Weirdly Complicated Things in Pokémon Games

"I thought it would be confusing for people and kind of hard to understand how it worked." To this day, I am convinced that he never should've said that, because we'll be on that quote FOREVER.
Inspired by a conversation I had on stream back in April of 2022, this is a brief breakdown of some of the most weirdly over-complicated things in a series that apparently removes certain things for being "hard to understand".
Gen 2 stat generator: pycosites.com/pkmn/stat_gen2.php
Gen 2 Catch Rate Calculator: www.dragonflycave.com/calcula...
Music used:
0:00 - Intro ♪ Sinjoh Ruins - Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver
4:55 - OR/AS Regigigas ♪ Title Screen - GBA E-Reader
10:35 - Bug-Catching Contest ♪ Hot Pursuit - Gravity Rush 2
20:25 - Mirage Island ♪ Subconscious Domain (Winter) - Xenosaga Episode II
26:48 - Outro ♪ Moongroove by Mystery Jayne
The Stream Art that inspired this video: www.deviantart.com/iinneus/ar...

[@jfb-]

regigigas is like one of those "my uncle works at nintendo" stories

[@ZeranZeran]

Regigigas predicted Twitch TTS UL UL UL UL UL UL UL LLLLLLLL BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[@Gursers14]

I remember getting all 3 Regis on emerald. Catching the relicanth took forever. That was something I actually did correctly, unlike the time I ran away from the “ugly looking magikarp” (feebas) that I fished up in the safari. Years later I saw how rare that was and I still think back and question why I just ran from that lol

[@MMasterDE]

I figured out the normal regis by myself. Easy to see it was brail. 🤷‍♂ idk about Regigigas though, never played the games with that in it.

[@eraserheadpssy]

i didnt actually think regigigas was real until my friend walked me through how to catch it in diamond. i thought he was lying about it because it sounded so "mewthree" and i thought the design was too bad to be real. but i was wrong. for the record i was like 8

[@tylerboothman4496]

​@@Gursers14I think we've all ran from the 1 Feebas in the game

[@SweaterPuppys]

I was hoping Mirage island would be on here because I actually seen it as a kid once and my brother didn’t believe me for years before he seen it on bulbapedia.

[@lythd]

man ur so lucky lmao, were u aware of showing different pokemon or did u just get like ridiculously lucky

[@SweaterPuppys]

@@lythd no I just had it mad lucky that day and as a 7 year old that was real life magic lmao

[@lythd]

@@SweaterPuppys dam, im glad u recognised it was magic. there mustve been some poor soul who saw it and jus ignored it cause they didnt think it was important lmao.

[@fatconomics]

back in the day all my friends thought I was crazy when I said there was a hiker going up mt chimney in sapphire. Hell, even I thought I was for quite some years, until I discovered I was, in fact, sane. 1/64 chances of spawning an npc while you take the cart, however I only saw it that one time in 20 years. And the phenomenon is wildly underdocummented, or it least it was until some years ago

[@SweaterPuppys]

@@fatconomics I’ve seen the hiker before when I was younger too although I just chalked it up to misremembering like how people do with Mario 64. I wish more things like that were in newer pokemon games

[@ronarscorruption]

I laughed so hard with your delivery of "no regis, no evolutions, no stats... our first topic is the regis". Great line, flawless delivery

[@JohnnyVincent420]

yes

[@JrIcify]

The steps to finding regigigas sounds like those fake rumors people would make up, like if you beat the pokemon league 1000 times you get mew, or if you walk around in a specific sequence you'll activate walk through walls mode. Maybe this ridiculous wild goose chase is their tribute to that era of the fanbase.

[@benjamincooper358]

Okay but like… intentionally or not if you *bike* around in a specific sequence in Gen 4 you *do* unlock Walk Through Walls mode.

[@vyor8837]

​@@benjamincooper358most insane glitch ever. Also proves that GF is just awful at programming...

[@corvusdominus9835]

@@vyor8837 nostalgia taints everything and makes people complacent and willing to regress. “The old days were better”

[@JadeJuno]

​@@corvusdominus9835I don't see how that's relevant to anything-

[@alisona.4166]

@@corvusdominus9835 Well the gen 4 remakes (I prefer to call them rebreaks) SP and DD, you could just randomly activate walk on air mode, which makes it so you can't interact with anything on the actual gameplay layer, similar to the safari zone glitch in the original gameboy games. So the original gen 4 games making it so you just walk through walls isn't nearly as bad as the game trying to improve them 15 years later having an even worse glitch and many more, so it is very reasonable to call the original Diamond and Pearl better games.

[@billuminati3867]

As one of the few kids that bought an action replay at 11, it feels weird to have experienced all the events in diamond and pearl I never knew they didn’t release til I was an adult

[@bobjoe3492]

I was an action replay kid too, and I thought the events were so cool and disappointed to find out they impossible to get in the actual game unless you went to a very time specific irl event

[@grydon6422]

@bobjoe3492 The ”very specific irl event” is what made those events to musterious and amazing as a kid, and you could feel the exclusivity of them and being able to participate in them was crazy cool. Action replay just takes all that away. Even the gen 3 events which I never got to experience back in the day, hold one of the best memories I have with the franchise because they felt so rare and mysterious back as kids and we were literally drooling for the chance to experience them. We never did, but that bitter sweet ”wish” has become one of the most nostalgic memories I have with the series

[@milanesadearsenico]

@@grydon6422 as someone who played as an adult not having action replay would be awful because you're just locked out of events because gamefreak wanted to extend the lifespan of the game with an event after launch that wasn't even available globaly

[@whyplaypiano2844]

@@grydon6422 But f*ck poor kids, am I right?

[@ZeranZeran]

smart kid!

[@deltaquarayza]

The weirdest thing about the Regis in RSE is that the Poké Dolls look far more like them than their real overworld sprites

[@chavonjames8941]

I thought I was the only who thought of this but glad I'm not :o

[@lilpetz500]

I thought of their overworld sprites as preserved, ancient resting forms of them before they get reactivated by you. Maybe in a more game dev sense, they were placeholders that stayed in, considering they only have the rough vibes of their representative legends, and not even the right colours (regirock is gold, regice has green eyes, registered is the wrong shade of grey)

[@undefined6512]

Who could forget the Bureaucratic type regi, Registered

[@nebulaiscool]

11:28 casually catching a legendary beast in the Pal Park. Completely normal bug type here

[@lukefreund08]

21:07 He just encounters a completely normal fish in the water, not a god

[@nebulaiscool]

HOW DID I GET NEARLY 600 LIKES

[@fawful9992]

It's definitely a bug.

