Playthrough Elusive Pokemon

[QuentinQuonce]

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Mantine (gen 2)

I've already talked a bit about Mantine being a relatively obscure mon in general, but I'd really like to highlight how Gen 2's trend of making their own generation's mons unnecessarily rare also affected Mantine. In Johto, Mantine is only found in Gold, Crystal, and Heart Gold, needing to be traded for the Silver versions. It is only found in one singular route, that being Route 41. It's luckily a fair bit better than the 1% mons featured in this thread, being at a gracious 10% through Surfing!! The issue with this, is that by being on Route 41, you already have a mon that can use Surf, likely a Water type. And on top of that, you're probably so annoyed with the constant Tentacool encounters that you've blasted your Repel for the entire route as you make it to Cianwood. You'd have to be seriously lucky to find this thing on your first venture through Route 41, and it's available nowhere else in the game. As far as I know, I don't think any NPCs use Mantine either, at least in the original GSC. (It may have been changed in HGSS). So yeah, redundant Water type that's version-exclusive, in one route only, and is a bit rare on top of that. Johto's work at it's finest.

Mantine was done so dirty for so long. It's only catchable in one out of the five Gen III games - LeafGreen - and even then with a miserable appearance rate. Even though it gained a pre-evo in Gen IV and was lucky enough to make it into the DP Sinnoh Dex (though I believe every Pokemon with a new pre-evolution did; it's just most of the ones with forward-facing evolutions that missed out) it's pretty invisible in those games; not used by anyone in the Water-type gym and not given any prominence.

Then in B2W2 we're told that Marlon learned to jump out of the water by swimming with Mantine as a child, so it's one we're meant to associate with him. Fittingly, it's on his team in the anime, and in the games...

...it's only on his team in Challenge Mode.

USUM finally gave it a spotlight, but damn did it have to wait a long time to get it.

 

[DreamPrince]

Mantine was done so dirty for so long. It's only catchable in one out of the five Gen III games - LeafGreen - and even then with a miserable appearance rate. Even though it gained a pre-evo in Gen IV and was lucky enough to make it into the DP Sinnoh Dex (though I believe every Pokemon with a new pre-evolution did; it's just most of the ones with forward-facing evolutions that missed out) it's pretty invisible in those games; not used by anyone in the Water-type gym and not given any prominence.

Then in B2W2 we're told that Marlon learned to jump out of the water by swimming with Mantine as a child, so it's one we're meant to associate with him. Fittingly, it's on his team in the anime, and in the games...

...it's only on his team in Challenge Mode.

USUM finally gave it a spotlight, but damn did it have to wait a long time to get it.

It’s funny you bring up Mantine in Gen 3, because I can name an even rarer option in Gen 3 with the Slowpoke line. Slowpoke is only found in LeafGreen, and has the distinction of being the only line found in one of the seven Gen 3 games including Colosseum and XD. Mantine could be at least caught in Colosseum. But Slowpoke line can only be found in LeafGreen. This also means that Slowking can’t be used in any Gen 3 main story campaign due to FRLG’s terrible trade restrictions preventing you from obtaining any Pokémon that wasn’t part of the original 151.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

It’s funny you bring up Mantine in Gen 3, because I can name an even rarer option in Gen 3 with the Slowpoke line. Slowpoke is only found in LeafGreen, and has the distinction of being the only line found in one of the seven Gen 3 games including Colosseum and XD. Mantine could be at least caught in Colosseum. But Slowpoke line can only be found in LeafGreen. This also means that Slowking can’t be used in any Gen 3 main story campaign due to FRLG’s terrible trade restrictions preventing you from obtaining any Pokémon that wasn’t part of the original 151.

That's... actually a really good point. I'm now finding myself inclined to use Slowpoke next time I run through any of the Gen III games. Wonder if there are any other Pokemon this applies to?

It's weird that Slowpoke wasn't in XD, because that game made a point of including most of the exclusives from the five Gen III GBA games (though interestingly there's a bias against Ruby - you can't get Lotad or Seviper, but you can get Seedot and Zangoose) and the fact that you wouldn't have been able to trade it to get Slowking didn't stop them including Scyther.

 

[Imperial Magala]

That could be a quite plausible explanation, indeed.

Still ... several games take you to undersea caves or inside active volcanoes before you get to any icy areas. Active mines, factories, criminal lairs, or faulty powerplants are also places the games like to send you long before you see any snow. It shouldn't be too much to ask for one snowy early-game area once, or just an Ice-type living in regular grass like other elemental creatures do.

