(TL;DRI made a short Pokemon fangame that gives you the experience of catching a certain Mythical Pokemon! And no, it's not Arceus.)
What? Who's this?
It's Arceus!!
And it's a real, not-at-all-hacked one. I got it back in 2017ish (holy hay that's eight years ago now) from my ex, when we were still close. They had been talking with one of their coworkers and found out that that coworker had an event gen 4 Arceus from Toys 'R' Us way back then. They weren't interested in Pokemon anymore so they traded it to my ex who traded it to me, because Arceus is my favorite Pokemon (tied with Swoobat). And I'm like omg I have a legitimate fateful encounter Arceus!1
One of the reasons this is Awesome is that, well, back in 2017 you could not get Arceus without attending an event. Nowadays you get one for fully completing Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and then another one in Brilliant Diamond / Shining Pearl if you've finished PLA. But there's another reason this is Epic, and it's because having an Arceus in HeartGold / SoulSilver actually unlocks a secret area that cannot be otherwise accessed.
Table of Contents
Sinjoh Ruins: A secret place and the treasure it holds
The Solution: An experiment to re-create the feeling of an event
Sinjoh Ruins
If you enter the Ruins of Alph with Arceus following you, you'll bump into this researcher guy who takes you into the ruins. You then get teleported by dark magic to a mysterious place.
This place is past the top edge of the map. There's no other way in, and there's no way to leave other than by either talking to a man with an Abra inside a nearby cabin, or by completing the event. You're isolated in this place few people have memory of. One thing I noticed right away is that the music in this area incorporates the melody of the Azure Flute (the item you use to encounter Arceus at the top of Mt Coronet in Sinnoh/Hisui), which is a really cute touch! This place has some interesting lore, as it's supposedly a remote part of Johto where travelers from Sinnoh once lived.
Anyway, what's this event I mentioned?
Well, if you go into the cabin, you'll meet up with Cynthia: epic girlboss Champion of Sinnoh! The woman who has not one but two battle themes that strike fear into the hearts of many! She recognizes your Stranth and Prower and invites you back into the ruins, where you see the Mystri Stage.
You get to choose one of three circles that represent Palkia, Dialga, and Giratina. And then what follows is without a doubt the weirdest cutscene in any Pokemon game. I can say that definitively, without exaggerating, because this cutscene involves pixel art Arceus walking around over a slideshow of real world photographs. Pokemon games do not do this sort of thing ever. It's confusing and ominous and absolutely wonderful.
What does any of this mean? Arceus creates an egg containing the legendary dragon you chose earlier, and it hatches and you get that Pokemon. It's using its God magic to create life out of nothing, which is incredible enough on its own. But this is also the only time in any game that we actually see an egg being created. Even when you leave two Pokemon at a nursery in order to breed another mon, it's not technically known how that egg gets created. It could theoretically not have anything to do with the parent Pokemon! Who knows?
Anyway. The event ends after this; you get sent back to Ruins of Alph, with your new dragon in tow. I chose Giratina!
There's actually something very important about this. The dragon that you get is holding its respective orb; Dialga will have an Adamant Orb, Palkia will have a Lustrous Orb, and you can see my Giratina has a Griseous Orb. This is, in fact, the only way to get a Griseous Orb in HeartGold / SoulSilver. You can give an Adamant Orb or a Lustrous Orb to a Pokemon and trade it to HGSS and you're fine and dandy, but you can't do this with a Griseous Orb. You won't be allowed to enter the trade room with it.
Why is that? Well, it's because the Griseous Orb doesn't exist in every gen 4 game. It was created in Platinum, and when held by Giratina, it has the effect of transforming it into its Origin Forme (the default outside of the Distortion World is the Altered Forme). The Origin Forme (and the Distortion World) did not exist in Diamond and Pearl, and neither did the Griseous Orb. This is a problem when it comes to communicating between the games. Even talking to a potential trade partner in the Union Room could be a problem, because what if they have an Origin Forme Giratina? How would Diamond and Pearl handle it, since it has its own sprite, stats, and ability? How would it even say what item it was holding? Items are stored and communicated as IDs, not as textual names, so Diamond and Pearl would just see a number that means nothing to them.
