PokéMondays: Things I Need To Do Before Game Freak Pulls The Plug on Pokémon Bank

Recently, Nintendo made an announcement that they would be shutting down online services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U next year. April 2024 to be exact. Around that time, the big question regarding 3DS was whether or not that included Pokémon Bank, the software that lets you transfer Pokémon from Gen I to Gen VII over to Pokémon Home so you can take your Pokémon with you forever and ever. Game Freak already did the player base a solid by not charging anymore for Pokemon Bank once the eShop shut down and making it free for everyone. They did us another solid by stating that Pokémon Bank will not be shutting down via this tweet but we are still encouraged to transfer Pokémon sooner rather than later.

So that basically kicked my ass into high gear and there are a couple of goals I wanted to accomplish in my portable Pokémon games before the shut down. And here they are in no particular order:

Complete the Gen VI National Dex

Having Pokémon X, Pokémon Y, Pokémon Omega Ruby, and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire, it is possible to complete the National Dex with just those four games. I found that little factoid really neat and welcoming as a new player. I started with X so being able to get every Pokemon introduced in previous games in that then-current generation was kind of exciting. Of course things happen, and my interests wanders like a leaf in the wind. I never completed the National Dex, but now I feel like I have to before the shut down.

Complete a living shiny dex in Gen VII

Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon introduced a new method of shiny hunting by way of SOS battles. Pokémon you battle may call for allies and as more and more allies are called, your chances of encountering a shiny one increases. I really like the SOS battles as it allows a bit more of a passive approach to shiny hunting. Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon tweaked the mechanics a bit to make it a little more convenient. The other Gen VII-related side quest is to ensure I get the regional variants of some Pokémon. This should take care of itself as long as I complete the main goal.

Get all the wormhole legendaries in shiny form

Those Gen VII games also introduced wormholes to encounter all of the previous games’ legendaries (except for Deoxys which is still a bit of a headscratcher why it wasn’t included).  I am hoping to catch all of them as a shiny through this game feature. Unlike the main method for shiny hunting, this one involves a whole lot of soft resetting. Save your game, check the legendary, if it’s not shiny, reset. Rinse and repeat. Back in the day before I became a shiny hunter, I’d read stories about people soft resetting their life away and thought it was excruciating. MMORPGs and the constant grind for anything has conditioned me enough to not see it as such a chore; it’s like a cake walk for me now. I’m almost done with this particular side quest too so that’s pretty exciting.

Get a shiny Shaymin and shiny Darkrai from Pokémon Platinum

Thanks to the DNS hack, I was able to get the necessary event items in my copy of Pokemon Platinum, items I’m fairly certain I didn’t get in BDSP (otherwise, I’d be doing the hunt there and not even bothering with Platinum). Having basically just rushed through the game, I still found myself enjoying the game. There’s something about the tried-and-true Pokémon formula that is comforting, like your favorite childhood snacks. I’m currently soft resetting for the Shaymin shiny. Those games didn’t have the shiny charm so this is a full-odds hunt. I’m crossing my fingers, hoping to get lucky and have it pop before I hit 10k resets.

Get a living dex in Gen I and transfer that down to home

I don’t know why I’m doing this one. This one makes no sense to me at all. There’s no piont. There’s no exclusive Pokémon to be had, no bonus, no prize, just bragging rights I guess. Don’t even know if Gen I Pokémon have their own symbol or not. This might or might not just be my justification for buying the virtual console titles. And I may or not be fancying doing the same for Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal.

Hunt for a shiny Manaphy… NOT!

There is this insane hunting method for a shiny Manaphy. In a nut shell, you have to complete Pokémon Ranger. There is only one egg per game, no matter if you restart it with a new save file. ONE EGG. Transfer that egg to a Gen IV game and hatch it. If it’s not shiny soft reset and then transfer the egg to a NEW Gen IV game save file. You can keep passing this egg back and forth between new save files in your Gen IV games. The time consuming part is playing the Gen IV games long enough to get to the point where you can do trades and receive eggs. Ideally you’ll want to transfer as many eggs as possible to increase your chances. It is insane and something I am not going to do… unless I finish all my other goals first. Even then I only have two Pokémon Ranger games that still have the egg and it may not be worth it. There are mods and programs you can load up on a 3DS to do things like duplicate the eggs. It’s not really my cup of tea as it feels like a bit of a cheat. I was going back and forth about the DNS exploit for the Shaymin and Darkrai event items but in the end made peace with it. But actually hacking the game feels like it’s a bit too far past the moral line.

So that’s it. It’s almost the end of December, and all my goals are in various states of progression. As I write this I’m soft resetting for a shiny Articuno in USUM, using the run away method in Platinum for Shaymin, and when I’m untethered to my desk, I’ll play Pokémon Red via virtual console on my 3DS. Let’s see where I end up come pull-the-plug-on-Pokémon-bank time.