Allow me to introduce you to merchandising and events
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
except for all the times they just...don't.
I see, Well ok
Well so far every single shiny except I think Calyrex? and Urshifu? has been released somewhere either via event, via merchandise, via movie or as prize for VGC seasons, or just for free from wi-fi distribution at some point.
Gen 7 similarly had both the shiny tapus and shiny lunala / solgaleo / necrozma.
They just like to keep current generation shiny legendaries as "event only", and then "release" them the gen after.
Understandable honestly, and at least makes "current gen shiny legendaries" a bit more unique compared to "just softreset 2400 times 4Head"
Reshiram & Zekrom, the ones that started the trend, didn't get their shinies as event (for some reason) and were unavailable until ORAS where they just sort of didnt have shiny locks.I wouldn't even call that marketing either because no one knew until they found it.
In addition to Calyrex & Urshifu (& thus, Kubfu) there's also the horses. Honestly this one feels like they collectively realized "oh, that would probably be really weird when using Rider form" but didnt want to update hte game to like...account for that.
But shiny locks apply to a lot more than just those. In gen 6, for example. None of the legendaries in XY could be found Shiny. And they never had any gen 6 shiny events so...the only way to get them...was by importing. Gen 8 locks off all gift Pokemon (except the fossils so it's something they had to specifically set for each one!) from being Shiny so even Poipole & Type Null can't be shiny even though it COULD be shiny in SM/USUM. There's also the incredibly goofy scenario of SWSH letting you SR for shiny Solgaleo & Lunala but NOT the shiny Cosmog who has never been released to this day. BDSP lets every legend be shiny, even if Darkrai Shaymin & Arceus, but not the pair of gifts; meanwhile Legends Arceus doesnt let you get any of the legends as a shiny to my recollection, even in terms of mythicals you can only find Phione (the one that will respawn) as a normal one and that's one ANYONE can get shiny in any other game! Giratina not being shiny huntable in particular being notable because it was apparently so far off their radar that if you bring over a shiny giratina, turn it origin and then use shadow force it crashes the game.
And speaking of those mythics, wow now there's some weird shit. The following have just never been released ever:
-Victini (obviously the BW1 victini was shiny locked)
-Keldeo (the one you can find in SWSH is shiny locked as well)
-Meloetta
-Hoopa
-Volcanion
-Marshadow
And then on top of that here's ones that you only get as shiny if you are able to SR and then transfer them around:
-Mew, the last time an event shiny Mew was given out was Gen 3 iirc and otherwise you could SR the emerald one (assuming yo uever got the dang map...). In theory I guess you could heavily manipulate a Mew through glitches and make that a shiny in the RB VC games?
-Deoxys, must have found in FRLG. There's never been an event and the ORAS Deoxys was shiny locked
-Manaphy, which is on a severe technicality. There's never been an event for it and its mystery gift shiny locked in BDSP I believe, but you could get around its shiny lock in gen 4 on the condition that you trade it to another cart before hatching. But considering the way the Ranger egg goes, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Good luck with that.
I want to say that the only shiny mythics given out since gen 3 (the mew) are a Shiny Arceus (Japan only, effectively as a lottery for the movie) in gen 6 and then Gen 8's shiny Zeraora and shiny Magearna (for Home).
It reads way more as arbitrary rather than for marketing. Like fine fine whatever you want the new legends (SIDE NOTE: They let the 2 new regi be shiny huntable which is wild?? Like how did they not just shiny lock the full set of 5 it would be no less arbitrary), but why all these other rando legends? Why all these gift pokemon? It's all very silly. At least be more consistent in handing out shiny events or something.
An addendum to this is that several shiny mythicals have been made available in GO. Shiny Mew was the ultimate reward for Kanto GO tour, shiny Celebi was given out as promotion for the Koko movie, shiny meltan (and hence melmetal) are occasionally made available, and deoxys, no drive genesect, and Darkrai have all been available in raids. (Genesect with drives are treated as separate forms and have not been released as shiny).
oh good point thank you, i forgot to check for Go and i completely spaced on the Celebi (I even got that one through the stupid email service so you'd think i'd commit that one to memory)
That was why I left Celebi (in general) out, but I left Celebi out of the list of "mythics given out as shiny as events" whic is what rocketsurgery was correcting me on.
I have always just assumed they make them shiny locked for the "potential" to give them out via marketing.