So, both Platinum and HGSS go to extreme effort to prevent Diamond and Pearl from ever potentially having to see an Origin Forme Giratina or a Griseous Orb. Origin Forme Giratina is not allowed to enter the trade room, and no Pokemon other than Giratina is allowed to hold a Griseous Orb at all (even outside the trade room). Unfortunately, this also means that they can't be traded between the games that do have them. This isn't the only case of this happening in gen 4; Rotom and Shaymin got new forms in Platinum, there's an event exclusive Pichu form in HGSS, and while Pokemon caught in the HGSS-exclusive Apricorn Balls can be traded, the balls themselves can't be held.
And yet -- the orb has been granted to me directly via the graces of Arceus itself! This is interesting because it essentially makes the Griseous Orb, and thus also Origin Forme Giratina, event-exclusive specifically in HGSS. A strange inversion of how Rotom's alternate forms are event-exclusive in Platinum but easily accessible in the postgame in HGSS.
Event-Exclusive Gameplay
I love that there's this secret place that I get to visit. It's something Pokemon games don't really do anymore (aside from the Sinnoh remakes), but were big in gens 3 and 4. I can remember being a kid and reading about the Sinnoh ones online, dreaming of getting to visit one and catch the Mythical Pokemon waiting there for me, but alas, I lived in Australia and I knew there was no way I'd ever be able to go to a Nintendo event. Little did I know that the Sinnoh event items wouldn't be distributed until Platinum, by which time I was living in the US but had also lost interest in Pokemon, and that they would be distributed over the Internet rather than requiring you to attend an event. Sigh.
There's not many of these event islands (as I call them, even though some are not islands). I want to take a moment to list them out, what games they're in, what is required to reach them, and what you can get once you're there:
Southern Island in Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Omega Ruby, and Alpha Sapphire, where you can catch Latios or Latias holding a Soul Dew. Notably the only way to obtain a Soul Dew in gen 3. Accessed using the Eon Ticket. Interestingly, you go here as part of the story in ORAS, but you cannot catch Latios/Latias on your first visit, and you cannot return without the Eon Ticket.
Navel Rock in FireRed, LeafGreen, and Emerald, where you can catch Ho-Oh and Lugia. Accessed using the MysticTicket.
Birth Island in FireRed, LeafGreen, and Emerald, where you can catch Deoxys. Accessed using the AuroraTicket.
Faraway Island in Emerald, where you can catch Mew. Accessed using the Old Sea Map. Notoriously only ever distributed in Japan.
Rotom's Room in Platinum, where you can activate Rotom's alternate forms. Accessed using the Secret Key. The room is still present in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl but it is not event-exclusive in these games, as the Secret Key is automatically given to you when you catch Rotom. An identical room is also located in HeartGold and SoulSilver, although it is again not event-exclusive and does not require any item to access.
Flower Paradise (and Seabreak Path) in Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Brilliant Diamond, and Shining Pearl, where you can catch Shaymin. Accessed using Oak's Letter. The item was never distributed for Diamond and Pearl, so the area cannot be legitimately accessed in those games.
Newmoon Island in Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Brilliant Diamond, and Shining Pearl, where you can catch Darkrai. Accessed using the Member Card. The item was never distributed for Diamond and Pearl, so the area cannot be legitimately accessed in those games.
Hall of Origin in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, where you can catch Arceus. Intended to be accessed using the Azure Flute, but the item was never distributed in any game. The area is still present in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, where it is no longer event-exclusive. Instead, you are given an Azure Flute if you have a fully completed save file for Pokemon Legends: Arceus on your Switch.
