u/Mexgar5

In Part 1 of this nonsensical journey through Orre, I showed off how to fill Colo’s storage by stuffing it full of nincada’s and evolving most of them.

In Part 2, I used the expanded storage to show off what happens to the displayed met locations of all XD Shadow Pokémon when transferred “backwards” into Colosseum . TL;DR, they are almost all incorrectly displayed as existing Colo map locations (and even a couple of unused met locations!).

Now, I’ve done the reverse! And you know what’s truly shocking? They actually fixed the bug in XD! Every Pokémon received from XD is listed as “met in a distant land” as intended, despite the fact that most of XD’s met locations do actually line up with Colosseum’s.

For some final cleanup: in the last post, I received a comment from u/elsteeler linking a Bulbapedia article outlining how the map locations line up between Colo and XD, which I will link here:

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_locations_by_index_number_in_Pok%C3%A9mon_Colosseum_and_Pok%C3%A9mon_XD

And while the table is mostly accurate from what I can tell, the article itself claims that this met location nonsense happens to BOTH Orre games. However, as the video findings show, every Pokémon but Ho-oh is labelled as “met in a distant land,” while Ho-oh is also correctly stated to be met as a fateful encounter. To be fair to Bulbapedia, the article says the met locations “may” differ between games, so maybe there is some condition I’m unaware of that messes up the XD met locations. But unless someone else is willing to do this storage nonsense and proves me wrong, I’m confident in saying that only Colosseum is affected by the differing met locations.

Additionally, the shadow Pokémon caught from Eldes, when traded to Colosseum, show a met location of “Laboratory,” marking them as the only Citadark Isle Pokémon not labelled by Colosseum as having come from Mt. Battle.

Anyways, I had a lot of fun doing this silly project! Gonna use the battle tower clones I made of all the Shadow Pokémon from both games to work on my casual Emerald 100% playthrough after this. But more immediately, Deltarune is tomorrow, so I’m gonna be all over that lol. Have a great day everybody!

So in the last post I made, I showed off how to increase the storage space in Colosseum from the normal 52 Pokémon all the way to its theoretical maximum, 97 (including the party pokémon and day care), by trading in and evolving Nincada’s to produce dozens of Shedinja. I only increased the storage space in my save file to 92, in an effort to maintain convenience.

As for what I did with all the new storage space: I spent all afternoon trading every Shadow Pokémon caught in Pokémon XD backwards to Colosseum. I would’ve liked to trade in *all* obtainable Pokémon in XD, but including the starter, the 9 Poké Spot obtainables, the 3 Duking gifts, and the 3 Mt. Battle gifts would have come out to 99 unique Pokémon–two more than can fit in this game at all. So I just settled for the shadows and the Mt. Battle gifts.

This process highlights the fact that these Pokémon were NOT meant to come back to Orre after leaving. For starters, one of the more well-known factoids about trading into Colosseum is that Frenzy Plant was localized incorrectly as “Solid Plant”. This can only be seen in-game by trading any Pokémon to Colosseum that knows one of the three elemental beams.

Additionally, all of the met locations are completely broken. Below I will summarize what the screenshots I’m sharing mean:

The starter Eevee and Teddiursa with a met location of Krane’s Lab and every Pokémon caught in Gateon Port, including the final Shadow Dragonite, are all given the intended “met in a distant land” met location for anything not caught in Colosseum.

Every Pokémon caught in front of XD’s Cipher Lab (owned by the Six Rangers) is shown as being caught in the Pre Gym, a completely unused met location.

Every Pokémon *inside* XD’s Cipher Lab, though? Nah, that’s Phenac City.

Miror B’s Voltorb, encountered the first time you visit the Rock Poké Spot, is listed as being caught in Mt. Battle. However not only is this not the last time we will see Mt. Battle, this is NOT the default replacement for Rock Poké Spot, as we’ll see in a bit.

Makuhita is a Pokémon intended to be encountered in the ONBS building, but I goofed and was forced to catch it in the Rock Poké Spot instead. This reveals that the Rock Poké Spot met location in Colosseum is actually “REALGAMTWRDOME”. This is further supported by Nosepass’ and Salamence’s met locations also being the Realgam Tower Dome, despite both being caught in the Rock Poké Spot from Miror B.

And then everything ELSE in the ONBS building is ALSO listed as being encountered in the Realgam Tower Dome.

The Ralts you technically catch outside in XD’s Pyrite City map, though? That’s Phenac City again.

Snorunt and Pineco, encountered in XD’s Mayor’s House, are given the intended “met in a distant land”…

But as soon as we go to XD’s Pre Gym it changes back to Mt. Battle.

The Swinub caught inside XD’s Phenac Colosseum entryway map is given “met in a distant land” as well…

But all the Shadow Pokémon caught in XD’s Phenac Colosseum are listed as the Realgam Tower Dome again.

The Zangoose we snag from Zook in the entryway to Cipher Key Lair is listed as “LABORATORY,” the met location given to anything caught in Colosseum’s Shadow Pokémon Lab.

The gift Togepi is given “met in a distant land” as it should.

Cipher Key Lair is a uniquely strange location. The Paras and Growlithe you catch in the first floor of Cipher Key Lair are listed as being from the Deep Colosseum.

However the Shellder caught soon after is given the met location “FRONT OF LAB,” another unused met location in Colosseum.

And then to top it off, every Shadow Pokémon caught in the other rooms of Cipher Key Lair display as “LABORATORY” again.

Every single Shadow Pokémon caught in Citadark Isle is listed as being caught in Mt. Battle, up to and including Shadow Lugia and Greevil’s entire team.

But after dozens of Shadow Pokémon listing Mt. Battle as their met location, the three gift Pokémon you ACTUALLY receive in XD’s Mt. Battle? Yeah that’s Pyrite Town actually.

So yeah, obviously none of this is intended behavior. Clearly the map data was jumbled around in the process of developing XD, and the result of that jumbling can only be seen if a madwoman spends several hours evolving Nincada in Colosseum and trading nearly 90 pokémon back and forth from Gamecube to GBA and then back to GameCube.

In Part 3, I’ll trade all the Colosseum Shadow Pokémon to XD to see if they remembered to be more careful about met locations in the sequel!

Step 1: Obtain all 52 possible Pokémon in a save file.

Step 2: Trade in 52 lv19 Nincada’s (holding Rare Candies for convenience).

Step 3: Evolve Nincada’s for an entire hour with extra space in the party until all three boxes are filled with bugs.

Step 4: Bask in the glory of what you have done.

Step 5: Pet Goggles (she is both fluffy and gay)

I’m trying to catch a female Heracross to be a ribbon master, but I’ve now reset the game seven times with no luck. In the RNG guide I read, they called Heracross a “Shadow Locked Pokémon”. Does that mean its gender is fixed? Am I wasting my time here?

Coming off the heels of an All-Girls run in XD, I wanted to do the same thing in Colosseum. However, unlike XD, I don’t know if it’s even possible for Espeon and Umbreon to have varying personality values, let alone genders.

Are they the same every time? Does everything but their gender and shininess change per reset? I’m unsure, and could use an expert opinion. If it’s the latter, I’d hate to reset and lose this Modest Espie for nothing.

Bonus picture of my real cat Goggles :3