Savefiles and pokehex dumps from completing the Pokedex in all generations
Me and my cousing have been playing Pokémon since we were little kids.
When I entered the university, I had less time for videogames. Also, I felt that the Pokémon videogames started to get worse in each generation, specially around 7th gen, so I stopped playing.
Years later, with the release of the classical Pokémon games in the Nintendo eShop for the 3DS I recovered my "passion" and together we decided to complete the Pokédex in each Pokémon generation and pass it into the next generation until our Pokémon end up in Pokébank.
Differently to other guides to transfer Pokémons that can be found on the Internet, our goal is to be able to compatibilize the playing of the games in original hardware with original firmware, original hardware custom firmware and emulators.
Our Pokédex will be a living Pokédex with minimum one Pokédex of each species. Some species may have more than one individual since there are certain variation withing the same species that we would like to have.
At the same time, we want to keep our Pokémons both in original hardware with cartridges and in a digital format, so we can reuse them when we want, publish them in open format, etc. We also want to keep saved files with the completed Pokédex. We will do the same with our favourite / used Pokémons, so in addition to the transfer of the Pokémon from the living Pokédex, we will be collecting and transfering Pokémons from our gameplay and from other people gameplays.
We also skip the rules imposed on Pokémon transfer between generation if possible, in order to start a new run with all of our favorite Pokémon / Pokédex already loaded in the save, taking advanatge of the superior transfer mechanisms between gens when using Pokehex.
Another condition is that for completing the Pokédex we will be taking the Pokémon that we possibly have in previous saves, instead of replaying the game. We will use the Pokémon of other save files as much as possible in order to have a lot of different OT (original trainers) in our Pokédex, reflecting a lot of our runs from when we were children.
We divide the process in stages, where sach stage corresponds more or less to either a generation or the transference from a previous generation to the next.
The first game that we played was Pokémon Gold (me) and Pokémon Blue (my cousin) from eShop in 3DS. These were the first and second generation Pokémon games that had no connection with the main story line until 7th gen, when they could be transfered to Pokébank in the 3DS when Nintendo released these games as eShop apps, that could be used in Pokébank.
We did not do a living Pokédex not completed the Pokédex at 100%, since there were some Pokémons that were impossible to catch if we did not have other titles, such as Pokémon Red or Pokémon Crystal.
This step can not be done with original hardware & original firmware because the eShop is closed and the ROM can not be downloaded to be played. Same happens with the app of Pokébank to transfer the Pokémons to an upper gen.
To transfer the Pokémon from this stage to Pokémon Home you need original hardware with custom firmware, so that you can download eShop and Pokébank from other sources. You also need a Pokémon Home account to save the Pokémons.
You can play the game in the original hardware from the downloaded ROM or you can play the game in an emulator using the original GB & GBC roms. If you use the eShop ROM in original hardware you only need to follow the steps to transfer the Pokémon in the previous paragraph. If you instead use an emulator, you will need to extract the save file from your emulator, extract the Pokémon, extract the save file from the eShop ROM (it needs to exist but it can be recently created) and inject the Pokémon into the eShop savefile. After that, you can continue the process as if you did not use the emulator since your Pokémon will be on the save of the eShop ROMs, meaning that now they can be exported into Pokémon Home through Pokémon Bank.
Since this generation was separated from 1st and 2nd gen (you could to transfer from 1st and 2nd to 3rd gen) we needed to start from scratch our Pokédex in this gen.
In pokémon Fire Red we gathered the living Pokédex and in Emerald we gathered our combat / favourite Pokémon.
We could play either in emulators or original hardware with custom firmware, since this gives us as much control as the emulator for the save file (extraction and injection).
To ease up the process we played in VirtualBoy emulator in Android phones, allowing to emulate a cable link via bluetooth and do Pokémon exchanges.
The challenges of this stage were:
- Entei, Raikou and Suicine: Which meant completing until the end 3 different runs of Fire Red or Leaf Green, and capturing them, knowing that they were errands (even though we saved our master ball for this). Forcefully you need to do three runs because the election of the initial Pokémon determines which of the three will appear.
- Celebi: Which needed an injection of the event in a USA save file or obtaining it from another save.
- Jirachi: Which needed the transference from Pokémon Chanel or obtaining it from another save.
- Mew: Event injection in Emerald
- Ho-Oh / Lugia: Even injection in any 3rd gen game.
- Deoxys: Injection in Emerald.
- Feebas & Milotic: Getting feebas is very difficult, specially the right Feebas and evolving it into Milotic it is too as you need to do PokéCubes.
- Cyndaquil, Chikorita & Totodile: We needed to complete the regional Pokédex in Emerald in three different runs, but in this case we can do the trick of saving before choosing one of the three Pokémons, and then choosing one, transfering it, and restoring the save file to a previous version and do the same with the other 2, without needing to rerun Emerald again.