[@CTHD13]

Here’s the thing- I honestly like Mirage Island. Back in the day they were still trying to create schoolyard mysteries. They made the island rare enough that only a few kids in each geographical area would see it, and rumors would spread about it easily.

[@toumabyakuya]

Downside is that barely anybody can experience it and that is simply unfair.

[@CTHD13]

@@toumabyakuya And that’s probably why they put so little on it, unfortunately.

[@dirtymike69420]

​@@toumabyakuyaunfair? Lol....

[@toumabyakuya]

@@CTHD13 Or fortunately, otherwise a lot of people could have missed a lot.

[@toumabyakuya]

@@dirtymike69420 Yes, unfair. I am the kind of person that believes that accessibility is the most important aspect of any game.

[@flamingpaper7751]

The Regigigas thing doesn’t do it for me because why is Regice the only one you have to do stuff with? Would it have killed them to do something silly with Registeel and Regirock too? Maybe Regirock needs to be at least level 87 and know the move Rock Climb and Registeel needs to have been in the Daycare for at least 1,000 steps and also be asleep while in your party. Go all the way silly

[@BlueAizu_]

My theory is that the connection to Regice specifically is a reference to Sinnoh being a colder region, and Snowpoint Temple being in a place where it's as cold as it gets. Guess Regice just reminds Gigas of home!

[@lilpetz500]

I like to think Regigigas shows up because you treated it's creations nicely and they're happy. You got regice an icecream on a nice sunny day, and it liked the cute name you called it :) (And you gave it a day to "warm" up to you) You took registeel out rock climbing and helped it feel strong :) Regirock had a great time at daycare all day and is having a nice nap :) I like the idea because in a way, you saw these mineral golems like valued living beings just like how regigigas does.

[@castform7618]

Regigigas has a favorite child apparently.

[@RaptinDinon-mn4ps]

Regice is his favourite child. His most beloved child. The others well don't get as much love he didn't even complete the other two.

[@danashton5265]

When I was a kid, the first time I spoke to the old man he told me that Mirage island was visible that day. So I went and checked it out. On the island I could only find woobofett and thought the island was boring so I left not thinking anything of it. Years later I find out it's pretty much the rarest encounter in pokemon and I foundd first time!

[@DestroyedArkana]

Same thing happened to me too. I would talk to that guy every once and a while, and one day I actually found mirage island as well. It was really underwhelming when there was basically nothing on it.

[@darthh3atran]

The issue I take with the Masuda quote is that Spear Pillar is one of the most important plot locations in the game, and the place you activate the Azure Flute resembles a FLUTE

[@tylercoon1791]

Wait....Spear Pillar is supposed to look like a flute?

[@darthh3atran]

@@tylercoon1791 the spot you enter Spear Pillar at in the original games is shaped like one

[@ObrigadaJim]

The real reason was not that GF though the azure was too complicated, in fact all this cause of something that the Pokémon company will never admit. As you may know, the diamond and pearl Games had very severy Bugs in the code, and one of the most infamous one, letter players to tweek while riding the bike and get the character out of bounds, with that trick they then could travel to every location in the game, including newmoon island, flower paradise and the hall of fame, the three places that contained a static encounter with the mythicals. This meant that a lot of people were catching the 3 mythicals before the release of the events. That was a problem, cause when the event eventually were released officially to promote the movie, the players would go get the code in the store and then play all the story event in the game, to get tk the end and find no mythical to catch since they w o show up a second time. For this reason all the diamond and pearl events were canceled, and in platinum they changed the code a bit so that Shaymin and a Darkrai wouldn't appear in the overworld before the event start, preventing them to be battled outside of theor event, and arceus event wasn't even release cause of this.

[@Infernape102]

That quote by Masuda was the first time I realized that Gamefreak would sometimes just blatantly lie to their fans. More examples were when they didn't remake the Battle Frontier because "smartphones", or how they remade the Pokemon models in Sword and Shield "from scratch". Its not that hard Masuda. Instead of lying, either be honest:" people catching arceus through bike tweaking and mystery zone/ time constraints ", or just say "No comment". At least that way you don't lose people's respect as much.

[@AbsolXGuardian]

Honestly so many people giving interviews promoting media need to learn the power of the no comment. When there's a question you can't answer because it's spoilers or oversteps boundaries (like fans asking for confirmation about every little theory or headcanon), just say no comment. The publication conducting that interview could even cut it out. Unless the person is being asked about something actually important like working conditions I don't really care about transparency

[@MrCheeze]

None of these are lies, he is stating his reasoning plainly. You just don't like it.

[@davebob4973]

ive noticed they do that a lot in the industry

[@saxor96]

​@@MrCheezeHow do you know they're telling the truth? Some of this stuff doesn't make sense, specially with this video showing *at least* hypocrisy.

[@PowerfulSkeleton]

​@@MrCheezeThe 'too complicated' line of thought is either a lie, or incredibly stupid in the context of Pokémon's many opaque and baffling mechanics. No, I don't like the answer either way.

[@johnmarkther2218]

When i was tiny and messing with an action replay on pokemon pearl (?), i actually stumbled upon shaymin by using noclip to run into the oceans. We didnt have internet back then so we couldnt get event pokemon, and id never heard of shaymin. i remember showing it off to my older brother and him getting real excited As a child it always felt like there was so much to discover in those games (:

[@bobjoe3492]

Honestly gen 2-5 had so much to look for and interesting npcs to interact with

[@joshuah.4496]

I remember running into Shaymin using walk through walls too, but I could’ve sworn I found it as a kid using WTW in the area above Floaroma town, and I remember just the sprite being there and not being able to interact with it or catch it. But for some reason when I tried it again as an adult playing Platinum I couldn’t find it anywhere there and ended up having to use an action replay code to get the specific event that happens near Victory Road

[@Zyroes]

I ran into Shaymin while using the walk through walls code when I realized the water there stretched much farther than anywhere else. I also came upon Darkrai's island when running around in the southern part of the void. I ended up using codes to get the actual event activating items though. I wanted them to be as legit as possible.