Shoutout to Pokemon Unbound for having two early game ice areas, one of which is your hometown.

 

[DreamPrince]

Here’s another one: The Porygon Line!

This line has had the history of being a novelty Pokémon throughout the years, and that has sadly affected its performance throughout playthroughs.

RB: Only through the Game Corner for 9999 coins. Unless you were grinding a lot of coins, you probably weren’t getting this. Not to mention it’s stats suck, yeah novelty Pokémon.

GS: Game Corner, post game only. Got Porygon2 as an evolution, but that’s also post game only.

FRLG: Game Corner, but you still can’t obtain Porygon2 before the main campaign ends thanks to terrible trade restrictions.

DP/BDSP: Trophy Garden only, which is post game.

Platinum: Veilstone City, has a gift. Possibly the first the time you can use the line without it being locked behind the casino or post game only.

HGSS: Same as GS.

Gen 5: White Forest, White only Post game.

ORAS: Mirage Spots only after you have defeated Kyogre/Groudon.

Gen 7: From an NPC once you have beaten the game.

Gen 8: From Mustard’s son after doing the final Mustard battle, which is post game if I recall correctly. Not obtainable through raids but can be found in the Max Lair.

LGPE: From an NPC in Saffron after the Team Rocket fiasco. Can also be found on Route 7 as a rare spawn, but evolutions are absent.

So for all the games, Porygon is available in Platinum is arguably the best since you can obtain it and it’s evolutions by the third gym. In the Kanto games, it’s held back by its lack of evolutions and the fact that you have to grind for what is a terrible Pokémon stat wise without the evolutions. ORAS is only other game where it can be obtained before the post game but only before the 8th gym, which is too late for most players.

 

[bwburke94]

Veilstone is the fourth gym in Platinum, not the third. Still vastly better than its availability elsewhere.

 

[R_N]

It is so utterly bizarre to me that Porygon is post game in gen 7. Like there are a number of Pokemon in the Alola Dex like that, but they're generally constrained to the post game Poni Island areas, so that's broadly fine.
Porygon is just a gift, and there's nothing about the gift that really needs it to be post game. It could be post-Aether, which is still late, and nothing would change about it.

USUM one-ups this by not just needing to beat the game, but beat the Rainbow Rocket plot!

 

[CPU]

I was very upset that you couldn't get Porygon mid-game in USUM.

So I traded in an Egg to use it, lol

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Porygon's funny because it's the one Pokemon they've managed to actually keep fairly rare across the generations.

I wrote a while back about Pokemon which evolve by trade being made available in the wild in later games, but Porygon for some reason is the one trade-evo mon whose evolutions have stubbornly remained out of the wild. No Porygon2 or Porygon-Z for you without trading. It's almost always a gift Pokemon. When it's wild, it's always postgame (semi-postgame in ORAS, but the point stands).

Lots of Pokemon which started off as one-time or fabulously rare, like Snorlax and Lucario, eventually got made much more common: Riolu is catchable wild in B2W2, Munchlax is catchable wild in USUM, etc. But Porygon has remained stubbornly elusive. The only instance I can think of where it's plentiful and available early on is via the Dream Radar: you could potentially get a Porygon before the first badge, but that takes some doing as you need to catch Thundurus to unlock it.

 

[R_N]

Porygon's funny because it's the one Pokemon they've managed to actually keep fairly rare across the generations.

I wrote a while back about Pokemon which evolve by trade being made available in the wild in later games, but Porygon for some reason is the one trade-evo mon whose evolutions have stubbornly remained out of the wild. No Porygon2 or Porygon-Z for you without trading. It's almost always a gift Pokemon. When it's wild, it's always postgame (semi-postgame in ORAS, but the point stands).

Lots of Pokemon which started off as one-time or fabulously rare, like Snorlax and Lucario, eventually got made much more common: Riolu is catchable wild in B2W2, Munchlax is catchable wild in USUM, etc. But Porygon has remained stubbornly elusive. The only instance I can think of where it's plentiful and available early on is via the Dream Radar: you could potentially get a Porygon before the first badge, but that takes some doing as you need to catch Thundurus to unlock it.

And even then that has to involve a separate app, on a different console.
You don't even get to use Porygon 1 or 2 in Colosseum (Porygon2 is arbitrarily not capturable) or XD (I'm not sure it's there at all)

Honestly I don't even mind it being kept "rare", it's a very quirky pokemon after all with lore that makes it difficult to be normally available, but just stop putting it in post game!