u/MosquitoVGC

Our Gen. III tournament at Long Island Retro Gaming Expo was a success! 26 players (3 were disqualified) competed using the Journey Across America (JAA 2006) rules on the 20th anniversary of the 2006 Pokémon Video Game National Championships! All battles were played on XD or Colosseum.

We were fortunate to be joined by two competitors from the 2006 National Championships: Nick Harper (Miami champion) and Peter Jimenez (Nintendo World champion). It was great meeting them and meeting people who traveled from other states to play Pokémon in New York.

There have been a surge of retro Pokémon events worldwide, especially in New York, Ohio, and Japan. If you're interested in attending an event like this, be on the lookout in relevant Discord servers and on social media. If there's no events in your region, then I highly encourage you to organize them. In-person events are the way the game is meant to be played!

Livestream

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Original Reddit post

At Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, we achieved the incredibly rare Scored 1000 medal for a third year in a row. We also completed the extremely difficult Funfest Mission Find Steelix Lv. 3.

The former has been accomplished 13 times (12 normally, 1 solo with exploits) post-pandemic. The latter has only been accomplished twice post-pandemic (the other success was one player solo with 2 DSs… this was the first group success).

We had an astounding 64 consoles (probably 50-55 people?) crammed inside a small room. The energy was intense and the tension high. Due to the interference from the number of consoles present, people literally could not receive Pass Powers for the Steelix mission. the game actually reset the passersby list and started re-showing passersby, probably due to a storage limit.

Thank you to u/codenamehockhead for leading the event and to the Skyarrow Club in general for organizing multiple events at the convention.

The livestream VOD of the event can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/live/EQZCfvsFMxU

I will host a Gen. III tournament at the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo next weekend! To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Pokémon Video Game National Championships 2006, we will use the same rules as that tournament. Battles will be played on Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness connected to GBAs.

Bring your GBA and Gen. III game! We will distribute Pokémon with optimized movesets to provide an even playing field between casual players and competitive players.

If you live in the Northeast US, consider attending this convention to meet other past generation Pokémon players and to partake in the many past generations Pokémon events we have (Gen. V Funfest, Gens. I-V distributions, etc.).

Convention website: https://liretro.com/

Long Island Retro Gaming Expo will host a Funfest Mission meetup on August 8th in Garden City, NY, USA. We will attempt to gather 35+ B2W2 players and play some Funfest Missions, hopefully getting the incredibly difficult Scored 1000 medal.

Along with the Kanto BW Off in Tokyo, this is the only annual event that consistently gets the Scored 1000 medal... but only because enough people went out of their way to attend. In 2026, Funfest Missions in Washington DC, Boston, and New Orleans have all failed to get the medal; LI Retro will be the last chance for quite some time if you want to finish this extremely rare achievement.

If you live in the Northeast US, please join us at this convention. We need your help, and you'll get an in-game achievement that less than 300 people outside of Japan have gotten.

NAIC attendees and New Orleans residents, there will be a Funfest Mission this Saturday at 6PM in the Morial Convention Center hosted by YouTuber AbsolBlogsPokémon. Join if you wish to get the hyper-rare Scored 1,000 medal!

This Saturday, I will host a Gen. III VGC-style tournament at NAIC at 2PM. It's tentatively planned for tables outside Hall C.

Bring your GBA, Gen. 3 game, and strongest team! In addition, I'll take challenges in VGC 2009-2017 if you bring your (3)DS and games.

The format will be Orre Colosseum: 6-4 Doubles, Lv. 100, Species/Item/Sleep/Tiebreaker Clauses, OTS, Bo1. The format is based on Pokémon XD's in-game challenge, which itself is based on PL2005, the official Japanese circuit format in 2005.

DETAILS: https://orrecolosseum.wordpress.com/2026/06/03/orre-naic-2026-hub/

Disclaimer: This is a fan-run event. For official side events, please check the NAIC schedule.

The Orre Colosseum (Gen. 3 VGC) community just finished its FRLG VGC-style tournament. It was played on Showdown with weekly scheduled matches. Double elimination, best-of-3, closed teamsheets, lv. 100, Restricted/Mythicals banned, and allowed only species, moves, and items obtainable in the Switch releases of FireRed and LeafGreen.

Notable takeaways

• Zapdos was on most teams due to its well-rounded typing and stats
• Due to the lack of White Herb and good Clear Body options, Intimidate dominated the format.
• Due to the lack of Metagross and inability for Snorlax to learn Self-Destruct (XD move tutor only), Dragon Dance setup was highly prevalent
• Due to the lack of Choice Band, the only good burst damage Physical option is Thick Club Marowak, which also happens to counter Zapdos

This tournament was hosted to see what a hypothetical Switch FRLG VGC-style format would look like. Between the lack of team variety and the extremely high time investment to obtain a team (RNG manipulation for good IVs and an extreme grind or glitches to get multiple TMs), I believe it is not viable to host a side event (e.g. at NAIC 2026) for FRLG on the Switch.

People organizing side events or tournaments have better options. If playing on the Switch, Champions with funny restrictions or Scarlet/Violet Regulation C offer more interesting gameplay. If playing with GBAs, the full National Dex format (PL2005/Orre Colosseum) is much more interesting.