[@KonroMan]

I genuinely think I’ve never talked to that girl in Pacifidlog and still have caught Regigigas, I think she’s merely an in game hint to help you with finding it.

[@KazShiro]

Yeah as far as I was aware when the game was new the only thing you had to do was catch regice, nickname it, give it an ice item and show back up during the daytime with the regis in your party. And that was because of serebi or a fan animation of it poking fun at it with May getting trolled by regice

[@dynamite4056]

The 24h requirement isn’t true either, at least when I played I was able to go to Regigigas the same day. I dunno how there’s so much confusion and misinfo around it even now

[@Iridesidae]

I don't recall interacting or waiting a day either. It was pretty straightforward in what I had to do when I finally caught the three Regis.

[@n7x]

I had a guidebook and it had all the steps except for talking to that girl and buying the ice cream. All I remember is renaming my regice

[@Double_T_G]

Game freak clearly never meant for everyone to see mirage island. I think they only wanted like 3 people to ever find it and then they could plant that berry and trade it around. I think febass was meant to be this way too, but to a lesser extent. Unfortunately, openly liking pokemon was social suicide so I never got to experience any of the social aspects.

[@666blaziken]

RIP to the potential friend group you could have had. Some schools just had really cutthroat social groups.

[@standard-carrier-wo-chan]

It was social suicide for me as well until Minecraft became popular, then suddenly everyone just became tolerant of other students playing games that aren't considered "cool" like GTA or Counter Strike.

[@tbthegr81]

With a 1/65k chance per Pokémon and 16 million games sold, that means a lot of chances overall to match that number

[@-jobrocodwawz-6226]

​@@standard-carrier-wo-chanbahaha back in my day it was social suicide to like any video game openly at school, I do remember how weird and hypocritical it felt when everyone suddenly switched to liking games lmao

[@Double_T_G]

@tbthegr81 Yeah, but you also have to remember that not everyone got that far in the game, talked to the old man, or tried more than once. 6/65k over 16 million copies per day sounds pretty good, but that's the best possible scenario.

[@chibiraptor]

The original bug catching contest is complicated, but i dont think you're SUPPOSED to figure it out. I think Its intended to feel a bit impossible to figure out, but to clearly reward harder to catch bugs with higher stats. You probably wont need to do the contest more than 5-10 times in order to get the items you need.

[@fntthesmth423]

Worth pointing out that, since the contest's only avalible one day of the week, that this is still kinda questionable design. Presumably the designers don't expect you to manually change the date of the system... so if we assume your 5-10 times is reasonable (which I think it is), that still means you're spending a whole _month,_ *_minimum_* to win a Sun Stone.

[@TheUltima_Werewolf]

I was trying to get a Sun Stone for a Bellosom and of course the bug catching contest is the only way to get one. I saved right before it so I could keep reseting the contest. I never realized that I kept losing because apparently damaging the Pokemon made you lose points -_-

[@tomc.5704]

​@@TheUltima_Werewolf Probably not a big deal -- at most, you lost out on 5 points. And that's if you had a high level, high base HP pokemon who you knocked down to red health. Compared to the 29 points from random IV/DVs... and the 19 points from the pokemon Cooltrainer Nick can pull.... you're probably better off catching and resetting for the win. Idk, maybe those 3-5 points mattered. But catching pokemon at full health takes longer and sometimes fails even after 20 balls, so.....eh The real question is -- when does the competition pull their pokemon? When the contest starts, or when the contest ends? Could you catch a high level pokemon, save the game, and end the contest until you win?

[@Kirbita22]

​@@fntthesmth423animal crossing behavior. this is pretty reasonable to me

[@sarag.945]

As a kid I literally played the game trying to catch schyter or pinsir until I won..

[@hi-i-am-atan]

the funny thing about finding this video today is that it's also the literal same day that i experienced something that makes me feel like i kinda get the masuda quote. i've been playing elden ring for the first time lately, and there's a point in ranni's questline where she tasks you with hunting down a "baleful shadow." there is no explanation for what a "baleful shadow" is, just that they're the assassins of her enemy. so i continued down her quest dungeon and killed shit and got to the point where a barrier stops you if you don't have a "ring of oath." ranni's dialogue has yet to change, so i figure none of what i killed was a shadow most baleful, and instead it's something out in the greater world. i check all the spots i can think that are related to her and nothing. i check a few spots that i don't remember exploring all that thoroughly and nothing. i'm at a point in the game where only a ( relatively ) small chunk of the map has yet to be filled, so i'm uncertain if there's some sorta progression gate in place, but i hope for the best and just put it off for later this morning, though, i decided to look up a _completely unrelated_ questline because i was pretty confident that i uncovered it _waaaay_ too late ( turns out: yes, i had already dealt with _literally its penultimate boss_ ) and wasn't sure if all the necessary actors were still alive. since it was then made clear that it was indeed still possible to complete, but only by doing something i'm not sure i would've thought of, i later decided to peek at how you get the ring of oath and ... the baleful shadow is an enemy that is literally named "baleful shadow," and you find it by going to the checkpoint with that ranni conversation and _walking down the hall into the next room_ i had my progress in the questline slowed to a standstill by the steps that go "talk to ranni" followed by _"continue forward"_ solely because _i did those in the wrong order_ it's one of those things that made me appreciate, as an amateur game dev, how easy it is to make something as simple as _walking down a hallway_ show-stoppingly confusing if you do not make said simplicity _abundantly_ clear, solely because players are unpredictable creatures who will take whatever scraps of mystery they can sniff out and imagine a grand feast where there's really just a bag of mcdonald's you left sitting for two hours. i actually don't have a hard time imagining peeps getting the azure flute and just never figuring out how to use it, even knowing it's for arceus and that arceus is associated with spear pillar, solely because ... i mean, surely there's gotta be more to it than retreading old ground that leads nowhere and getting a prompt to use this fancy event item, right?

[@hinkage]

Except people figured out--or found a guide for--the Regis' puzzles, which were much more complex. And they figured out the GS Ball before that. And the Mew glitch before that, which wasn't even INTENDED. There is no good reason. Masuda just made a dumb decision.