That doesn't mean they'll get enough events out to do so, but they just "reserve the option", and if they don't manage, well, the next gen they'll be available legitimately (mythicals aside which are their own thing)
I recall some combination of these two explanations off the top of my head:
- Someone at GF/TPC/etc. saying they don't like the idea of two kids getting a starter/story legendary/real-life event mythical together, and one of them getting an explicitly "more special" version than the other kid. Optional sidequests are acceptable if that specific Pokemon is not being promoted.
- Someone at GF/TPC/etc. saying they don't like the inconsistency when a special Pokemon appears in a cutscene non-Shiny and is then Shiny afterwards (which would explain why e.g. all of the Ultra Space Wilds legendaries are specifically silhouettes).
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I just think that it doesn't "feel" right for a majestic story-related Pokemon to randomly have a special attribute, hence why box legends are shiny locked. I would say it's fine for "legend-hunting" modes like Warp Ride and Soar to have shinies available, as they're a side thing for a Champion to gather powerful Pokemon. In PLA, they either changed their design philosophy and decided that minor legendaries should also be unavailable shiny, or they decided that since they hold Plates, the legends are more associated with the story and should as such be shiny locked, or they wanted people to buy BDSP
The horses are pretty relevant to the Crown Tundra story, so I can see why they would shiny lock them.
There is a case to be made that the Regis aren't that story relevant, but I have no idea why the same philosophy wouldn't apply to the Galarian Birds. Game Freak is strange.
It's probably because the birds appear in that tree cutscene, and then later appear flying around the overworld. The Regis, to my knowledge, make their first appearance already in battle.
i see the logic (the only mew given out for hte VC games legitimately was not shiny) but it is still funny.
That is, unless you name your character “GF” and fish for the right trainer ID
Or use Arbitrary Code Execution to give yourself that OT and ID.
Hang on - is this a guess or a confirmed change that GF made to Poke Transporter? Last I remember, Mew from VC only checked OT and ID; it didn't check for legal vs. glitched IVs. But for all I know they could have quietly made a server-side update to block VC Shiny Mew.
Shininess is determined by DVs, or the Gen I Equivalent of IVs. All of the VC Event Mew's DVs are maxed out at 15, which will never generate a shiny. If you see or have a Mew that is Shiny from the VC titles, it is not legit in the slightest.
Also, the Mew was only handed out in the UK and Japan, so it can only ever be in English or Japanese, since they can only be sent to games with the right language(the event requires you trading with a nintedo staff member and cross-language trading was not possible until Gen III) and I would question any English ones more than the Japanese ones due to the fact that only 100 English Mews were handed out in person at a single UK location, while the Japanese version of the event was a lot easier to obtain by comparison. On top of that, unless a non-UK citizen somehow got in for one of those 100 Mew, I doubt any of the UK Mews would have their geolocation set to anywhere outside of the UK and/or say they were originally obtained on a non-Europeon region 3DS, since both of those things are kept track of in a Pokemon's coding.
Someone traded me a Volcanion on Pokemon Home this morning which prompted me to write a little about it.
I've posted before about how much I dislike mythical Pokemon which seem to be there to sell movie tickets first and be an interesting Pokemon with unique lore second.* Marshadow, Zeraora, and Zarude all fall into this category to varying extents.
But Volcanion is where this ugly trend started IMO. It has absolutely no significance in the games and nothing in the way of interesting lore; so much so that there's really very little to talk about. By the time it was revealed X&Y had pretty much run their course; to the extent that it had to share its movie with Gen VII's first mythical, Magearna. I haven't seen the movie it stars in (maybe one day, though I'm told it was terrible) but am aware of the plot and feel like they at least tried to do something interesting with it. So that's something.
But I wish it had some more backstory, because even going by the movie there isn't much. Its flavour text is incredibly boring and does little to make it distinctive. It lives apart from humans in the mountains. Well, so does Clefairy. It has enough power to ravage the landscape. So do Tyranitar and Gyarados and Lugia. It lets out large billows of steam which obscure it from view as it makes an exit. Eh. Team Rocket do that all the time.
Maybe they're cheap shots, but I want to know what drives it, what it wants. What makes it a mythical exactly? We're not told. Like a lot of the other underwhelming mythicals, it just seems to be one because it's really powerful. It lives alone in the mountains - that doesn't preclude there being others; maybe they're a solitary species by nature, but why are they so few? Is it because it can live for a really long time? Even the Mauville TV bonus text in ORAS just reiterates what we already know: it converts moisture into steam and blows stuff up - the most interesting part for me is that we're told Volcanion has been found in different areas in Kalos, Sinnoh, and Johto, further indicating that more than one exists. The Lumiose Press event in XY only gives one interesting insight: that it was apparently worshipped in Southern Kalos for its power. But that's all we get.