Rock Peak Ruins, Iceberg Ruins, and Iron Ruins in Platinum, where you can catch Regirock, Regice, and Registeel. Notably the only way to catch these Pokemon in gen 4 (although you can still transfer them forward from gen 3). Requires a fateful encounter Regigigas to be in your party (so, one obtained through an event, not caught in-game).
Sinjoh Ruins in HeartGold and SoulSilver, where you can obtain (not technically catch) Dialga, Palkia, or Giratina holding their respective orb as described above. Notably the only way to have an Origin Forme Giratina in HeartGold and SoulSilver at all. Requires an Arceus to be in your party. Both a fateful encounter Arceus and an Arceus caught in the Hall of Origin will work, and in fact the game is coded to allow you to access the area twice if you have both, but the Hall of Origin was never made accessible in gen 4, so the fateful encounter Arceus is the only legitimate way to access it.
Liberty Garden in Black and White, where you can catch Victini. Requires the Liberty Pass. This is the only event-exclusive location outside of gens 3 and 4, and the area becomes accessible without an event (although also without Victini) in Black 2 and White 2.
Out of all of these places, I was able to go to exactly one of them as a child, and that was Southern Island. The Eon Ticket was distributed in a unique way in gen 3, compared to any other event item. My parents took me to a Toys 'R' Us before we left the US in 2003, and I was handed a physical ticket with an e-Reader stripe on it. There was an accessory for the GameBoy Advance called the e-Reader which worked like a credit card swiper. Nintendo could encode data on a stripe on these cards and you could get some in-game effect from them. It wasn't very popular in the US and didn't end up being used for much, but it was big in Japan apparently. And one of the few international uses for the e-Reader was this card that you could swipe in order to get the Eon Ticket item in your game.
I still have this card. I carry it around in my wallet, because it's meaningful to me. It's water damaged from years of storage and moving from country-to-country, and it can no longer be read by the e-Reader. But I still love it. And interestingly, I can still legitimately access Southern Island in new gen 3 save files, because for some reason, you can give a copy of the Eon Ticket to another game by mixing records (which is not something that works with any other event ticket).
Southern Island was so cool to me as a kid, even though the Pokemon you get there isn't even Mythical; I could have simply traded with my brother (I had Ruby and he had Sapphire) to get the other Eon Pokemon. It was a remote location I hadn't seen before despite playing the game for months. And I felt privileged to be allowed to go there. I was "in" on something.
There have been so many Nintendo events throughout the years and so many Mythical Pokemon that they insist on locking behind events, but event islands have not made a comeback aside from in the gen 3 and 4 remakes. For the most part, they just give you the Pokemon directly now. It feels melodramatic. It makes me realize that the Pokemon itself isn't what I'm really interested in. I'm not really going to battle with it, not that you're even allowed to battle with them in the battle facilities. What I'm interested in is the lore. The way these Pokemon fit into the story and the world.
Possibly the most well-known Pokemon rumor ever is that Mew can be found under the truck outside the S.S. Anne in Gen 1. This rumor had everything: a cool Pokemon you couldn't get anywhere else, a unique sprite (the truck) that seemed like it had to be there for a reason, and a non-trivial supposed method of accessing it, which was hard for most schoolchildren to verify (you had to have Surf before visiting the S.S. Anne to even see the truck, and the rumor said you needed Strength to move it). This rumor was ultimately untrue, and never became true despite the games revisiting Kanto several times (although FRLG and LGPE cheekily hid a Lava Cookie and a Revive respectively near the truck as a nod to the rumor). But this falsehood didn't seem to matter. The rumor was so pervasive and enticing that, years later, some people even attribute part of the game's success to it. People love a cool secret hidden just out of reach.
