Part 13: Bonus: Pearls Before Pokémon

Alright, one more for the road. If you thought I was cynical up until now for whatever reason, I get a lot worse from here, so you've been warned

I didn't plan on covering Generation 4 all that much because...for starters, it's my least favorite. Diamond and Pearl are actually really bad Pokémon games, in my opinion, due to lousy frame rates, poor type variety (your only Fire-types are Chimchar and Ponyta, and this is the game that added Magmortar!) and lots of glitches. It was so bad that Game Freak rushed to release the updated version, Platinum, and fix the problems before the vastly superior HeartGold and SoulSilver came out - unlike the previous Generation, where Emerald followed FireRed and LeafGreen. I get the feeling Generation 4 will be mostly appreciated for how future games benefit from its wonderful new modifications and additions to the battles.

Double-edged as they are.

Anyhow, before I get into the big tricks, here's a quick primer on some of the notable bugs in Generation 4:

- If you knock out an enemy with Pursuit as they are trying to switch out AND a weather effect that isn't Rain is active, a glitch state occurs where EVERY kind of weather, including Trick Room, Uproar and Gravity, is active at once. Solarbeams don't need a charge turn but do 50% damage, you get damaged by Sand and Hail, Castform and Cherrim go nuts, it's a crazy effect...with no practical use, unfortunately.

- Azurill has a 1:3 male-to-female gender ratio. However, it evolves into Marill, whose gender ratio is 1:1. This means that your Azurill has a 1/4 chance of changing gender when it evolves. This also happens in Generation 3, and apparently they didn't notice AT ALL this was happening until Generation 6, where they fixed it. Blasted gender conformists! No wonder Wally got a Mega Gallade!

- Here's one that was useful: If you have a Pokémon that evolves by trade, deposit it in the Global Trade Station, perform any other trade on the GTS, then withdraw what you deposited; the game is tricked into thinking it's supposed to evolve by trade and it does! If it evolves by trade with a hold item you should give it the item before doing the trick. Due to the old Wi-Fi servers being shut down in 2014, this can't be done any longer without a private server, if those exist.

- The Pomeg glitch from Emerald still works, but it's harder and you can't do quite as much as you could before with it. Still, sending out a pair of glitch Pokémon in a double battle is always funny. I recently learned that if you do that, the enemies can't target the glitch Pokémon, leaving only one attack target: THEMSELVES.

- If you U-Turn into a Pokémon holding a Choice item (which forces them to pick one move and use it exclusively until they leave the field) the Pokémon you switch into is suddenly forced to U-Turn again even if it doesn't know the move.

- Fire Fang technically ignores Wonder Guard - then again, Shedinja was already weak to it to begin with.

- Facade's animation shifts the user's sprite up one pixel, so if it's used a lot, eventually the Pokémon flies offscreen.

And now, the big ones.

Want to know one of the other reasons I dislike Generation 4? Event Legendaries. These are nothing new: They've been around since Mew in Generation 1. However, Generation 4 onwards has LEGIONS of them, distributed alongside merchandise and movie tickets long before on-disc DLC. It doesn't even have to be an exclusive Pokémon, either, they could distribute a Pokémon with a move, ability or color it couldn't normally get, which by the way, is technically a hack. Even if it weren't, it kinda sucks if you're playing this in 2016 or just can't be in the right place at the right time, meaning certain content locked away from you for no good reason. This is why hacking is a thing.

And I do mean no good reason. CTRL+F "Azure Flute". The Azure Flute is an event item that would have unlocked a new area with a new Pokémon, but are you kidding me, Masuda? You thought "Take item A to area B" would be "too confusing"? I know Generation 6 has low difficulty and a cartoon plot, but Game Freak can't possibly think their audience is THAT unintelligent.

Well, we don't know the ABSOLUTE reason for not distributing the Azure Flute, but the most logical conclusion I've heard is that Masuda is fibbing and the real reason is that classic Game Freak QA strikes again.



