacks in that area, and tells the story it wants to tell centrally. Not that Pokemon's ever been that intense on story. So this is an area it can't really work for. But the ones that do stand out...also run into issues. XY and SuMo have great events with Looker, Emma, and Anabel...but the actual playing of those segments isn't great. And going back to the initial question, does Teal Mask count as postgame if you can do it, entirely, from nearly the start of the game?

The final issue is one of...well, the Battle Facilities. I hate them, personally. I have no investment in playing literal cheating AI at reading minds. Gimmick frontier stuff like in Emerald and Platinum can be fun, but stuff like the normal Battle Tower sucks. Add to it that legendary Pokemon don't count, and there's also very little benefit to gathering legends. You don't really get to do much but stomp the League with the box legends, and...then what? Do a bunch of extra stuff? Run battles that don't allow them? What's the point of having the postgame without those benefits? Galar fixes this a bit by letting anything into Tower, but it's a small concession more than a proper fix.

Honestly, I don't really know what this all adds up to. Part of it is desperately wishing Pokemon had better capture mechanics, because god do the current ones suck. Part of it is thinking that postgame should be a little quick, because usually my complaint is it goes on too long. But I really don't even know what I'd expect anymore. I think that, to some degree, postgame in Pokemon works while the generation is current, but falls off in importance on replays. It's why Daybreak made Legends Arceus worse.

[strawbebearts]

Pokemon Challenge 2024! #1104 Coppink.

Coppink is a Steel-type based on a skink made of copper. This is kind of a cheat because my fire starter is already a skink, so I'm kind of doubling up here. But I had the idea for the names and my set was short on Steel types, so here we are. I always enjoy drawing metals, although it gets a bit funky on the legs. How cute and innocent is he? Ignore the knife.

Find the rest of the Te'Roa set in my master post!

[shinysamurott9]

How I nuked my 400 Hour Save of Pokemon Heartgold

So, recently I've been playing through the Pokemon Generations doing a Ribbon Master Quest, obtaining every Ribbon a single or set of Pokemon can possibly obtain by sending them up through the series. Just yesterday I was on the tail end of finishing the Gen 4 segment of the challenge.

I have a team of 5 Ribbon Masters currently; Mushi, my Shiny Heracross from Pokemon Colosseum which I hunted specifically for this Ribbon Master Quest, Velos and Seibzehn, a Latios and Metagross I raised to use in Emerald's Battle Frontier, Sparda, my Shiny Arceus I hunted using the void glitch in Pearl and Nero, my Shiny Giratina from Sinjoh Ruins. The only ribbons left for them to get was the Legend Ribbon for beating Red and most pertinent to this story, the World Ability Ribbon.

For those unaware, the World Ability Ribbon is obtained by reaching Rank 5 or higher in the Wifi Room in Gen 4's Battle Tower. Despite what you may think, this is still obtainable thanks to fan made servers which restore old wifi functionalities in Generations 4 & 5. The thing is though the Wifi room is bullshit. The opponents you fight are recorded teams from other players and unfortunately, on top of the highly optimised teams you’ll encounter, you'll also encounter many teams of blatantly hacked stuff like Machamps with OHKO Moves or Sturdy Shedinjas.

This is where I mention the fact that I just so happen to have a modded 3ds, which, among other things, let's me backup save data. So since the game was blatantly cheating anyway, I decided "Fuck it, I'm cheating too". How I did this was to fight one battle in the Wifi Room, and after winning, I'd use the rest option to save and exit the game. Then I'd backup that save file, so if I lost the next battle, I could restore that backup and try again, letting me continue my streak. A slow process but it would mean eventually, I would be able to climb the ranks high enough to get the World Ability Ribbon.

As you can imagine though, I was doing this process of reloading and backing up a lot, and at one point I restored a file incorrectly, taking out the game too early, causing the file to go blank. No problem I'll just restore the file again and if I was competent, that's wherethis would have ended. But, because of how much I was using Checkpoint, my muscle memory got a lite crosswired, so instead of restoring my file, I made a new backup over it, effectively erasing the entire thing.

