Most of us have played more than one Pokémon game. After a game is finished, chances are that the next one will be loaded into your console. But how would you define ‘finishing’ a Pokémon game? Is it simply beating the Pokémon League? Or is it beating the Pokémon League and finishing the post-game events? To go even further, it might even be completing the entire Pokédex. An even larger extreme is to have all the Pokémon in the Pokédex at Lv 100, regardless of whether they’ve evolved or not.
But how do we get the access to all these Pokémon? Even after weeks of hard work, you’d find that certain Pokémon can only be evolved by trading and certain Pokémon need to be transferred from the other version of the game. Some are even distributed solely in Nintendo events. The general consensus is that if you want to beat the game, you’re going to need help. And that’s what we’re following in this article. We’ll also examine how various features of the Pokémon games took advantage of the ability to link between each other, across all the generations.
The owner wanted to attach an Everstone before trading Haunter over, but his friend didn’t like the idea for some reason.
The History of Pokémon Trading – Gen I
When we talk about the concept of trading in the games, think of the originals, Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green (Red and Blue in English). Satoshi Tajiri had introduced this idea of linking two Game Boys with a cable through these games. He promoted trading in these games by having version exclusives, meaning certain Pokémon could only be caught in Red, and certain only in Green. Furthermore, a handful of Pokémon like Graveler and Machoke could only evolve if they were traded from one Game Boy to another.
So I’ll give you this awesome Magikarp, and you give me your useless Mewtwo…
A few in-game trades also existed, but none of them were particularly useful for getting rare Pokémon, except for Farfetch’d. These games had a distinction between rare and common Pokémon, because there effectively wasn’t any Pokémon that was featured in events, and all of them were catchable in-game except for Mew, who could only be caught by a glitch. Later on, Mew was distributed through events. One can tell how much the concept of trading has evolved through the generations by playing these games.
Pokémon Stadium was introduced for the Nintendo 64 in this generation, which was a spinoff mainly for promoting the original games. You could connect one of the original games with Pokémon Stadium using a Transfer Pak, and get your Pokémon data loaded into Pokémon Stadium. You could then use your Pokémon to battle in various leagues in-game or with your friends. You could also play mini-games with your friends and trade through the home console if both gamers have Transfer Paks. Battling in this game became popular because it featured Pokémon in 3D. It proved so popular in fact that a sequel was made, Pokémon Stadium 2, in the next generation.
The Search for Link Cables Continues – Gen II
By Gen II, Nintendo Events had popped up that featured exclusive rare Pokémon if one attended a real-life event. At first, these events took place only in Japan, and then spread to the US. This meant that most of the Pokémon fans outside these countries had virtually no access to the rare event Pokémon at that time. Celebi and Mew are the earliest legendary Pokémon available purely these events. Furthermore, using a ‘Time Capsule’ concept we could trade back from Gen I to Gen II, so that many Kanto Pokémon, especially the rare ones, could be transferred into the next game. This type of trading could only allow old Pokémon which do not know any move that was introduced in Gen II to be traded back. A hundred new Pokémon were introduced, and there were more version exclusives. Also, certain Pokémon now had to be traded while holding a certain item to evolve.
Going back in time may not be good for your health, but your Pokédex will certainly prosper.
The concept of breeding was also introduced, which reduced the pressure on gamers who wanted to stick with their rare Pokémon because they could breed a new one and trade that. Unfortunately, none of the legendaries could be breeded, and that increased their value by quite a bit. The final point is that this generation introduced shiny Pokémon, who were extremely rare compared to their normal counterparts. In battle, they functioned exactly the same (save for having a certain IV range), although their body colour differed from normal Pokémon. However, you wouldn’t normally find more than two or three in your journey, so their trade value was much higher, sometimes even more than a legendary Pokémon. Since shiny Pokémon share the same IV range, breeding a shiny Pokémon increased the chances of a shiny Pokémon inside the egg by a quite a bit, thus making shiny Pokémon an even bigger rage.
Through a feature called Mystery Gift, you could in fact send your pal a gift for decorating their room. It was possible by connecting with another Game Boy through the infrared port. You would receive a random item from your pal, and this could range from a cheap Berry to a Max Revive or even a decoration item that you haven’t gotten yet. You also could fight your friend’s in-game team in Viridian Trainer House through Mystery Gift.