This is Jubilife City, not 2 badges into the game. The maps in Generation 4 are separated into 32x32 blocks, and further divided into 16x16 quadrants - kind of like a Minecraft chunk. Which quadrant you're in determines which blocks get loaded. See those lamp posts? That's where the "load lines" for the quadrants intersect. If the player gets on the bike, switches to the fast speed and rapidly changes direction while at full speed, you can get weird effects to happen, like the game freezing, invisible walls, and this:



Ta-da. This is the "Tweaking" glitch, which allows you to enter and walk around a black void. This occurs because you crossed the load lines faster than the game could load the next block. Though this works in all of Generation 4, only in Diamond and Pearl can you REALLY abuse it.



If you get a void, walk behind this building's door, and then open any menu and exit, the building comes back and you can enter the door from inside the building.



You end up in the void on the indoor map, and can explore it at your leisure. Now, the steps for it are seriously annoying and a black void isn't very interesting to look at in screenshots, so here are two walkthroughs for glitching into the maps where you encounter...

Darkrai
and Shaymin

That's right! You don't need those silly events to get these legendaries now! This was discovered shortly after the release of the games in Japan - though it was actually a different glitch they found, involving Surfing on a door in an Elite Four room, but this method works internationally.

It's theorized that glitching into the Darkrai and Shaymin rooms led to the associated event items NOT being distributed in Diamond and Pearl. After all, it would suck if you bought a movie ticket to get the event item, only to find that the area had already been glitched into and the Pokémon captured. So, Darkrai and Shaymin wound up being distributed directly without the event item. When Platinum came out, the void glitches were fixed and the items distributed.

However, you CAN'T glitch into the map where Arceus is, and even if you did, for whatever bizzarre reason, the game is programmed to not put Arceus there if the player doesn't have the Azure Flute, unlike the other two. So why did we get Arceus directly instead of the event item? My conclusion is that it wouldn't make sense for them to distribute the item in Platinum but not in the versions where it might be possible to glitch into the map (even though you couldn't in the end) so they just distributed Arceus directly in all three versions. Yes I do realize that logic is completely silly, but it's normal for Game Freak.

Curiously, if you capture Arceus through the event AND get the gift Arceus, taking them to HeartGold or SoulSilver lets you do the Sinjoh Ruins event two times. I'm beginning to wonder how much of what Game Freak does with Pokémon is planned in advance, and how far.

Anyways, at least you don't need to buy a spinoff title just to get Darkrai. Not that you can get him that way anymore anyhow. Did I mention how horrible this idea is in the long run?

Okay, okay, let's get away from that and do something hilariously broken. We like doing that, right? Let's do something REALLY crazy.



You see that ability? That sounds like a wondrous ability. We should get some insane moves for it!



You can see my party here. I'm entering a double battle, and it can be any double battle you want thanks to the VS Seeker. What a cool item. I hope they don't mysteriously exclude it from future games!



That's my Ditto on the left. Yep, Ditto's still broken. I'm having Machamp Mimic Transform. Mimic isn't a TM in Generation 4, so you have to teach it Mimic in FireRed or LeafGreen with that one girl in Saffron City. I think she's also in HeartGold and SoulSilver. What I'm doing here works in any Generation 4 game.



Next I bring in my Smeargle, and have Machamp Transform into that. Only in doubles can you target your ally. In singles this would be a lot harder.



This is what the Smeargle's moveset was. Smeargle can of course copy any move it pleases. And now, so can any Pokémon, ever.



The key here is the Rage move. Have the Transformed Pokémon use Rage until you get the "Rage is building message", then end the battle by any means, but DON'T switch out, and DON'T knock out the enemies with Rage itself.



Then take a look at your Pokémon's moveset.

THEY KEEP ALL THE MOVES FROM WHEN THEY WERE TRANSFORMED.

Oh yes, oh YES. No Guard combined with one-hit kill moves, which are normally horrendously inaccurate! BONUS: If No Guard increases the accuracy of a move, then that move now has a chance of BYPASSING PROTECT AND DETECT. Zap Cannon: Guaranteed to hit, 80% chance to ignore Protect! And now Ditto can get any move and compete in Super Contests! Of course I'm pretty sure Generation 6 will never let you transfer this over, but you can give Generation 4 the butt-kicking it always deserved. Get your revenge on Whitney today! (In the rematch anyways.)

So, that's Generation 4's glitches. Now unless you can come up with something even worse in Generation 5, that should pretty much be the end for real!

(Yes I know about the Zoroark bug in the Japanese version. That's completely detrimental so nobody needs to hear about it.)