It's a shame. I really like Volcanion's design. It looks strong and gruff (atypically for mythicals, which generally trend towards the floaty and serene) and it's the first and so far only Fire/Water Pokemon we've had, which is a tremendous waste - using up such an interesting type combination on a mythical the majority of players will never see. I wish we'd gotten to know more about it, but I guess I'll probably have to wait for the inevitable XY remakes to learn more.
*before anyone replies, I am well aware that all mythical Pokemon primarily exist to sell movie tickets
I've posted before about how much I dislike mythical Pokemon which seem to be there to sell movie tickets first and be an interesting Pokemon with unique lore second.* Marshadow, Zeraora, and Zarude all fall into this category to varying extents.
But Volcanion is where this ugly trend started IMO. It has absolutely no significance in the games and nothing in the way of interesting lore; so much so that there's really very little to talk about. By the time it was revealed X&Y had pretty much run their course; to the extent that it had to share its movie with Gen VII's first mythical, Magearna. I haven't seen the movie it stars in (maybe one day, though I'm told it was terrible) but am aware of the plot and feel like they at least tried to do something interesting with it. So that's something.
But I wish it had some more backstory, because even going by the movie there isn't much. Its flavour text is incredibly boring and does little to make it distinctive. It lives apart from humans in the mountains. Well, so does Clefairy. It has enough power to ravage the landscape. So do Tyranitar and Gyarados and Lugia. It lets out large billows of steam which obscure it from view as it makes an exit. Eh. Team Rocket do that all the time.
Maybe they're cheap shots, but I want to know what drives it, what it wants. What makes it a mythical exactly? We're not told. Like a lot of the other underwhelming mythicals, it just seems to be one because it's really powerful. It lives alone in the mountains - that doesn't preclude there being others; maybe they're a solitary species by nature, but why are they so few? Is it because it can live for a really long time? Even the Mauville TV bonus text in ORAS just reiterates what we already know: it converts moisture into steam and blows stuff up - the most interesting part for me is that we're told Volcanion has been found in different areas in Kalos, Sinnoh, and Johto, further indicating that more than one exists. The Lumiose Press event in XY only gives one interesting insight: that it was apparently worshipped in Southern Kalos for its power. But that's all we get.
It's a shame. I really like Volcanion's design. It looks strong and gruff (atypically for mythicals, which generally trend towards the floaty and serene) and it's the first and so far only Fire/Water Pokemon we've had, which is a tremendous waste - using up such an interesting type combination on a mythical the majority of players will never see. I wish we'd gotten to know more about it, but I guess I'll probably have to wait for the inevitable XY remakes to learn more.
*before anyone replies, I am well aware that all mythical Pokemon primarily exist to sell movie tickets
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This may be incredibly petty on my part, but Volcanion's name bothers me a bit since its name derives primarily from Volcanoes despite its concept seeming to draw heavily/particularly from Geysers, which can correlate but are probably understood with some separation (especially in Pokemon where we have Volcano themed Pokemon like Camerupt or Heatran). I like everything else about the creature itself in terms of design, stats/playstyle, signature move, and theming, it's just that less-than-perfect name scheme that irks me.
I always thought it derived more from canyon, given the area it's meant to be native to. "Vol" does evoke volcano but also volatile, which suits its aggressive nature, so I've never associated it directly with volcanoes. But given that Game Freak apparently often tries to make legendary names work across multiple languages, I wonder if vol-canion was a simpler concept that didn't need as much translation; a name relating to geysers or steam might have been trickier to make work.
Possibly, because it's not clear exactly where in Johto they could be talking about - the area described doesn't match up with any area in Johto we've yet seen.
The exact quotes about Kalos and Sinnoh are:
Join us in the swamplands of Kalos where we found a mythical Volcanion!
Kalos actually has two areas that could qualify - that could be Route 14, but seems more likely to be around Route 19 as it's further south.
Join us in the untouched woodlands of the Sinnoh region where we found a mythical Volcanion!
That could be pretty much anywhere - Sinnoh's map has a lot of empty space.
And then Johto's quote is:
Join us in a desert island in the Johto region where we found a mythical Volcanion!
Uh... where's that, then? Might just be a random off-the-cuff description someone thought up, but it's a weirdly incongruous one for a region with no known desert islands. And Johto's a mountainous region so they could just have said "uncharted mountains" or something.