[@tomc.5704]

I feel that. You never know what a player will do. In my case, playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, I got to the point about 1/3 of the way through the game where I was clearing out the shadows from Hyrule field and lake Hylia. I stepped out of the cave at the bottom of the map, and teleported to the top to work my way back down collecting everything. Except when I got back down, I couldn't jump back down to the dry lakebed. If I had taken five steps outside the cave back at the start, I would have unlocked fast travel back down. Instead, I was softlocked. (Well, almost. Found out on my restarted playthrough there was a single plant at the top of the map that I could have interacted with to be transported back down via minigame). Still though...the Azure flute? This is pokemon. The source of countless convoluted playground rumors. It's also 2009, and the internet existed. Walking to Spear Pillar and receiving a prompt "The Azure Flute is making a sound? Would you like to use it?" is...not complicated, not possible to miss if you go to the location, and impossible to lock yourself out of. Elden Ring, much as I love it, had some really bad story communication. Pretty sure I missed....most of the NPC story progressions before I looked it up. Literally would have missed four massive areas to boot. Part of me likes what they were going for, but to quote someone else, their execution of NPC questlines "leaves much to be desired."

[@hi-i-am-atan]

@@hinkage y'know professor layton, i thought you were supposed to be p. mild-mannered, but i guess not

[@hi-i-am-atan]

@@tomc.5704 the main detail i think y'all are missing is that most event pokemon are just beamed directly into your game. just the straight-up simplest and most direct way to give the players the special unique pokemon, because that's kinda the point. you're already participating in the event for the pokemon, it's completely unnecessary to make you jump through a single extra hoop the gs ball and the sinnoh event items were attempts to spice this up a little, adding an extra step to the whole process by integrating the encounter with the mythical pokemon into the game itself ... but the process was _still_ supposed to be basically "go to the event, get the pokemon." you weren't going to the event to get the opportunity to solve a puzzle or complete a challenge that leads to the pokemon. you were still just going to the event to get the pokemon, and that's why the in-game events are basically just cutscenes thing is, even if the in-game events only added a whole two steps to the process ... that's still _tripling_ the complexity of the whole ordeal. not really much of an issue with the member's card or oak's letter, because they literally have instructions in their item descriptions, but the gs ball and secret key? the gs ball feels like it _mostly_ hits that sweet spot where giving the super special pokeball to the guy who makes special pokeballs is obvious enough without being _too_ obvious that you'd dismiss it off-hand, but the secret key is actually just straight-up obscure. it's actually the least complicated because you _just_ go to a place and, bam, now you have your reward ... but it's also a key that opens a high-tech door. that's it. that's all you have to work off of, so have fun scouring the entirety of sinnoh for some incidental door that's actually in a dungeon you've probably long beaten! frankly i get the feeling the azure flute situation can entirely be blamed on the secret key. i can easily see gamefreak getting a lot of letters asking how to use it and how to get the new rotom formes, leaving them feeling glad they wrote the member's card and oak's letter description as they did ... but the azure flute was just as ambiguous as the secret key, except the secret key had the benefit of being a _key_ that _opens a door._ no amount of common sense would let you figure out how to use the azure flute; the only logical deduction you can rely on is knowing it's for arceus ( which, like, actually, would the promotional material for the event have even spelt that out? i genuinely don't know ) and that the spear pillar is associated with it yeah, still not the hardest thing to puzzle out ... but it's not _supposed_ to be a puzzle in the first place. the intended end result is still effectively just beaming arceus into the participants' games. that's why i bring up that part of ranni's questline in particular - you're supposed to pick up the tiny little ranni that's directly on your path, stop at the grace site that's directly on your path, try grace site option that's not usually there until she speaks to you and gives you the quest, then kill everything that's directly on your path. the only trick to it is how insistent you have to be to get tiny little ranni to say something, as it otherwise completely boils down to "complete this linear quest dungeon." if your gut instinct about why she's silent yet you can still keep talking to her is because she's intentionally saying nothing out of indignity of being tiny and little and not "oh, maybe i need to find ranni's current body and transfer her to this one and _then_ i can continue," then at no point will you hit a stumbling block it's just not that complicated. it's not _meant_ to be complicated, yet there's still enough space for someone to fall between the cracks. i doubt fromsoft sees that as an issue with that particular questline, considering ... they're fromsoft, but gamefreak? i can easily imagine them seeing that as a failure of the event item experiment and deciding to go back to the gift pokemon system, as the flair the items added just didn't justify the extra steps tacked onto a single-step process ( also a secondary factor that occurred to me in the middle of writing this that i don't really feel like integrating more smoothly into the whole thing: the hall of origins arceus is level 80. you have to battle and catch it yourself. while this is also true of the event darkrai and shaymin, they are level 50 and 30 instead. level 80 in platinum is sorta where the game expects you to be after beating the elite four _20 times,_ and you probably do not have the master ball this late into the game's lifespan. yeah, uh, it might be an _understatement_ to say that azure flute only tripled the complexity of just beaming god directly into your pc )

[@shinysamurott613]

These are all good points but it’s kind of moot when you think, if they did think it was too complicated, it isn't, Shaymin and Darkrai were the exact same thing and they were released, they could have just put a line somewhere in the game, like its wonder card, item description or even the mailman that gives it to you, that tells you "Take this to Spear Pillar" and that's it, problem solved.

[@cryotheamayzo5445]

Yeah, I recall being fascinated by Mirage Island as a kid. I believe around 8 or 9 years old I actually lucked upon it and I had no prior knowledge or cheats besides "Wow this old man is probably onto something." I recall being extremely excited by the island but that died down when I realised there was nothing too notable there. I think kid me was expecting something like a legendary, maybe a pokenon never seen before or at least something like a Mew. So yeah, pretty cool experience. Almost makes up for that time my older brother tricked me into releasing a pokemon with PokeRus (Because "Your pokemon is sick and will die!") or when the first shiny I encountered in years was a Growlithe that used Roar.