For reference this included:

400 hrs of Gameplay, A Pokedex roughly 2/3rds complete, A fully developed Safari Zone, Several Pokemon from my various Gen 4 Playthroughs over the years, Every Arceus Plate, (Which are actually pretty difficult to get in HGSS), All 5 of my Ribbon Masters

And perhaps worst of all, my entire collection of Gen 4 shinies. This included:

My near back to back Shiny Luxio and Luxray from Platinum,

A shiny Darkrai and Shaymin I hunted with the Void Glitch

Several Radar and Safari Week Shinies

And a shiny of each Sinjoh Dragon.

Needless to say I was both pissed and devestated. There was some consolation, since I had backups of Gen 3 and Platinum, my Ribbon Masters and Battle Tower mons were safe. Everything else though, initially I was resigned to either losing them forever or trying very likely in vain to recreate as much as I could in PKHex which has it's own issues both logistically and ensuring they were legal, not helped at all by how bad the legality checker in PKHex actually is.

BUT

There was, one, just one saving grace. Fucking POKEMON BATTLE REVOLUTION

The way that Battle Revolution works is that you connect a Gen 4 Save File and it will make an exact copy of your boxes so you can use them in BR's various Colosseums. And of course I just so happened to have copied my boxes from HG a few months ago just after Safari Week meaning every pokemon I had nuked still existed! I had to hack my Wii U to dump the save file but because of that I was able to completely restore almost every single pokemon by copy pasting them back onto Heartgold.

Obviously still lost a lot in other areas but I really can't complain considering what I managed to restore.

As a sidenote, there was a similar incident way back where I accidentally erased my friend's Ruby Master File no shinieswere lost just a lot of progress. I think his reaction speaks for itself.

[loupy-mongoose]

I don't know if anyone is interested, but I want to share the IRL story of Akoya. Because yes, I took the time and effort to hunt a “legitimate” shiny Mew.

When my brother and I were kids, we got into cheat devices, specifically Action Replay and GameShark. Our Action Replays are gone, I believe, but we still have the GameShark for GBA—Which allows access to Faraway Island in Pokemon Emerald, normally only accessed through an Event, long ago.

The Mew you can catch there counts as a legit Mew and can be transferred up through the modern games. And it can be shiny, with the original odds of 1/8192.

A couple years ago, my brother started and completed a hunt—In the Diamond and Pearl days, he got a shiny Mew off the GTS named “konozama” that we both grew attached to. Unfortunately, it was cheated and is now stuck in Black and White. But now he has konozama back, his own and legit. (The original konozama didn't have a capitol k, so I'm not here either.)

In June of 2021, I began my own hunt. I spent a few months on it, getting about 7,000 encounters in before losing interest. Time passed. The Emerald cartridge got lost (possibly knocked into a trash bin without us noticing) and we got a new one. In June of 22, I picked it back up. I played the new cartridge normally up the point of having the Master Ball (didn't end up needing it) and used GameShark to teleport to Faraway Island. From there, the hunt finally resumed.

And on August 1st, after a total of over 10,000 encounters, she appeared.

Mew has been my favorite Pokemon since I was a kid, and I've always had a soft spot for the Faraway Island Mew since I learned about it. So Akoya is, and likely always will be, my proudest and happiest Pokemon accomplishment. By extension, this story I'm telling with these characters is very dear to me.

To anyone who took the time to read all that, I offer a special thanks!

TL,DR: I caught Akoya using GameShark to teleport to Faraway Island. It took over a year and over 10,000 encounters for her to shine. She is now my Pokemon pride and joy!

Thank you to those who have been enjoying my story and characters with me!

[livewireprojects]

Old Solaris Twins Refs(Lost Prince AU/Butterfly Effect AU)

This is kinda why I finally worked on the post for the Butterfly Effect AU so I could finally post this cause the post explains stuff.

This is an old ref cause I've edited post-reboot Mephiles's design & I plan to edit Iblis's casual outfit.

Here's how post-reboot Mephiles looks now for context

I'll explain as best I can but I'm going to try keeping summarizes & stuff for a remake of the designs when I get to them.