I don't recall hearing the Mew rumor as a kid, but there is one I do remember: the idea that Celebi was hidden in the shrine in the Ilex Forest in Gen 2. This one eventually turned out to be true in Crystal, albeit only in Japan, and apparently it was added specifically in response to the rumor.2 For a limited time, via a ridiculous method involving hooking up your Game Boy Color to a mobile phone, you could get a special item (the GS Ball) that would unlock a cutscene in the forest that spawned Celebi. It wasn't exactly an event island since it took place right in the forest. But the idea that there was a secret Pokemon hidden in the world that I'd spent so much time traversing and living in, that it was the forest's protector and that it was just barely out of my reach, was captivating. It made me love Celebi. It was one of my favorite Pokemon for a long time, and that's despite not obtaining one until I was an adult and they made it available without an event in the Virtual Console release of Crystal.
Left: the truck outside the S.S. Anne in Gen 1. Right: summoning Celebi at the Ilex Forest Shrine in Crystal.
So, I love these little islands and the tickets that get you there -- but there's an obvious downside to them.
The fateful encounter Arceus isn't the only event Pokemon that has a special effect in HGSS. If you have a fateful encounter Celebi, you can take it to the shrine in the Ilex Forest and activate a scene where you travel back in time to when Team Rocket was broadcasting the signal for Giovanni. You can go to the hidden room behind the waterfall in Tohjo Falls and Giovanni will be there. You learn that this was his hiding spot in the time between Team Rocket disbanding and trying to start back up again. You get to battle him, thus becoming the reason that he never responded to the radio signal. And you also learn that Silver, the rival in these games, is his son. It's a really cool addition to the Johto lore, and I've never seen it play out. Because I don't have a fateful encounter Celebi in gen 4, and likely never will.3
The exclusivity of these in-game scenes is part of what makes them so tantalizing, but it intrinsically also means that many people will miss out on them. And that doesn't quite feel fair. Work went into creating these scenes and islands. They had to be designed, drawn, scripted, and scored. The developers had to come up with lore for them that they knew would be interesting to the players. There's real gameplay, however short, that is coded and embedded in the games we're purchasing that we're not allowed to access because we didn't happen to be playing at the right time over a decade ago. The excitement to see these mysteries has built up in our heads the same way it did for players before the event actually happened, except now it's wasted because there's no payoff. That's probably why they don't do this anymore: because why work so much on a part of your game that most players will never see?
I have spent an embarrassing amount of my adulthood pining to go to these secret islands, and I've actually managed to legitimately access most of them. My friend Emily procured for me what is, to the best of her knowledge, a legitimate unclaimed AuroraTicket on an Emerald cartridge.4 I similarly managed to procure what I believe to be a legitimate unclaimed Old Sea Map on a Japanese Emerald cartridge.5
Rotom's Room and Hall of Origin were "declassified" in a sense in BDSP, and I did claim Oak's Letter and the Member Card when those events happened for BDSP. My brother happened to have the fateful encounter Regigigas and he gave it to me, so I can access the three ruins in Platinum. And of course, I have the gen 4 Arceus too.
Also a copy of Pokémon Black with a Liberty Pass on it mysteriously showed up in my house one day. I don't remember buying it, I don't know how legitimate it is, and the Victini on it was already caught anyway. Maybe the sandwich ghost is responsible.
The amount of work that went into some of these, again, makes the payoff feel more special. But it's another reason why these event islands are not good from a gameplay perspective. Finding the cartridges with unclaimed tickets on them involved a lot of luck, research, money, and luck. Getting the Regigigas and the Arceus just involved a lot of luck. Only the BDSP events feel reasonable, because they essentially revived the old events for a newer playerbase, which happened to include me at the right time.
And that, I think, is a hint to one of the main things Nintendo could've done if they wanted to preserve the exclusive feeling of these event islands without cutting them off from a majority of the players: make the event tickets available periodically, forever. This could be at odd intervals, so no one knows when it's going to happen and it's still an exciting feeling when one becomes available for download and you have to snatch it up. Even if you miss it, or if you don't start playing the game until later, there'll still be another chance someday to reach that phantasmal land.