[@mp-lily7908]

I feel your pain. My first shiny(and so far my ONLY shiny encounter in a mainline game that isn’t from the Ultra Wormhole) was a Relicanth that used Take Down. I have a decent number of shinies in Go and a beloved shiny Wyrdeer in Legends, at least. Oh, and a handful of dirt cheap Ultra Wormhole shinies :/

[@rinnnnnnnnnnrin]

When hg/ss came out, my brother was playing and didnt know about shinies at all sooooo he encountered a shiny geodude and knocked it out... i was flabbergasted and speechless...

[@saoirse_miller]

my first and only shiny was... ekans. it used wrap. it was level *five.*

[@nightfrostbreeze]

I vaguely remember finding an island with just Wynauts in Pokemon Emerald when I was a kid, but I didn't think too much of it at the time. Crazy to think that random island was way more rare than a shiny

[@luischeco3009]

I remember getting the mirage island in Emerald on a dead battery, not sure if that makes it any rarer.

[@houraisheperd9721]

I was highly committed to seeing Mirage Island as a child, and checked daily or near-daily for over a year. I never saw it.

[@rinnnnnnnnnnrin]

Thats stupid... it should be guarenteed at least ONE day out of 365 days of the year... but i guess the hell not =_=

[@rtr360josh7]

I found mirage island about a week before my battery on emerald dried out and didn’t understand what happened. In retrospect that’s probably the luckiest thing I’ve ever done in a game

[@abscinding]

With the azure flute I feel like there was actually gonna be a super complicated thing that happened in it, and it wasn't just get the azure flute and go to the top of Mt Coronet, but even with that being said, the regi trio wanted you to read braile and bring specific pokemon and moves, how much more complicated than that could it have been?

[@petergriscom3431]

It wasn't even a matter of it being complicated. Masuda's "straightforward reply" was just a feigned ignorance cover for the real reason they didn't distribute the event: the surf glitch. In the original Japanese release of D/P, there was a bug where you could surf out of bounds, and by traveling to specific coordinates out of bounds, you could reach the event legendaries without their prerequisite items, save and reload to get the map to load proper, then catch the event Pokemon. By catching them this way, the legendaries were counted as caught, and wouldn't appear if you then got the event items. This prospect sent Gamefreak into a panic, because if their event sponsors received complaints from idiots expecting a duplicate event legendary, they'd be in hot water. So they ditched the _actual_ event and instead gifted event-goers """legit""" legendaries. This is also why Sky Shaymin and the gen 5 Poke-transfer thing had a "fateful encounter" check, specifically to spite anyone who caught an event legendary that wasn't Gamesharked in by Gamefreak.

[@Robbie_Haruna]

I think the problem was that it might be hard to figure out where exactly to take it. These items were technically programmed in by default and the descriptions for them were already done. For Oak's Letter and the Membership Card they both gave you general location to go (Route 224 and Canalave City respectively, and it was easy to figure out where to go from there.) However the Azure Flute's description for whatever reason has no such instruction so it'd just be a crapshoot as to where to take it. Now this still somewhat questionable since not only is this still significantly less cryptic than any of the Regi puzzles, but they didn't even change the description for it in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, so why the change of heart?

[@petergriscom3431]

@@Robbie_Haruna I figured out that something was up with the Ilex Forest Shrine at 7 years old, without even knowing about the unreleased Celebii event. I think a kid could figure out where to bring the flute by process of elimination, as there's only a few locations that relate to Sinnoh creation myth. And besides, it was 2006, high speed internet was widespread at that point. D/P was the first time I was able to actually follow along with all the prerelease info, leaks, and rumors for a Pokemon game. Which is one of the reasons it was all the more disappointing how badly they botched events in Gen 4.

[@revalon1282]

I will say that one of my biggest flexes as a kid was learning mirage island existed, thinking huh you never know, checking once and it was there. Didn’t talk to the guy nothing just surfed over there.

[@zeemgeem]

I've encountered mirage island naturally twice. I didn't know at the time either time about it's rarity, which honestly is even higher considering most players will probably only cross that route twice to go to spear pillar.

[@xero7324]

Yeah, me too. I don't know if it was once or twice, but once definitely. Didn't think much of it, I was like yeah, I've seen it, it's a boring island with only one berry, so what? It only was many years later that I learned of how low the chances of that happening was and my jaw dropped.

[@HoopSkootz]

I had actually found mirage island as a kid completely by accident. All I really remember is being confused and disappointed, only to find out just how rare it was many years later

[@cypher686]

The steps for regisis are available - you need to read the book in the bookshelf Next to the girl in pacifilog town

[@astralwyzard]

Decided to check this video out AFTER watching your pokeblock video and holy moly your quality and dedication is off the charts! I absolutely love videos like this, your writing and narration is fun, your editing is smooth and not distracting, and the subject matter is interesting :) I can't wait to see other things from you!

[@cipocreep1050]

This was honestly so cool, and felt like a very natural evolution of your stream highlights

[@duwanglover3424]

It's funny that everyone always talks about how hard or rare mirage island is, but my first time I ever played Emerald, I ran into it going on that route for the first time so I thought it was just a natural part of the level. Same with the mirage tower in the desert

[@dr.c2195]

Mirage tower? Is that that place where legends come true?

[@ryukreya45]

There is a tower in the desert in emerald, like the one where you can get the fossils

[@laurenchinsphealsupremacis9978]

3:33 Yoooo, that's one of my comment sections! I see my old pfp. I feel famous. Btw, I shared your video. I haven't finished watching it myself but I will continue after typing this comment. Have a good one!

[@bestgames64]

Woah! You are now in a KZbin video! Never seen that im sure

[@SigmaGE]

Hearing Cool Trainer Nick again sent me into war flash backs of Gen 2. That Bug Catching Contest was such a pain, I remember soft resetting so many times just because of Cool Trainer Nick and the Scyther Bias.

[@lamMeTV]

Your channel will grow into an amazing essay channel! Everyone loves "I had a train of thought and here is where I ended up at" videos

[@zyaicob]

Yeah the sense of humour and storytelling are really top notch. More crisp audio and better sound level balance and this would be indistinguishable from the top echelon of video essayists

[@redkingdom15]

When I was a kid, after putting maybe 500 hours into the game? I triggered the Mirage Island event. I will never forget going to Pacifidlog one day, being told that the island was visible, and desperately surfed everywhere I could until I found the Island. I didn't learn until I was older HOW rare that event is. I only found out something could happen because of a rumor on the playground at school.That caused me to check Pacifidlog every day after school just in case. Surprised you didnt mention it.

