You've talked about good and bad moments, but what about your weirdest?

[DuoM2]

So a few years ago I was just Wonder Trading stuff after breeding on my Pokemon Sun cartridge, I'm watching the whole trading animation and I see I got a Bulbasaur. Cool. I look away and I hear Wormadam's cry, so a bit confused I look back down and see the Bulbasaur again. I know almost immediately what had happened after it had registered in my brain that this Bulbasaur had Wormadam's cry.

Someone with Pokemon USUM used cheats to bypass the filter that blocks certain Pokemon from being put on Wonder Trade just for the sake of sending out a mythical, but what they ended up doing was sending a USUM-exclusive Pokemon back to a game where it doesn't exist. So this Pokemon I got had an invalid ID number in SM's code. Pretty sure all of its base stats are 0, this thing was just EV trained in Attack and Speed with 4 Sp. Def EVs. The first move in the image below was probably Plasma Fists.

I released it immediately after getting it because I didn't want there to be any long-term effects or for the game to detect me for cheating or something like that. I regret not looking into it first, still don't know whether or not it would've done any harm and it would be a cool little keepsake.

Image

Don't ask me why a Magearna was in this box for Wonder Trading, I don't have a great answer. I have one a friend gave me as a gift and I think it may have been from that. I know they wanted like a living dex of competitive-bred mons so maybe I just wanted to be nice and give them a head start with a 4IV breedject or something.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

I got Pokerus SUPER early in my first Brilliant Diamond playthrough. As in, the download to my Switch finished around 8 or 9 A.M. on Sunday, November 21st and I started the game right after that, and I have a photo on my phone of my Switch with the "Little is known about the Pokerus..." line from the nurse that has a timestamp at around 1 PM that same day. I think it's the most unlikely thing that has ever happened to me in a video game.

Oh my GOD you've just reminded me of how my sister, on her first time playing any Pokemon game, original Diamond, caught Pokerus...

...from the Starly that attacks you at Lake Verity.

Boy howdy, was I mad that day.

 

[bdt2002]

A quick disclaimer before I write this post: no, you're not seeing things. I went and changed this thread title after four and a half years for the sole purpose of not wanting the word "weirdest" to be written in caps lock. Such a monumental and revolutionary change, I know.

Looking back, 2019 me was a lot different than the me of today. At the time I still had a different style of posting on the forums reminiscent of the rest of my teenage years. I don't quite know how to explain this off the top of my head, but something about my posts from that first year or two on the Forums feels a bit... off. I mention this because I found one of my own posts and wanted to look back at what's happened and changed since then:

(My notifications weren't working right so I missed half of these until now, sorry)

Well I might as well share mine now. This is an example of that weird sequence of events I can't really explain. These, in my eyes, are much more interesting that weird individual moments. Let me take you the world of spinoff games. Trust me, you'll understand once I tell you what's going on here. This is kinda freaky.

So my first spinoff I had ever played growing up was the third game in the Pokémon Ranger series, being Guardian Signs. Not many people talk about it because they mostly prefer the first two games. Anyway, as crazy as this sounds, I've been able to trace multiple things in that game back to...myself? In other words, I'm convinced that somehow, I'm related to this game somehow.

"But bdt2002, how the heck does that make any sense? It's a freaking DS game." Questions like those are excellent questions. But just read this list of strange coincidences. At this point, there's so many it's honestly kinda creepy.

1. The male protagonist has the same name as me (I'm a guy)
2. The female protagonist just happens to have the same name as the season I was born within
3. In the anime special for the game he uses a Feraligatr as his go-to partner with the Ranger sign (Feraligatr is my all time favorite Pokémon)
4. The region the game takes place in (Oblivia) uses a resort style theme, a theme many friends of mine know I'm always a fan of
5. For some reason, a Pokémon I always hated growing up (Kingdra) is placed in very specific locations throughout the game
6. I probably missed something-

The main thing that's changed since then has been the onset of the Switch era of the core series lineup, excluding Let's Go's 2018 release of course. This on its own doesn't mean anything, but like many other fans, I found myself appreciating the older games more at this time as a result of the Nintendo Switch's shortcomings in spite of its massive financial success. For the sake of this post, it wasn't until the core series' perceived decline on the Switch that I really started getting nostalgic for a special list games that started it all for me from 2010 to 2014, the Pokémon Ranger trilogy chief among them. In my original post I said Guardian Signs was my first spin-off game, and while that's technically still true, it was also my first Pokémon game outright, and with the game's 10th anniversary landing in 2020, I decided I would dedicate that year to honoring how it brought me into the franchise and possibly the greater fanbase as a whole.