But Nintendo isn't interested in making things available forever. They shut down their online services the earliest opportunity they can. They sell their games temporarily so that you're dependent on subscription-paid re-releases later on (I'm looking at the 3D Mario remasters). Nintendo wants you to play their games their way, and it's just sad to leverage the love and trust they built up in the children who grew up with their games, who lived and learned alongside them and internalized them into the recesses of their minds.6
I should also say that I'm sure a lot of seasoned Pokemon players would react to this melodramatic essay with: "if you're so upset at Nintendo not giving you what you want then why don't you just hack the event item into your game?" And there's nothing inherently wrong with doing that. For some people, that's a great way to gain access to this stuff. But for me, it's not good enough. It taints the special feeling of the event. It doesn't matter so much if someone is dangling something cool just out of reach if I'm able to snap my fingers whenever and magically wrench it out of their hands. I want fate to decide when I've done enough longing, and reward me for it. Yes I'm being really normal about Pokemon right now.
The Solution
After playing through the Sinjoh Ruins event and thinking about the lack of event islands in newer gens, I had an idea. What if I just... made one? I could make a mini fangame where you get the experience of going to an event island to catch a Mythical Pokemon. And it'd be available perpetually, so you can't miss out on the fun. Wouldn't that be cool?
Well, I hope so, because that's what I did! It's on itch.io and you can check it out here, if you want to play it before reading my process of developing it.
I made it with the wonderful Pokemon Essentials engine, which helps so much with creating a Pokemon fangame. There's tons of features that are handled off the bat for me, and that meant that I was able to make a quick yet advanced game without getting stuck in development hell for years. (And even so I still ended up stretching this project out to like three weeks lol).
There are several things, I think, that go into the experience of visiting a Pokemon event island:
Perhaps most importantly, the Pokemon you get there.
The "Inside", by which I mean the island itself.
The "Outside", by which I mean the place you access the island from.
The item that unlocks access to the island.
The method by which you receive the item.
Optionally, a puzzle you have to solve before seeing the Pokemon.
The lore behind the island and its relation to the Pokemon.
Let's go through these one-by-one!
The Pokemon
As you can see from the title of the game, I chose Marshadow.
First of all, it had to be a Mythical Pokemon. Southern Island and Navel Rock are cool, but it's not the same as the feeling of seeing an otherwise unreachable Pokemon for the first time, and seeing how it fits into the world. Second, it should be one that doesn't already have an event island. Third, while I would love to design a home for Jirachi, I think it had to be a Pokemon from one of the newer generations, since they don't have any event islands.
This made the decision pretty easy. Gen 7 is dear to me. It's what got me back into Pokemon as an adult. The designs (both the Pokemon and the Alola region) are great, and IMO Sun and Moon has by far the best story in any Pokemon game (although Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon ruin it arrrghghghh). Marshadow is also the first Mythical Pokemon I got from going to an event! I still have the card from it.
Not only that, but I saw I Choose You! in theatre in 2017 when it came out. That movie was an incredible shared experience by the way, because the entire theatre lost their minds when Pikachu started speaking. I haven't had that much fun in a movie theatre in a long time. And also: Marshadow plays an important role in that movie! So yeah, I'm fond of the little cutie.
The Inside
So, what is the island itself like? Well, I did want it to actually be an island, just because the canonical event islands are so iconic. Alola is also an archipelago of islands to begin with, so adding an extra island to the mix seems reasonable, and there's plenty of coast to leave from.
One of the main things we know about Marshadow is that it hides in the shadows of strong people and learns to fight by mimicking their movements. I love this concept of it being able to blend into the shadows, rather like Pride from Fullmetal Alchemist. So, I thought of the perfect place to find a bunch of shadows: a spooky old house! This mysterious locale allows Marshadow to trace the player's footsteps until noticed, which provides some cute flavor to the encounter.
I obviously had to name the island too. I stood in the shadow of the moon last year (which is to say, I witnessed a total solar eclipse) and it was one of the best experiences of my life, so I quickly thought of the perfect name: Penumbra Island.