Pokémon Stadium 2 was much like its prequel, featuring new cups and mini-games to finish and also battle with friends. This game allowed linking of any game in and before Gen II for the Game Boy, making it much more convenient for combining your Gen I and Gen II teams together. You could also transfer items into the game without much hassle. Pokémon Stadium quickly gained a lot of popularity because of the 3D utility and the easy convenience of linking between the games, so much that even Pokémon fans did not feel complete without having this game.
What? What about the older Generations? – Gen III
Imagine that you’ve finished the National Pokédex in Pokémon Crystal. You’ve caught them all, and it took more than three years to do it. Now you’re just waiting for the next generation, itching to finish that new Pokédex quicker than ever. But no, you can’t trade even a harmless Magikarp to Ruby or Sapphire. Nope, you’re stuck in this Generation, and you can never go further. You even caught twelve shiny Pokémon! They’re all back in your Crystal PC, and there they will rest now forever. Gen III is like a reboot to linking, which was not expected by the fans. Adding on Pokémon Fire Red, Leaf Green and Emerald was a partial solution: now all 386 Pokémon are catchable, but there wasn’t any Johto region in Gen III. True, we can get all 100 Johto Pokémon by odd means, but that just increased the demand for a Johto remake. Fans were torn after the introduction of this generation, but this was a stable ground for many more generations to come. In fact, this generation was where the concept of linking started evolving. The Wireless Adapter was introduced in Fire Red and Leaf Green, which allowed wireless trading between the games, which made Pokémon Trading easier.
No more tripping over link cables!
But having Johto Pokémon on your Game Boy Advance was a really nifty thing, especially those which are hard to get. Since this Generation is much like a reboot, there wasn’t any need of a feature to transfer older generation Pokémon. Gen III also had spinoffs like Pokémon Mystery Dungeon that used the linking feature for various purposes in-game, but there wasn’t any Pokémon Stadium 3 introduced. Instead, Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD – Gale of Darkness were the spinoffs in the Game Cube that could link between the Gen III games. A few side-features such as Pokéblock grinding and Berry Crushing that required linking with others started the slow evolution of linking in the games. It proved that cables and adapters could be used for more than just battling or finishing the Dex. In RSE, you could even battle your pal in his Secret Base! His Base will be filled with all the decorations he has. This is done through mixing records with him. You could also get little statistics about your friend, like how many times he’s saved his game.
It was not easy to set up links between the different games: for Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green, you had to beat the Elite Four and find the Ruby and Sapphire gems (whose search constituted most of the post-game) before links could be established to Ruby, Sapphire or Emerald. For the home console games, Colosseum and XD, you had to beat the game before you could link to any of the handhelds, however, this needn’t be done for Ruby, Sapphire or Emerald. For connecting between the handhelds and the home console, you needed a GameCube-Game Boy Advance cable connected between the two consoles.
Throughout the first three generations, there haven’t been much radical changes to linking consoles, but it proved to have increasing roles in the games. Competitive battling was built on over this linking utility, as battlers from around the world now focussed on a different style of battling: no items and one battle. This promised to build new strategies to play with in the games. The later generations even reduced the burden on competitive battlers by introducing items and features that help in training, but having competitively-raised Pokémon in the early generations meant a lot, especially to those who wanted a good team. Trading also meant that you could raise said Pokémon faster, so people traded Pokémon for easy level ups as well.
What did this mean for those who played their games in isolation? What did this mean for those who played their games in a country without events? What did this mean for those who played without friends? Did this mean that their hopes of having to complete the Pokédex were shattered? Did this mean that soon their inability to link would restrict them from playing the game itself some day? It meant that completing the Pokédex, catching them all and becoming the best was far from the goal of these games. Game Freak has subdued the motto of gotta catch ’em all ever since the first few games were released. It was an unnecessary challenge, as proved by the later games, where you only need to have ‘seen’ all the Pokémon in the Pokédex in order to get the National Dex. The next few generations also introduced a lot of changes, features and utilities for linking. It mushroomed into a huge part of the game.
All these changes, some major and some barely noticeable, are to be followed in the next part of this article, so keep your eyes open!
Written by Hoenn
Edited by bobandbill and Dramatic Melody