Fast forward one year to 2021, and things immediately take a suspicious turn. I honestly didn't hate 2020 as much as most people I know, but 2021 was significantly worse on almost all fronts. I'd like to think I've been very fortunate to have a great life, and to my family's credit, my worst year was still better than some people's best. Something else worth noting too was that, thanks to Guardian Signs' international release happening seven months after its initial release in Japan (I live in North America), my 10th anniversary celebrations carried over into the new year as a result of this. During 2021 I was also playing through Alpha Sapphire at the time as a replacement for what was originally supposed to be a Pokémon Emerald nuzlocke attempt. The re-adjusted playthrough helped me get through an otherwise miserable year, but I wouldn't be making this post if something didn't come up during it. ORAS fans may remember the BuzzNav, more specifically that dude on the news who talks about things you've done in the game up to that point.

At one point, a news headlines mentioned "Summer, age 12" (if anyone's curious, I chose to play as the female protagonist in this run, naming her as such because of the Guardian Signs celebrations), something that caught my attention with the understanding knowing that ORAS Hoenn doesn't seem to take place at the same time (in year, that is) as the original games. If you somehow haven't figured this out yet between my username and my post details, some basic math can tell you that, assuming ORAS Hoenn takes place in 2014 instead of 1996- remember, Gen 3 and Gen 1 are contemporaneous- the ORAS version of Brendan and May were born in 2002 just like me. Okay, cool, but that doesn't mean anything... until you remember the Soaring feature being a direct reference... and you remember Brendan having a Latios and May having a Latias... and you remember that ORAS were still the newest games at the time of the Wii U Ranger ports- Sun & Moon wouldn't release for another five months, but oh? What's that? Sun & Moon just happens to also be in an island-based region with Legendaries guarding each island, has an emphasis on riding on Pokémon instead of HMs, and it has a regional PokéDex size of exactly 301? What's next, you're going to put Pichu on the first Route of the first island? Hey look, they did that too.

I'll end of my post here since this is getting extremely long (I don't blame you if you didn't want to read this whole thing), but I couldn't believe I missed all of these little details. The fact that both ORAS and SM were directed by the same person and the fact that there's already another spin-off reference in Alola, that being Gladion's battle theme, only increases the assumption probability that Shigeru Ohmori knew exactly what he was doing, and by the grace of whatever you might believe in, the stars aligned perfectly in what was otherwise the hardest year of my life so far to help me learn to appreciate these 3DS games after they were on their way out. All of this because someone in the heavens above with a crazy sense of humor decided to make me the target of a bunch of coincidental references back-to-back-to-back.

 

[Noah3475]

I ( ) recently defeated Byron ( ) in Pokémon Diamond Version. I had Kricketune use Sing in the hopes Bastiodon would hesitate to knock out Kricketune with Ancient Power. It worked better than I intended. Sing hit, so Bastiodon consumed its Chesto Berry, but it then used Rest twice, even though it had taken no damage yet. After Bastiodon was knocked out, I switched in Skorupi, which used Pin Missile to nullify Steelix's Sturdy Ability. Infernape then easily defeated it with Close Combat.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

I had Kricketune use Sing in the hopes Bastiodon would hesitate to knock out Kricketune with Ancient Power. It worked better than I intended. Sing hit, so Bastiodon consumed its Chesto Berry, but it then used Rest twice, even though it had taken no damage yet.

Diamond and Pearl are rather infamous for being the only games in the series where all trainers, even important ones like Gym Leaders and the Elite Four, have functionally random AI, leading to lots of situations like the one you describe

I switched in Skorupi, which used Pin Missile to nullify Steelix's Sturdy Ability. Infernape then easily defeated it with Close Combat.

Sturdy doesn't have its Focus Sash effect in Gen 4. It only protects against OHKO moves like Sheer Cold and Horn Drill

 

[DaRotomMachine]

So when I played Inclement Emerald( I beat it of course), I was causually on the Island were Brawly(the gym leader) was and was walking around the extra flower area for a female Combee. I encountered a Shiny Cutiefly.