The Outside
The next question is, where are we before we go to the event island? All of the Gen 3 events involve using a ticket to get the game's one ship to take you to an actual island. This is cool, but is a little lacking in personality. In contrast, even the Gen 4 events that are actually on an island have interesting ways to get there.
As a kid, I was entranced by the dead end of Route 224 and the locked building in Canalave City. I would repeatedly go back to both places after achieving certain things in the game, hoping that I'd be allowed to progress. I don't think I knew at that point that you had to receive a special item from Nintendo to do something in those places. But they had me hooked. I wanted to see more.
Route 224 extending into Seabreak Path and then Flower Paradise is cool, and it's the only time you actually walk across the sea to get to an event island. But Canalave City's Harbor Inn is particularly intriguing. It's a locked building in a busy city, and the game goes out of its way to tell you that the door "appears impossible to open". That meant there had to be something cool in there. If it was really impossible to open, there just wouldn't be a door. And then when you do get inside, someone hypnotizes you and you teleport to Newmoon Island in your sleep? So cool.
I had an idea that borrowed from both of these. Again, one of the things we know about Marshadow is that it can hide perfectly in the shadows. We've already investigated the motif of shadow, but there's another part of the study of shadows besides the darkness, and that's the light. Keeping that in mind, I took a look around Alola for locations that seemed relevant. At first, I wanted to do something with the Lake of the Moone, but there really wasn't any room for the kind of thing I wanted.
And then I saw it: the Konikoni City Lighthouse!
Just like Darkrai's Harbor Inn, the Lighthouse can't be entered (although the game doesn't taunt you with a description of why not). You also can't even approach it from the city; you have to go through an alternate exit from Diglett's Tunnel. This is perfect for a Mythical Pokemon event! I wanted to take a place that was tantalizingly out of reach in the real game, and put something there.
And what happens when you get access to the Lighthouse? You turn on the light, of course. And it illuminates a path over the water that leads you to the island. Just like Shaymin's Seabreak Path.
The Item
This one is pretty easy, given what we've already discussed. How do you gain access to the Lighthouse? With a key! So the item is simply the "Lighthouse Key".
The Method
Now this is where things get kind of bonkers. We have to figure out how the player receives the item.
Mystery Gift always fascinated me as a kid, for precisely the same reason that event distributions did. I knew that this feature was the key to receiving the secrets I yearned for, and yet were always out of reach. Like I said, I never got to make use of this feature in my childhood. The Eon Ticket was the only event distribution I attended, and that was technically pre-Mystery Gift.7 I stopped playing Pokemon between Diamond/Pearl and Platinum, and Platinum is when the Gen 4 event items were distributed over the Internet.
As an adult, however, I was able to attend events and receive Wonder Cards via Mystery Gift. I have a list on my phone of a couple dozen Gen 7 event Pokemon I've obtained, both through getting serial codes at GameStops and through online distributions that were free to everyone within the timeframe. It was always exciting to get these Pokemon, even though most of them weren't Mythical, and even though they weren't items that allowed me to go to cool secret places.
Because of this, I knew I had to make use of Mystery Gift in my fangame. Pokemon Essentials includes a Mystery Gift feature, which was super exciting to me. You embed a URL to a server in your game, and after the player has unlocked Mystery Gift, they're able to use it to check for active event distributions. If there happens to be one, then voila! The Lighthouse Key is delivered to them.
The word "if" is important there, though. Part of the intrigue of Mystery Gift is that there isn't always something there. It wouldn't be the same if you were guaranteed to find an active event distribution when you unlocked and checked Mystery Gift. Is it really an event, then? Or is it just a gameplay element? No, I wanted part of the event island experience to include the feeling of exclusivity. The feeling that you're being given something from outside of the game; that playing the game itself is not enough to be able to see everything hidden within.