[@kunoricsanrio7852]

I have Read and kept EVERY GAME MANUAL from every physical game i own, and even some i don't. There isnt a braille chart in the original manuals, but i am ashamed to say page 61 ,"TRAINER TIP", has one tip, and its that any strange writing you find might be" braille ".(emerald replaces that chapter with game cube link stuff)

[@happysmilesworldandgames8755]

What we learned: regigigas in oras, mirage island and the bug contest are less difficult than azure flute

[@bunnychama5261]

I honestly love the implementation of Mirage Island. I wish more games had things in them that felt like playground rumors come to life but were incredibly difficult to find. It just makes your cartridge feel more magical, I think.

[@thecoolestofthe834s2]

in modern games you would jsut ace it by picking up a chicken and throw it and if you patched it out everyone would whine

[@TheAzulmagia]

I got Regigigas in ORAS! I remember the instructions being more convoluted, though, like it specifically having to be a Tuesday morning. These steps were pretty ridiculous, though.

[@rinnnnnnnnnnrin]

All for it to have one of the shittiest abilities in the game... like klutz but a blatant middle finger to the pokemon

[@cloudthelemon756]

I was one of the few who made an actual effort to see Mirage island and actually saw it after I finished a lot in the game. Saved it right there on the island itself after putting my game away forever.

[@ianfinrir8724]

And the battery in your cartridge is dead by now so Mirage Island will always be there.

[@MarshallSambell]

I found mirage island once in my emerald completely organically, I was almost in disbelief that it even existed as I thought that there was something wrong with my game and that was why it never came up although I never really tried to get the event

[@jesusramirezromo2037]

I once found mirage island organically, I got lost trying to go to Sky Pillar, And randomly found it I tried and tried again to find it, and never found it again, Made me think thr world map was much larger than it actually was

[@AndreaGiuseppeCastriotta]

Mirage Island is something supposed to be ermetic and mysterious, something that happens randomly and potentially never, so children can talk about it and tell stories on the matter. It's intentionally complicated to have super low odds to happen by design

[@youtubeuniversity3638]

And if that's seen as Bad Design Intention by some?

[@ianfinrir8724]

Much the the quest to find the Regi Trio, Mirage Island adds a sense of wonder to the game. Mirage Island is almost pointless and the Regis aren't that great, but it does make it seem more like an adventure where the journey is the important part.

[@Lies_and_Slander]

I've only been to Mirage Island once and all my friends thought I was a liar because I couldn't make it appear again.

[@roonkolos]

That bug catching contest section is both a strange catharsis that brings peace to my childhood but also aggravates me knowing that damn thing was rigged from the start

[@Winasaurus]

Glad to be the 1000th subscriber. I did encounter mirage island as a kid, just by bumping into it in the ocean, didn't speak to the guy about it. Being a very young kid, I had no idea it was rare, that the berry was good, or why it wasn't there later. I remember some of my friends saying it was really cool that I found it, then not caring when it only had crappy pokemon on it. Obviously none of us knew how good the berries were back then, it was spamming high power attacks and maybe holding a smoke ball because I thought you always had a chance to be unable to run from a battle. So my level 100 sceptile held one all the way through, even into the hall of fame. The one that really shocked me was bumping into latios. I distinctly remember it being on the tiny patch of water to the right of Mauville, on my way to the berry guy's house since I farmed the status cure berries to use after battles. Then suddenly the silhouette was a big X shape instead of the typical tentacool and I threw my master ball at it because I had never seen it. I could only tell it was rare because it was grouped near Groudon in the dex. (I also thought metagross was an actual legendary for a while for the same reason)

[@Macer84]

Fun Fact: There is a full explanation of all the steps in the Regigigas quest in ORAS in the official guidebook, which I owned when I was younger, I'll have to see if I still have it lying around because it had some fascinating information and some fantastic pieces of art that I have seen anywhere else.

[@RatedX29]

The Pokemon Go devs used the too complicated excuse for a wider spawn range recently.. then introduced 3new items and 2 more features since that are weird

[@VacantMinded]

Yes I encountered mirage island 'organically' the first time I was made aware it was a thing from a friend I went to the old man and he said he could see it. It was hilarious timing and the sheer disbelief from my friend that assumed I was lying because what are the odds... Good times, don't think I ever saw it again lol.

[@DanielHoffmanddhoffman]

My first shiny was a Scyther I got in the bug catching contest in the Crystal play through. I won the contest. I also used it so much on the Pkmn Stadium 2 mini-game.

[@BubbliciousStrawberry]

I’m glad this popped up in my recommended. If I didn’t check, I would’ve thought this was a 100k-500k sub channel from the quality. Definitely underrated, keep up the great content!

[@ochuspin]

@@GamerZoneSpeakingsubscriber count doesn’t mean much anyways

[@ProjectEchoshadow]

So does Regigiggas have an early bedtime?

[@techknight3753]

I have brain stormed a better Regigigas quest in the time it took to explain the actual quest. 1. Have Regirock, Regice, and Registeel in your party as the only pokemon. 2. Have them hold a Hard Rock, Never-Melt Ice, and Metal Coat respectivly. 3. Return to each of the regi's caves in any order and step on the tiles the original golems were on. Each time you do, the ground shakes to signify you are doing it correctly. 4. After stepping on each tile, either Regigigas challenges you immediately, or a new location opens. Either way forcing you to fight/catch Regigigas with only the other 3 golems in your party. (Note this would be a perfectly reasonable task with any preperation considering between the 3 you have access to thunder wave, recover, defence boosting, and 2 normal resists.)

[@2yoyoyo1Unplugged]

I do like that they included the Azure Flute in BDSP

[@765craven4]

I've always assumed that maybe the reason the Azure Flute was never distributed was for a similar reason to why they've never done a story mode in Smash like Subspace Emissary again. People posting the event on the Internet. I know the Azure Flute event was datamined long before Platinum even came out. And the official reason was that it was "too complicated" but the Azure Flute event was no more or less complicated than the Darkrai and Shaymin events that came before it

[@softsounds8453]

They shouldn't punish fans though just because of some dataminers. I loved Subspace Emissary and played it all the time when I had Brawl. It's tragic that they never did something like it again.