Just so there's some sight context before I eventually summarize them in a redesign ref post Iblis is cheerful, a little like Sonic, likes to tease but is a caring person. Reboot Mephiles is calm, kind, tries to be gentle & sometimes worries about his pre-reboot actions as he's a different person now that still remembers the past.

Soleanna outfits:

I got some inspiration from Cylent-Nite on DA for some of this.

Originally Iblis was going to be male & look similar to Sonic but I went with this after seeing others' art of Iblis as a Mobian. While still having quills similar to Mephiles/Shadow, her quills are also based on her original form's spike/horn things. She also has some features(claw hands, third eye & sharp teeth based on her original form's mouth) that come from her original form kind of like how Mephiles still has his eyes & is mouthless.(And in the redesign his quills are more like his crystal form's quills)

Their outfits are based off of Elise & her dad's outfits because I attempted to look up Elise for outfit ideas, these outfits are for when they're suppose to be doing royal/guardian business or have to dress up.

Casual outfits:

I drew outfits for Iblis & Mephiles when not doing their jobs/traveling, Iblis doesn't travel much but she still has an outfit.

Iblis got an outfit meant to be a mix of Sonic's & Blaze(also a little based on Marnie from Pokemon Sword/Shield because I've become obsessed with her outfit recently), might fix it up some when I do a digital version of the ref. Mephiles got a remake of Shadow's old outfit before I gave him a biker outfit, he still has the old outfit but for special occasions when not in his royal outfit.

Iblis is hiding her 3rd eye(but also making sure she can still see threw it) because she worries she'll scare people.

Alt forms:

I might repost this pic to the redesign post cause I hate drawing these forms because of all the details that go into them. It's hard to draw these two like this.

So pretty much the two have alternate forms that are pretty much Mephiles's crystal form & Iblis's 3rd form in a more mobian form similar to crystal form Mephiles

They don't go into these forms that often but they have them especially if they need more powerful forms or something.(I dunno where I was going) Mephiles sometimes uses his second form as a Halloween costume, his son thinks it's cool, his wife thinks it's funny he cheats by using it.

Link to master post for Lost Prince AU

[pbjelly90]

Writing Patterns

Rules: list the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern!

I’ve seen a few posts on this and wanted to try it, although it took some digging to find the last 10 things I’ve written/shared with friends since I never post anything. This probably isn’t the best sample because most of these are from first drafts (and many of them from short stories for friends that I probably won’t ever go back to edit much), but here goes! I’m curious to see if there’s any patterns. I might put more than one sentence for some of these if the first wasn’t a complete thought, maybe that’s cheating, but eh, this is for my own fun and learning anyway.

I don't really know how to do quotes on Tumblr yet, so let's see how this formats.

1. Not a single person recognized she was dying.

This is one of the potential first lines for my novel, below are going to be a couple others I’ve tried. This one was retooled from “If she didn’t escape today, she would die.” This one is currently the line I’ve kept as I’ve continued on writing.

2. It was easy to get lost in the ____ Galaxy. People from every planet, every colony world, and every moon went missing all the time. Most were never found.

(Note to self, choose a name for the dang galaxy at some point.) Another first line attempt for the space fantasy novel.

3. Her days had never been easy, but they had been brighter with them.

This was another novel first line I didn’t keep, when I thought I might start with a flashback/reflection from the first viewpoint character.

4. Leuda entered the training yard to find it empty save for the swordsman, Saburo, flowing through basic forms with a training sword, his breathing synchronized with every step.

The rest of these come from quick Pokemon/SW RPG short stories for friends, many of them more slice of life type stories, from about 2016 to last year. These don’t get edited much and I am not expecting these first lines to be good, ooh boy. 😆 A lot of them were written more so to establish who/where the story was about quickly for an audience who knew the characters, rather than to draw a new reader in. But hey, that’s no excuse for them being boring, and man, looking at them now, they certainly are for the most part.

5. It was his favorite day, the Phoenix Festival. Mother brought him that morning down the hill into the colorful market streets, full of stalls and people, their neighbors and friends. There were so many delicious smells, delightful sounds and fun games to play. Young Nobunaga looked forward to it every year he could remember, but this year was the best yet. This year he would be a torch bearer, and light the ceremonial torch for the Tin Tower.