Now, I could just have the server only offer the distribution during recurring real world periods of time, but that would also kind of suck because you wouldn't be able to have the experience regardless of when you discovered the game, and it would also make the experience less meaningful to those who happen to discover the game during an active distribution period. So, I came up with a scheme that combines both the feeling of getting an exclusive distribution from outside of the game, with a gameplay element that allows you to activate this distribution whenever you want.
This little questionnaire is linked in the README of the game, and the NPC who unlocks Mystery Gift for you hints toward its existence. It is key to unlocking the event distribution. The way Mystery Gift works in my game is that the pool of active distributions is not global; it is specific to your Trainer ID. And the answers you provide to the questionnaire are able to identify you to the server.8 So, if you correctly fill out the questionnaire using the answers you find within your game, the Wonder Card is unlocked for you and you alone. Then, you just have to open Mystery Gift and the game will find an event distribution waiting for you.
It was so much fun implementing this part; both devising the identifying questions, and writing the server code itself. I love a simple webapp, and my tool of choice for this is a Ruby library called Sinatra. The webapp consists of a single Ruby file which contains the API endpoints for unlocking distributions based on questionnaire responses and for checking for active distributions, as well as a single HTML file making up the questionnaire itself, and a PNG file so you can see the Lighthouse Key item. It's that simple. No database is needed; the unlocked distributions are just stored in memory. There's no need for long-term persistence because the player is going to download their Wonder Card pretty shortly after filling out the questionnaire.
Writing the questions also allowed me to fill out some of the areas of the game that didn't have to do with required gameplay elements or the event itself. I tried my best to replicate the experience of being on the south part of Akala Island. I'm hoping that the questionnaire does a good job of enticing the player to explore the area and talk to NPCs.
The Puzzle
I said this was optional, because most event islands don't actually involve a puzzle. The only ones that did were Birth Island and sort of Faraway Island. In the latter, Mew hides from you in the tall grass and you have to chase it around without being able to see anything other than patches of grass occasionally shaking.
In the former, though, you are presented with an odd, triangular stone. Interacting with it causes it to move, and you have to approach it in the most efficient way possible (by taking the fewest steps possible). This repeats a number of times before the stone finally breaks open and reveals Deoxys. It's a simple puzzle, but it further enhances the experience, to me.
I like puzzles, so I wanted to include one on my event island. This one is a little more complicated than the one on Birth Island, but I still hope it's easy enough for players to solve. When you first enter the house on Penumbra Island, the lights are off, and you get the feeling you're being watched. There are five switches arranged in a circle in the house, and toggling a switch also toggles the two adjacent to it. You have to configure the switches such that they're all on at the same time. Doing so turns on the lights, and thus also reveals the creature that's been hiding in your shadow the whole time. This is a variation of a common puzzle type called, aptly enough, Lights Out.
The Lore
Finally, what does this event say about Marshadow? How does it help this Mythical Pokemon to fit into the world of Alola?
This is something that I've developed throughout crafting the other pieces of this game. Marshadow is a shadow, and although people whisper about its existence, it is seldom ever seen. It isn't just a myth, though. It inhabits an island not too far away from Akala Island. There's even a path that leads you there, albeit one that is invisible to people without the illumination provided by the abandoned lighthouse. It squats in a house that seems to be in a state of disarray. There must have been people there at one point, but they're gone now, and both the house and the island have been forgotten. Marshadow glues itself to your side the moment you step within its reach, haunting you until you turn on the lights. And then...?
One really cool piece of lore that is shown in I Choose You! is that Marshadow is able to harness Z-Power without a Trainer and thus without a Z-Ring. It has an exclusive Z-Move called "Soul-Stealing 7-Star Strike", the animation of which includes seven stars that form the Z-Power symbol. Marshadow also has a second form called "Zenith Marshadow", which is not present in the games as a real alternate form, but is seen in the movie and in the animation for Soul-Stealing 7-Star Strike. "Zenith" is actually what the Z in Z-Power stands for. There's some kind of connection between Marshadow and Z-Power, and we're never fully shown what it is.
