Hits close to home! I actually just did this endeavor with Emerald a few months ago for the first time since I was a kid. Also did my darndest to complete the National Dex.
In battle frontier, I have 6/7 silver symbols with the only one missing being the Factory. The battle factory is evil in the same way the Challenge Cup in Stadium 1/2 is evil. The completely random nature of it all that always benefits your opponents is infuriating and requires a level of patience and soft resets I don’t have. Gold symbols just honestly seem verrry daunting to me for all but a few of the frontier areas. For me it’s feasible for the Pike, the Pyramid, and either the Dome or Arena. The others are just ridiculous to me with the amount of team building effort and attempts required.
As for the national Dex, I have 363/386. Any more will require me to find a copy of FireRed and play it through, play through all of XD Gale of Darkness AND probably use a GameShark or Action Replay. Even so I’m unsure if it’s possible to get Celebi in English games.
Good luck to you!! Such an amazing game it is definitely my favorite Pokemon game ever. So much content.
Beautiful art. It may have been said already earlier in this thread I can’t remember but it seems like the normal holos from the EX era get overlooked pretty easily by many folks out there. EX’s and Gold Stars and other secret rares took the focus away from what made the TCG dope in the first place - that thrill of opening a shiny sparkly holographic card. There’s also so much better artwork at play there, the EX’s by and large are hideous 3D art imo (risk of post getting booted to unpopular opinions thread).
The normal holos are also dirt cheap for raw copies!! Only a handful of cards out of 270 across all 16 sets that will run you >$50 for a mint raw copy. Most are between $4 and $25.
At whatever point in the next few years I turn my collecting efforts towards this era, I’m definitely prioritizing the normal holos.
I am using the exact same team right now, it won me Silver in the Battle Tower and Pike so far, and I am confident in using it in all my Gold runs (except for the Battle Pike and obviously the Battle Factory). For the Battle Pike, I am currently training a team consisting of Miltank, Heracross and Swampert/Starmie, which I think will give me better chances to get Gold there.
Love to read your reply. Yeah, the Gold symbols are a really long task, but I am willing to take on the challenge. I am also pretty confident in my team so I hope one day I will succeed in this mission.
I won’t bother with completing the National Dex, as I don’t have a Game Cube right now. I am happy with the completed Hoenn Dex and currently standing at 230/386, but I think I will up this number to maybe 300 or something.
Good luck to your further progress as well in one of the best games ever made.
I never bothered with the National Dex in Gen 3 once I knew it was pretty much impossible without cheats. Mew not possible (did we even get the required event in the west?) and Celebi is a no-go unless you lived in Japan and had the Colisseum bonus disc.
Even Deoxys…I don’t remember there being events here in the UK to obtain it legitimately (but I could obviously be wrong). I DID get one using an Action Replay on Fire Red but I think it must be glitched in some way because it disobeys instructions as if you didn’t have enough badges, even though I had everything. I have it on my Diamond cartridge now (I transferred everything over through Pal Park back in the day to get the 'dex in that game up to 475) so I will have to check and see if it still ignores me on that game.
Okay, I have given Deoxys a go in Diamond and it DOES obey in this game. It was in Speed Forme as I’d traded it from Fire Red to Emerald at some point before Pal Parking it over to Gen IV. After well over 200 hours invested in Diamond, I’ve only just found out that the meteors in Veilstone City can change the forms of Deoxys at will and I’ve switched it to Attack.
Over here we never got mew in the states but you can use this device called a gb operator to add the event data to your cartridge without cheats. It’s basically the only way to get mew nowadays without them besides finding a Japanese emerald that experienced the faraway island event.
I have done the dex in Emerald personally 383/386 missing Mew, Celebi, and Deoxys but do plan to get them with the operator and celebi bonus disc.
The gen 3 dex is so fun to complete to me as you really need every piece of gen 3 to do it. RSE, FRLG, Col and XD. It really makes you feel like you’re on a journey to catch ‘em all and I love it. Though I do understand that not everyone has the capacity to so it needing all of the hardware.
I’m currently trying to complete the national pokedexes in Sapphire and Leafgreen! Already completed Colosseum and XD so I can trade over the Johto starters and Ho-Oh/Lugia. I just need to get the Colosseum bonus disc to get Jirachi. My Emerald cart that I bought on eBay happened to have Mew, Celebi and Deoxys on it so I got lucky in that regard
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong but you need a Gamecube game called “Pokemon Channel” to get Jirachi. It’s an easy game and you get to transfer Jirachi to a GBA cart upon completion. The Colosseum bonus disc is a Japanese exclusive that unlocked Celebi.
Unfortunately I sold my Channel before ever playing it when I wanted to get out of videogame collecting so I missed getting Jirachi. I’d fallen out of Pokemon as well at that time so didn’t bother at least blasting through the game and sorting that. One of those little regrets.
I don’t think you can get Jirachi from Pokémon Channel (I have it and don’t remember anything about it). However, just like the Celebi bonus disc in Japan there was a similar disc that released in North America that had Jirachi. It was also used to promote the Jirachi Wishmaker movie that released around the same time.
Ah, I didn’t know about that disc. We didn’t get that in the UK. The console + game bundle did come with Pokemon Box though which was invaluable for dragging/dropping large numbers of 'mon between GBA carts.
Channel definitely gives Jirachi though I’m guessing it must be a PAL exclusive to make up for not getting access to the bonus disc.