This one is a backstory/flashback oriented short story and man do I do a lot of telling in the beginning here instead of showing, but at least it gets better after this opening.

6. “So,” his Master Linar started, standing a few feet across him on the grassy field, a spot they’d scouted out for practice from their ship. “I understand you’ve seen my daughter Olivia recently.”

7. On a rare quiet evening amidst his travels, Regal Aurion sat around the community firepit with his sister Olivia Sylvarant on Alderaan, watching the village children playing, chasing after fireflies that gathered by the warmth and light.

8. The fire crackled and danced in the small pit they had dug, the remains of dinner cleared away.

9. The longer Kilandra Yanet worked at the Center of Lifepod 96, the more she noticed her fellow Healer, Hunter Alnwood, had a very predictable routine. It wasn’t that she followed the man or anything of the sort, but it was in her nature, part of her past skillset, to notice such patterns and observe behaviors.

She used to be an assassin, and she totally follows him. 😆

10. She heard the boots thudding on the hull even before she felt their presence.

I may do more than 10 here just for my own curiosity to see how these ones start:

11. This time she sensed her coming. But it was already too late.

12. The howling winds filled the valley before them, blanketed in white.

13. From the edge of the forest, they watched as cranes worked and freighters flew into the gates to deliver their supplies to the new Lifepod.

The new Lifepod is barely important to this story besides being the reason the lead character is here when she's normally a hermit, I could have improved this one so much more if I went back for edits.

14. After some time working for her boss, Sara Besand-Asgard began to notice certain things. He could be very lively, even charming, positively full of life around their friends and clients, but the few times she visited his home by the river to deliver equipment or news from work, he seemed... withdrawn. Quieter. A touch sad.

15. My precious niece, From the moment you first displayed your Force gifts, I was worried for you. Your life would not be a normal one, as my sister might have hoped, your path would not be an easy one, one of safety and peace.

This one’s a letter, same with the next one.

16. Yue, It’s been nearly five years since your daughter left Lifepod 96 and my protection. I know that Scipio trusted these people, but I can’t help but feel that time is wasting, and the girl is not learning all she needs.

17. “Human…” It was her first time out in the open in some weeks, inspecting the new pier built off the coast of Lifepod 678. Leave it to chance, then, or the Force's will, that someone would find her this quickly. Someone who'd address her like that, even more so.

18. In the yard of the Center, a lightfoil hissed against something like steel, as a man danced against an Escavalier, feinting and parrying, every step purposeful, every motion calculated with a kind of precise grace.

19. A long, long time ago, on the Core world of Corellia... Farl Jahalyu had just finalized a deal he knew would secure his future for at least the next several years.

20. Shiftry leapt from stone to stone across the reflecting pond in the backyard, chasing a butterfly that had caught his attention. His expression was one of intense focus, even calm. Gone were the tremors, the rage, the pain of his past.

Okay that’s a bunch of them, and patterns? They’re very straight to the point lol. Trying to establish who the short story is about right away, but many are fairly bland. A lot of them introduce the lead character by full name right away, which was purposeful for these particular stories, but doesn’t make them the most engaging for any new audience. It assumes you know these characters, understand who they are already, know their relationships to one another, and care about what they’re doing. Sort of lazy, telling more than showing? But in a quick story like this, maybe it’s all right that we jump right into the point, as these were meant to be fun or interesting little extras set before and after the main RP story for the other RP writers. It does make me want to shake things up a bit next time I write one of these though.

As for the novel sentences, so far I’m kind of throwing the stakes into the reader’s face right away with the first opening conflict in the sentence I have now. I wanted to do an in-media res sort of treatment with the first POV character’s initial breakout from prison, but kept getting stuck on what was the best way to set things up. This has led to me to obsessing over the first few scenes way too much when I should just keep writing, so for now I’ve accepted well enough and I can edit later on lol.

If anyone happens to see this post and wants to try this out, go ahead and have fun! :)

[ribesrubrum]

Send ☭ for a vs. battle quote to your muse

@vee-vee-volley

Battle intro: Carmine: Ohhh, look at you! I've heard this meek little geek knows how to battle real well--how about you show me what those Vees of yours are all about?!