- Zangoose: Rubi exclusive, which is the only reason to play Rubi.
- Lunatone: Saphire exclusive, which is the only reason to play saphire.
In the hardware of the original Nintendo DS, it was possible to insert a GBA Pokémon game with a NDS pokémon game and there was a mechanism to transfer from the first to the least. The problems is that if you do not have your saves in phisical cartridges and an original Nintendo DS you can't do it. But what we can do is emulate a NDS with DeSmuME and virtually insert a GBA Pokémon game with our save files and run the NDS game to transfer the Pokémon. All 4th gen games have this capabilility, but it is limited to tranfer only 6 Pokémon per day, which is not acceptable. Only HeartGold and SoulSilver do not have this limitation, but the problem is that these Pokémon games were difficult to work in an original 3DS hardware with custom firmware.
Due to this limitation, we finally end up using Pokehex directly to extract all Pokémon from the saves of 3rd gen, and then load them into our 4th gen save, in Pokémon Platinum. This was very fast and easier, much more that it would have been using the built-in transfer features, as you also need to complete a minigame for each 6 Pokémon that you want to transfer.
This happened WHILE completing the Pokédex of the 4th gen in Pokémon platinum.
At some point, when we were satisfied with our run, we "forked" the save so that there is another version of that save that instead of our Pokédex has all our favourite Pokémons transfered from 3rd gen.
I played Pokémon platinum until we got a lot of 4th gen pokémon and we were ready to transfer the pokémon from 3rd gen. At that point, we forked the save file and in one version of the saves we kept going on the completion of the Pokédex and in the other we transfered our favourite /combat Pokémon.
- Spiritomb: We needed to talk to each other on the subterranean many times in order to get spiritomb to appear.
We directly used Pokehex to transfer from the 4th to the 5th, so we started a run in Pokémon Black 2 with all Pokédex from 1st to 4th gen completed + some Pokémon from the 5th gen that we could get from previous saves.
We played Pokémon Black 2 as the main game to complete the Pokédex. As in the previous gen, we forked the save so that one version contains all the Pokédex and another version contains all of our favourite Pokémon
We started a run of Pokémon X and then we trasnfered all of our Pokémon using Pokehex into the start of the run. We also made a run of Alpha Saphire in where we transfered all of our favourite Pokémon.
We played Pokémon X, pokémon Y and Alpha Saphire and Rubi and we extracted the exclusives from those games. We reunited all the favourite / combat Pokémon from the games in Alpha Saphire and we put the Pokédex in Pokémon X.
The combat Pokémon are not yet transfered, but the save will be forked for that. The Pokédex was transfered to UltraMoon at the start.
We started a run in Ultramoon and transfered everything from the Pokedex of the previous gen. We also injected all events at the start. We played Ultrasun for the exclusives.
We completed the Pokédex and now we are going to make a transfer, as now the games sadly do not have all Pokémon inside, so you can't actually complete the Pokédex in one Nintendo Switch game. Instead, waht you can do is have Pokémon Home, which you need to subscribe to fully use or you can go with the free tier, which is very limited.
Also, there is the problem that we want to play the games in real hardware but custom firmware, which means that you can't go online in a Switch game such as Pokémon Home. Of course, you can use Pokémon Home in Stock mode, but in there we do not have our save file and we can't access any program to do it because we are in Stock mode. So, what we decided to do was to enter into sysNAND mode, which actually loads your Stock data, but it also loads atmosphere. In this mode, you can access the homebrew Checkpoint to inject your save into the Pokémon game that you desire. After that, you can enter Stock mode and from Pokémon Home transfer the Pokémon from the save file from the CFW, because you actually injected the save in the Stock. In any case, this allows us to play the game in CFW while reatining the capability of transfering the Pokémon to Pokémon Home without risk of baning. The only limitation is that you need to have created a save file for the game that you want to transfer the Pokémon to, which means that you need to at least have the phisical cartridge just to create a save game in your Stock system that you can overwrite with the save file from the CFW later.
We are currently stopped at the transition between the 7th gen and the 8th gen. We are gathering the Pokémons in 7th gen, which already has a completed Pokédex, to transfer them into gen 8th.
We want also to transfer Pokémons that are on saved games of previous generation that we found on the saves of other people after completing that generation.
In this generation Game Freak decided that you could only "catch'em all" if you pay a monthly suscription to Pokémon Home. This is due to the switch games (8th gen) having only a specific regional Pokédex, with some Pokémon missing in each game and even Pokémons not appearing in any game (you need to transfer them either from previous gens or from Pokémon Go). This means that to keep a living dex in the original games you need to use Pokémon Home.
We would also like to extract some other Pokémon from previous saves and from some cartridges that I acquired from my neighbour.