There's a plugin for Pokemon Essentials that allows you to have Z-Moves. Obviously, I had to use it because I'm making a game based on Alola. And this plugin includes the ability to allow certain wild Pokemon to use Z-Moves. This, I think, was the perfect flourish to really accentuate the climax of the game. When you encounter Marshadow, it gains a Z-Power aura, and I made it visually change into its Zenith form. It's much stronger in this state, and is even able to use its Z-Move (with a five turn recharge period). You have to lower it to 30% health in order for the aura to drop and for it to change back to Gloomdweller form, at which point it becomes catchable. It's like a final boss and a catching game rolled into one!
This was a really exciting addition, for me. It feels like I know more about Marshadow now than I did before I started working on this fangame, and it makes the project as a whole feel more meaningful. I've learned more about this Pokemon that I love, and I've gotten to develop on its lore myself too by giving it a home. I hope this game gets you as excited about Marshadow as I am!
And that's kind of it, for now. Those are the things that I think makes up an interesting Pokemon event island. Take notes, Nintendo. They're not even including Mythical Pokemon in the base game anymore! They're adding them in with patches! And both Gen 8 and 9 have only had one each. It's interesting. On one hand, it's nice to not keep so much cool stuff out of everyone's reach, but on the other... There's something fun about it. If done correctly. As we've discussed.
The game has a bunch of other unnecessary flourishes that are not required for the intended event distribution experience, but which were irresistible to me. It turns out that when I want to make a piece of fan art centered on a thing that I obsess over, the other things that I obsess over end up leaking in too. I kind of want to make another fan game, now that I know how easy it is to get started with Pokemon Essentials. There's so much random complicated nonsense in Pokemon that occupies my mind to no end, like the battle facilities and weird one-off cutscenes and items that are hard to get and obscure minigames. It's exciting to think about.
"Fateful encounter" is a flag that is set on Pokemon that are received from event distributions; such Pokemon are said to have been "met in a fateful encounter". Strangely, the Shaymin in Flower Paradise in Platinum (but not the other games that Flower Paradise is in) also has the fateful encounter flag. This is probably because there are certain things in gens 3 and 4 that specifically check for this flag on a Pokemon, such as the NPC who gives you the Gracidea for Shaymin. It's unclear why checking for this flag was necessary, but it does mean that certain Mythical Pokemon transferred from gen 3 such as the Pokemon Colosseum bonus disc Jirachi and Celebi are not eligible to activate their in-game effects in gen 4, because they do not have the fateful encounter flag. ↩
Bulbapedia cites this interview as evidence for this claim. ↩
There's even a third instance of this in HGSS. If you take a fateful encounter shiny Pichu to the Ilex Shrine, a special spiky-eared Pichu will appear and join your party. This Pichu can't be evolved, traded, or sent to a later generation. It is a unique treat just for HGSS. And it's eternally out of reach now. ↩
I hyperventilated when she gave it to me. It was pretty amusing. ↩
I know that Wonder Cards can be hacked onto the cartridges. I've done additional verification beyond just the presence of the Wonder Cards but yes, it is true that I can't know for certain that they're legitimate. ↩
There's a research paper about how people who grew up playing Pokemon are good at visually recognizing things. It's pretty neat. ↩
This is me being pedantic. Mystery Gift officially debuted in Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen, and allowed you to receive Wonder Cards using the wireless adapter for the GBA. Ruby and Sapphire had a similar feature called Mystery Event though, which did the same thing except you received stuff using the e-Reader. So Mystery Event is how I got the Eon Ticket in my game. Additional note: a feature called Mystery Gift also existed in the Gen 2 games, but it was unrelated to event distributions: it was for gifting random items between games, and for connecting to the Pokemon Stadium 2 and the Pikachu pedometer. ↩
The tech-minded of you out there can probably guess how the questionnaire identifies the player to the server just by looking at the questions. ↩
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