Victory: Carmine: Haha! A good serving of matcha is all it takes to bring down a team of little Vees? Maybe you should get some variety!

Defeat: Carmine: You've gotta be kidding me--using six of pretty much the same Pokemon should be cheating, you know!

Assist: Carmine: Mind if we cut into the Veevee production? Mightyena, Sucker Punch!

Taunt: Carmine: Gosh, if I didn't know any better, maybe the V's just for the vendetta you'll be holding once you lose! Reacting to Taunt: Carmine: You nerdy BRAT! You're going to regret ever saying that! Tie: Carmine: Ha...well. Good to know that I'm good enough to match even Team Star's former leader. What, you think I didn't watch that livestream? Perfect Victory: Carmine: You've got 25 more letters of the alphabet to master before you can even hope to beat me, nerd!

[kettouryuujin]

So You Wanna See an Evolution Party?

[Inspired by @monsoon-of-art's Pokerus AU]

The second they’d returned with Lady Lilligant, Akari had basically Extremespeed’d to the supply tent, leaving everyone else in the dust. Rei helped Arezu get her Noble to medbay, grumbling about Dewotts and priorities. Honestly, he didn’t see what the big deal was with this whole “evolution party” anyways.

Honestly, he’d rather rest up and heal. This whole thing was just… a lot to deal with. A whole lot to deal with. And being around the Dewott may only make things worse.

---

Akari was zipping around the supply hall, going back-and-forth to try and gather the supplies needed for the party. It was astonishing one hadn’t been planned yet, but there was a crisis afoot. That and these weren’t their natural forms, but. That’s no reason to cheat someone out of one of the most important days of their life!

“So...what’s the plan for when we get this all fixed?” Eh? Fixed? Wott? “Honestly? Mainly getting rid of all these adaptations, and getting rationing reset.”

Hearing all this caused the Water-type to screech to a halt before she stumbled over another’s words. They weren’t seriously talking about...

“Heh, well. I’d kill to have arms again, if you ask me. Sucks that I have to ask for so much help.”

“Legends, that has to suck. I’m just glad I still have mine...” As the pair laughed and walked along, neither deigned to notice the slack-jawed Explorer. And, if she was of a clearer mind, she’d be thankful for that. But as it was, she had only one thing in her mind.

‘Legends, why didn’t I think of that...’

---

Rei grunted, working his forelegarm a bit. One good thing about these changes, Potions were far more useful. And if Akari was anything to go by, this wasn’t that bad a fate - Jubilife was adapting enough before she showed up, but once the Dewott had shown that life as a Pokemon didn’t have to be uncivilized things picked up pace. 

On his way out, he passed by a Sliggoo’s bed, where the Rock-type Noble helped remove some shards of stone from his Warden’s goopy body. A small chuckle escaped the Raichu’s lips - another training accident, no doubt. The pair had been sparring a fair bit after both had gotten back to health, and he’d heard even Sabi was joining in. It made sense - while Sliggoo were blind, Goodra could see. Best to get that back sooner than later, even if they don’t know how long they’ll... be like this...

Eyes slowly went wide as implications went thru his head. Sweet Groudon, was that why?

---

*thump*

“OOF! Sorry about that Rei...”

“I-it’s alright, I wasn’t watching where I was going.” The duo slowly stood up, avoiding eye contact with the other.

Dust drifted upwards as paws shuffled. “So, umm... W-we don’t have to do the party.”

“I’m not sure where we cou-wait, what?” Embarrassment forgotten, the Electric-type’s eyes darted to look at the Mareepish Dewott.

“Y-yeah, I...I kinda was getting all into it, and forgot you guys. May not be staying this way.”

“I...umm. I actually realized that...”

“Wait, what?”

A small nod from the ‘chu. “Yeah, I...I know we want to go back to being human, but we don’t know how we’d do it... or when. So I guess indulging in something like an evolution party might not be that bad, especially if we...you know.”

“O-oh... I see.” Silence reigned over the pair, a small wind stirring up the dust and grass. “So, umm...”

“My apologies, but I require you to change tracks and connect with mine immediately.”

