Future RMs: Gen 2 Shiny Celebi and Time-Traveling Grovyle?
I haven't completed these RMs yet, but "hasn't happened yet" is not a big problem for Celebi, so here you are. With Bank shutting down and another recent development, I figured I shouldn't wait longer anyway.
I wanted to pair up Celebi and Grovyle for a long time, because of Explorers as you might guess, but Bank forced me to speed up those plans. Shiny Celebi becomes inaccessible once Bank goes, but after roughly 6-7k resets, I finally got them!
I took Celebi on a quick spin through Kanto to pick up the remaining badges (Crystal's messed up XP scaling working in my favour for once), and also defeated Red with copious X-item use. Just pretend I got a ribbon for that.
Now all that was left was to head to Hoenn and pick up Grovyle, except...well, time travel. Let's just do it right now.
This is the main reason I wanted to make this post. Turns out, Pokemon Transporter has absolutely no issue with transporting Pokemon number 253 up to Gen 7, even if Pokemon 253 should not yet exist. Arbitrary code execution is relatively easy to set up, and can be used to obtain a glitch Pokemon that will later be revealed to be any Treeko family member from Johto. You can also do Torchic, though Mudkip sadly missed the boat.
And that's pretty neat. Yes, obviously illegal even if Home didn't notice, not eligible for this subreddit's list, but the pairing was too good to pass up. It's fun to do, and even if it is from an oversight, you can be sure that Crystal origin Grovyle will never happen again. May as well get it while you can, right?
I was too late. Nintendo patched the oversight a few days ago in the last update. You can still send them from the Gen 2 games through Transporter to Alola, but they can no longer enter Home and the Switch games.
Maybe if I had started hunting Celebi sooner, or prioritised Grovyle, I'd have made it. But in the end, it doesn't really matter, this could have happened at any point in the future. I don't know what will happen to those that already made it through.
I wanted to share this anyway, because no matter what Nintendo want, we can choose how we want to play the game. This entire ribbon challenge is self-imposed, and once Bank shuts down, everything will be just as unobtainable as Crystal Grovyle. Doesn't have to be perfect to be special.
Celebi will be fine, and if not for the possibility of Grovyle I might never have finished that hunt. So, I'm going to use a save editor to change Grovyle's origin to Emerald once I'm ready to move up. I know where he came from, Nintendo don't need to. That way I can still keep going.
So, still the same general situation. Last chance to get a Gen 2 Treeko/Torchic for your collection - you could keep it in Gen 7 to be "legit", or do what I am to keep the ribbons going as long as possible.
Main point is, do what you find fun. It'll all be impossible once Bank goes down, even for my slightly suspicious "Emerald" Grovyle.