The thing is it also had Pokerus. But I'm not done.

2 years later, I was playing on my firends Pokemon Sun cartridge on a 3ds. I was walking through Melemele Meadow and guess what I find?

A SHINY CUTIEFLY!!!!
(don't have screen shot on 3ds)

And then I found a shiny fearow later on :)

 

[Railroader17]

So when I played Inclement Emerald( I beat it of course), I was causually on the Island were Brawly(the gym leader) was and was walking around the extra flower area for a female Combee. I encountered a Shiny Cutiefly.
View attachment 603882
The thing is it also had Pokerus. But I'm not done.

2 years later, I was playing on my firends Pokemon Sun cartridge on a 3ds. I was walking through Melemele Meadow and guess what I find?

A SHINY CUTIEFLY!!!!
(don't have screen shot on 3ds)

And then I found a shiny fearow later on :)

Is it just me or does that Cutiefly look like it's POGing? Is it the graphic smoothing?

 

[Yung Dramps]

Last night I had a dream that they suddenly revealed a deluge of remakes and ports all at once including:
-NSO Gen 1
-FRLG Remake. Yes, another Switch Kanto remake based on that game instead of Yellow. The big selling point was the return of Shadow Mewtwo from Pokken Tournament, who was teased on the game's website as a silhouette with glowing red eyes
-Faithful BW. It was being made by a company besides ILCA but I dont remember what it was called
-Pokemon Z. No, I don't mean Z-A news, I mean that they were also going to make an XY remake under that title, presumably with additions and changes to replicate what Z would've been if it released on the 3DS in 2015
-I remember seeing a post on Smogon where some guy said something to the effect of "Hell yeah starter Togepi". Whether this was part of one of the above games or signified a Johto remake being added to the pile I did not have the time to figure out

 

[bdt2002]

Last night I had a dream that they suddenly revealed a deluge of remakes and ports all at once including:
-NSO Gen 1
-FRLG Remake. Yes, another Switch Kanto remake based on that game instead of Yellow. The big selling point was the return of Shadow Mewtwo from Pokken Tournament, who was teased on the game's website as a silhouette with glowing red eyes
-Faithful BW. It was being made by a company besides ILCA but I dont remember what it was called
-Pokemon Z. No, I don't mean Z-A news, I mean that they were also going to make an XY remake under that title, presumably with additions and changes to replicate what Z would've been if it released on the 3DS in 2015
-I remember seeing a post on Smogon where some guy said something to the effect of "Hell yeah starter Togepi". Whether this was part of one of the above games or signified a Johto remake being added to the pile I did not have the time to figure out

Prior to Legends Z-A being announced, every "new" Pokémon game ("New" referring to games that are not third versions or DLC expansions) had a pattern that was being followed as for what region it was being created for. It's a bit complicated to explain, but the basic idea is that every existing region's order number (Kanto would be 1, Johto would be 2, et cetera) was revisited in some capacity before any specific region would itself be revisited. These continue to line up with the split version release model Pokémon's been using since the very beginning. I mention this because I remember telling people we would get a Kanto remake in Gen 7 before we ever got Sinnoh remakes, and this... kind of happened with Let's Go even if I would preferred FRLG "re-remakes" personally. In any case, the number pattern for a FRLG remake would have looked something like this:

1 (FRLG), 4 (DP), 2 (HGSS), 5 (BW), 5 again (B2W2), 6 (XY), 3 (ORAS), 7 (SM), 1 (remake)

In this pattern, we see that every number that existed prior to 7 had been covered when Hoenn's Gen 6 remakes came out, meaning that a FRLG remake in Gen 7 fits well into what would essentially be FRLG's role as "Gen 3.5". For continuity's sake, HGSS being Gen 4's second paired versions after Diamond & Pearl, thus making HGSS "Gen 4.5" in this case, is why i was expecting for a return to Johto in Gen 9. Instead, we got a Legends game for a region that, theoretically speaking, was not "supposed" to see a new game until, like, Gen 12 or something. It's possible that Legends games aren't going to be a part of this number pattern and instead be their own thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this stuff ended up happening anyways. Pokémon loves breaking their own patterns, after all.