Confusion gave way to shock as the pair were gripped by the scruffs of their necks, dragged along by red claws. Eyes turned to their captor - an Express Master by the name of Emmett, smile wider and tenser than ever before. Akari took the initiative. “Umm, Emmet? What’s going on?”

“I have been informed that my brother and fellow Express Master, Ingo, was in one of the Mystery Dungeons when it formed.” Rei’s eyes widened at the name.

“Wait, you know Warden Ingo?”

“That is a matter of discussion for another station. For now, I am lifting my embargo on Dungeon exploration to proceed on this new track I have found.”

“But-”

“No buts. We are proceeding apace. As my brother would say, ALL ABOARD!!!”

Rattling ears shook out any sense of control the younger Explorers may have had. They were heading for the Coronet Highlands...

Whether they liked it or not.

[kafus]

i know they said bank will remain open after general 3ds wifi services shut down but i don't trust for how long that will be, so i'm making an absolutely massive list of stuff i want to transfer for my collection before the ability to do so gets shut off forever...

i'm putting it below the cut because the list is long but i do want to say here that if anyone else is making a sort of "collectible list" before bank's shutdown one day and you're not a total stranger to me (we don't have to be mutuals, i'm comfortable if i just see you in my notifs sometimes), please feel free to reach out to me about trades for old gen event pokemon, i have a plentiful collection of hardware to be able to distribute events to myself in gens 3 & 4 like as if i were a toys r us employee in real life, and i might be able to trade you something for your collection (the "legitimacy" of these since they weren't distributed at the real life event over a decade ago is up to you! but i think it's a cooler way of getting them than cheat codes or injection through PKHeX at least)

okay here's my current list

Ribbon Masters

Kaf Farigiraf

Porygon-Z KAF/U pair

Something from the GameCube games (Quagsire in honor of Ayano?? Butterfree because I like it??)

Gen 3 shiny Zigzagoon

Childhood PKTOPIA Raichu (+ PKTOPIA Pikachu if I have time)

The gen 3 PCNY Pokemon Venty is giving to me at Regionals next year

Gabby the Garchomp

Gen 3 Latias named Bianca

Sport Ball Shedinja/Ninjask (trade to DPPT for evolution)

LeafGreen Bulbasaur at minimum, maybe some other stuff to honor my childhood cartridge

Something to honor my love for Sinnoh, TBD

Maybe others

Mythicals

RNG Shiny Mew in JPN Emerald (Maybe RM it?)

Get Ayano to shiny hunt Celebi in VC Crystal for me (I could RM this one too), grab a normal one too, maybe from the HGSS event

RNG Shiny Wishmaker Jirachi unless that's too agonizing, in which case get a normal Wishmaker Jirachi and RNG a Channel Jirachi instead

RNG Shiny Deoxys in RSE or FRLG, get a normal one from whichever game I don't do the RNG on

RNG Shiny Manaphy in DPPT or HGSS, get a normal one from there as well (Phione can be bred later or RNG'd in gen 4)

RNG Shiny Darkrai in DPPT, get a normal one too

RNG Shiny Shaymin in DPPT, get a normal one too

Get a normal Arceus from DPPT, shiny hunting it isn't urgent since that's only doable in BDSP

Shiny Victini doesn't exist :(, get a normal one from BW

Shiny Keldeo doesn't exist either, get a normal one from BW

Shiny Meloetta ALSO doesn't exist, get a normal one from BW

Get a shiny Genesect from Japanese Gen 5 (the only place it was released), get a normal one too

3DS Mythicals and their shinies can be injected as needed into 3DS games (Volcanion, Hoopa, Magearna, and Marshadow have unreleased shinies. I have shiny Zeraora from SWSH. Magearna doesn't need to be injected)

Not currently concerned about Meltan/Melmetal/Zarude

Other collectibles

Need to check Apriball legality listings, maybe get a few of my favorite mons in Apriballs from HGSS

Transfer a copy of Mikoto's Safari Ball collection

One of every Legendary with a cool ribbon

Ayano's original Crystal team just in case

VC Origin Legendaries since I'm playing through Crystal anyway

Some other various gen 3 & 4 events I can self distribute

More TBD