[@765craven4]

@@softsounds8453 I agree. I'm just throwing some conjecture out there cause it fits their track record

[@psachickennugget8617]

I think it’s cute that Regigigas goes on dates with Regice with ice cream

[@marianorivera3272]

I remember feeling like I really solved some ancient mystery when I was a kid and obtained the Regi using the braille reference from the strategy guide. I had a very hard time as English isn't my first language and I barely understood it at the time.

[@OtherMomo]

"Oh! It's holding an item!" Is that something the judges say in the bug catching contest? I feel like I just got nostalgic for just a line of text but I'm not even a hundred percent sure it's from this

[@kowardlywow]

I can say I got to Mirage island as a kid one time on Emerald. I didn't know anything about it at the time bc I was a kid and didn't have a PC or the guidebook. I remember I had to check it every day for like a month or 2 just out of curiosity because I thought mew was gonna be there. Boy was I disappointed and confused when I finally got to it😂

[@Neville133]

I checked literally every day for a year and a half to finally get mirage island. I got the berries and the Wynaut. Never saw it again after that.

[@kohakustella]

It's so funny that in the same couple of years, we got both the "azure flute is too complicated", "people play smartphone games so we're dropping the frontier", and "hahahaha I don't know"

[@2011multisam]

I remember doing the regi braille thing with a friend as a kid, we didn't understand what it meant by "period" and thought it was talking about a length of time tgat we needed to wait before moving on to the next one... A little embarrassing looking back😅

[@SilharaTheChosen]

Shoutout to Gamefreak for gaslighting me as a kid with mirage island. None of my friends believed me, thought I was going crazy.

[@pikachufan3588]

I remember finding mirage Island, being so excited and then being so let down by the lackluster result lol. Though I could be just fabricating a memory, it's a bit fuzzy, but I do know that I checked alot.

[@Rockden]

On the other hand for me, my battery ran dry the day I found Mirage Island, so I'm stuck with it forever now. I even caught lots of Wynauts to have "proof" I went there before realizing it wasn't going away and I wasted all my money on Poké Balls lol

[@J777ack]

I was in a Friendlies as a kid with our family/friend neighbor who was taking us out for ice cream. I remember stumbling across Mirage Island! I remember catching a couple Wynaut and grabbing the berries. If only I knew just how rare that occurance was…

[@xyno2112]

I actually have seen mirage island I remember it pretty well, I was just surfing around and saw an island I hadn't seen and was like huh? went on it, and wynauts everywhere, and I was super confused because I had only seen the one in the egg, got the berry got out and never questioned it until years later when I found out what it was

[@silverwolfkai]

I actually did happen to get mirage Island when I was younger playing the original sapphire. It was purely by chance and I didn't even know that it was a special thing because I just happened to come across it while I was surfing but I was so confused when I could never find it again afterwards. It wasn't until years later that I learned about the way it's supposed to spawn and how complicated it is.

[@vitriolicAmaranth]

"Take a specific amount of damage in this one specific part of the map to evolve this Pokémon" was (almost) in RBGY. Due to two glitches working in concert, if you used fly or teleport the frame the tile a max-sight-range NPC was standing on came on screen, they would spot you as you unloaded the zone, buffering a battle event; Changing zones (eg walking from Cerulean to Nugget Bridge or from Lavender to the adjacent routes, the most common places to execute this glitch) would initiate that event, which since the trainer was unloaded would be a wild Pokémon whose identity depended on the HP value of the first Pokémon in your party, allowing you to easily snipe a wild Mew without events (or any other Pokémon you wanted). This was actually circulated back when the games were new but there was so much disinformation about how to get Mew, not to mention Pokémon that weren't even in the game like Mewthree and Pikablu and Togepi, that it got drowned out by all the "use strength on the truck with a level 100 golem" and "walk around the pond in front of Bill's house exactly 100,001 times then fly to victory road and beat the Elite 4 with just a Pikachu" and "fish in a specific statue in Silph Co then use strength on it to reveal a staircase" and "release every Pokémon you have except a level 100 Exeggcute" instructions. The funny thing is that it's now not that far off from how you actually get some Pokémon, and neither are some of the rumours, which makes me wonder if Game Freak took inspiration from all those rumours back in the day (I wonder how prevalent they were on the Japanese internet?) for the games directed by Mesuda.

[@oVexlz]

Most of the math in the bug catching competition makes a lot of sense from a programming perspective, its all a mix of bitshifts and ‘and’ operations. The EV thing is equivalent from a programming perspective to “(ev >> 1) & 0x1” which is really efficient for the processor to calculate. But I have no idea how they would have decided upon that specific formula.

[@LaserGlow]

5:33 This cutscene lives in my head rent free and I always love to reference it in contexts like these, so thank you for including it here.

[@Pqag]

I love these hidden things in the games. They give them a real sense of mystery and are how the stories you’d hear as a kid managed to be so believable. I love things in games that make the game world feel so much larger and full hidden things than it really is

[@kylespevak6781]

"Regice needs a nickname" That hurts as someone who never nicknames Pokemon

[@lilburd8715]

I actually stumbled across mirage island when i was a kid i also remember being very confused where a whole island went

[@katamichi8003]

I'm pretty proud to admit that I organically came across mirage Island long before I ever knew what it was. I remember thinking why am I only finding one type of Pokemon but I was kind of preoccupied going to the next town so I figured I would come back eventually see what the deal was. Never saw that Island again😅

[@lukeunlocked]

This is a really good video I'm so used to poketubers just regurgitating facts everyone knows while pretending that people don't know them and then trying to pad them out enough to make a decently sized video out of it Meanwhile you're here going fully in depth on really menial stuff but whole-heartedly with complete enthusiasm that really sells the whole video Good job man

[@noammkw3770]

when you show your gameplay it feels like im watching you play without a backlight

[@K.ssuggtha]

Hearing Gravity Rush music in the wild is always a rare and surprising treat

[@laslosermcuseless1574]

Ah I remember getting a regice name Jukebox of the gts and thought it was odd. I guess I found out why. Before I just assumed regigigas would be caught by just flying around with the other regis because that's how you tend to get like kyurem.

[@BreonFX]

this vid was mad entertaining, you’re keeping me alive at work 😂

[@victooria]

You don't even need to bring up the Braille from Gen3 in order to discredit Masuda's excuse for not distributing the Azure Flute, I think just looking at Oak's Letter is enough. That one alone is literally more complicated than the Azure Flute. The Azure Flute leads you to a place you necessarily have to go to while completing the main game, meanwhile the Oak's Letter event triggers in a completely optional Post-Game Route.

[@PokeshadowYT]

Yes, I did naturally find Mirage Island as a kid! I had no idea what it was, but I'd heard the rumour that Mew was hidden on an island somewhere and was convinced I'd found it. Spent ages running around in the grass trying to find it, and of course never did. Eventually just took the berry and left in a huff. Next day I decided to try again but... no island. Had I remembered wrong? Maybe I took a different path in the ocean? But nope, never found it again, and never figured out WHAT it was until years later. My primary school friends legit thought I was making it up or had fallen for a rumour

[@triplebog]

I do think that there is something lost with the simpler system. I think the core of pokemon, especially non-combat challenges like contests, is the experience of raising and bonding with your pokemon. While I think the RSE pokeblock system could certainly be improved, if you remove all the difficulty and risk and trial, you lose some of that bonding and challenge.

[@alfsleftnut9224]

You really should do a generation by generation series on this, I love this series

[@galloviking4766]

Gamefreak: "The Azure Flute is too complicated for children" Braille Regis puzzle: "Am I a joke to you"

[@Flygoniaks]

That statement from Masuda about the Azure Flute reminds me of another relatively obscure bit of cut content - a little location in the Generation 3 games called "Altering Cave." It's part of the Sevii Islands, but it has nothing of value. No items whatsoever, and the ONLY Pokémon that spawns there is Zubat. So, you might wonder, what's the point of this thing? Well, it turns out there was GOING to be a point - there's code in the games that would allow certain Johto Pokémon to spawn there through Mystery Gifts that were never distributed. There's a thin possibility that these never being released was due to the same "logic" as the Azure Flute - both events have the structure of "download this, then head to a specific location."

[@jacobbrown1407]

When I was a kid I ran into Mirage Island a few times, I would just happen across it and eventually began to ignore it when it showed since I had grabbed the berry and didn't care about the Wynaut that could spawn.

[@ikaniitoshi]

This doesn't have much to do with the video but, i just want to thank you for linking the websites you used in the description, i discovered *The Cave of Dragonflies* , as well their affiliated sites and, seeing all this fan work, creativity, and a little community in those websites, makes me want to create my own site in the future. Without that link or your video i would never know these fan sites existed, and i would never know that i could express my creativity, and information this way. Thank you ✨

[@kilojoel776]

A few years ago I decided to try and find mirage island on my emerald save. I wanted it for the battle frontier and figured I'd try and do it legit but work out an efficient way. So I did some reading. Basically worked out that since the internal battery had been dry since before I started my current game, the mirage island value would be all zeroes. I also found out that spinda's spot locations are determined by its personality value. So I got an emerald emulator and a pokemon generator and generated some spindas with different personality values to work out which spot locations correspond to the right values to match my zeroed mirage island number. Then I started grinding for spindas. I spent a long time looking for the right spot locations. I even found 2 shinies. Unfortunately I never found the right spot locations and gave up. I caved and went instead for RNG manipulation, which was successful and only took a few tries. It was definitely ambitious, and a shame I couldn't see it to the completion of my original goal, but it was a fun project.

[@mikemath9508]

i was strangely into the bug contest gimmick as a kid. having only one attempt 3 times a week made it frustrating though

[@hade_407]

Awesome video Genuinly popped off at that sigh on 2:08 with how good you delivered it, it really spoke to me

[@RemindMeToCheck]

2:55 - No way, Masuda sounds like that one crazy gay dude

[@waluigi763]

I actually found mirage island as a kid! I had absolutely no idea how rare it actually was, and I was really disappointed that all I got out of it was a pokemon I already had and a berry I didn't care about.

[@roninevelyn]

This is exceptionally well constructed considering this was a random video from a smaller channel I randomly stumbled on. I hope you continue to grow! great job!

[@animegod8495]

Nah what the hell for such a high quality video your views and sub found don’t add up KZbin should step up their game

[@ZobeeStreams]

something wacky!

[@QuirkyMemes]

I found the Mirage Island as a kid aswell. And when I was gonna show my friends it had disappeared - then I gaslit myself into thinking it was all a dream.

[@api4194]

This is such a well done video! I like your style of story telling, it was really easy to listen to at work. Your music choices were great too

[@enartogo]

Really good video! I have to admit I was pretty confused on what the title had to do with the video for a while. If I can give any tips: 1. Make the chapters actually say something about the video, and if you want to give credit for the music, just do so right under the chapters without time markers. This way, you'll be able to scroll through the YT timeline and actually see at what point the topics of the video changes instead of simply seeing different songs. 2. Make the background music a tad lower volume! It was a bit too dominating at times. Maybe keep atleast a 6-10 decibel difference between your voice and the BG music at all times. 3. I loved the topics of this video, but the title did not give me any idea about them. "weirdly complicated things in pokemon" had me thinking about certain features (maybe battle features), or certain route paths or mechanics. Not particularly some legends and their distributions (which is a very interesting topic in itself, but the title did not suggest it!). This makes it hard for people to actually know what these videos are about, and probably decreases both CTR and retention. Still, I liked watching this video, it was interesting for sure. Nicely edited as well. Good stuff brother, keep on!

[@MazzVG]

youtube like linneus please

[@danielthelevel100]

Calling it now: In the Black and White remakes, Enamorus will be added to the quest to catch the genies. She’ll only be available if you have the original three, and there’s going to be some absurdly complicated way to encounter her.

[@Meteorite_Shower]

I would be so screwed on that Regigigas quest without a guide. I never used legendary Pokémon in my playthroughs, so I just never nicknamed them. It felt wrong to sully them like that. Y'know, before sticking them into my PC Box like a trophy. Pokémon: Arceus was the _first_ game I played since the days of Pokémon Blue where I named my legendaries, because the game actively encourages you to use them.