Correction: 00:31:23 @JohnGamefreak was actually a temp username for @red031000, my apologies to her and wanted to be sure she was given proper credit! (thank you for your service to our galaxy 🙏) Timestamps: 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:22 Why do people love this game so much? 00:05:14 The mysteries begin… 00:08:21 Serebii couldn’t be more wrong 00:10:47 How to force the Johto starters to spawn 00:13:40 …what if there is another way? 00:20:28 The real hunt begins. 00:23:45 Debunking the Ruby Board myth 00:27:47 What is the “pret” discord? 00:33:55 The code behind the mysteries. 00:38:39 A deep dive into spawn mechanics. 00:42:37 Final Suspicions 00:44:39 Thanks for all the support! (on streams, videos, and Patreon!)
Might be worth mentioning to people in a short or something that the guy who’s selling the ereader cards noticed the extra traffic and has significantly raised his price. I think it was around 60usd, now it’s 100usd
Hey man, Great Video and congrats on clearing up decades of misinfo on this game! I live in Lee County and know how bad those 2 hurricanes were! We got lucky this time and only lost power for 2 days instead of the 2 weeks like last time... We even went out and bought a generator before this hurricane season but, knock on wood, didn't really need it... This time! Keep up the great content, brother. I'm looking forward to your next vid!
31:48 in case it wasn't obvious, hi, i'm the spirit of pikalax aka pikalaxalt and i demand recognition for being the bearer of bad news in this instance
Never did I ever think I'd find the official channel for a NFL team beefing with a random guy over the internet about a high score in a handheld spin-off Pokemon game. What a magical world we live in.
Gmedly breaking the rumor cycle by encountering Chikorita and Aerodactyl on the Sapphire board is an absolute powermove and iconic moment in gaming history
I have been in contact with the Serebii admin. He said he never got your email. He said he is working on fixing the Pinball pages and clarify the Johto starters page.
@@nidohime6233 Pretty sure you're right, and surely they couldn't. They actually have gone up to SM so I'm just talking about the character bios. I remember pouring over those as a kid and being excited for the DP characters to get added but they never did. But you know maybe that's a good thing, it's like a little time capsule.
@@nidohime6233 I'm pretty sure Joe only is working on updating this because of being called out. There's no way this was the only e-mail over the years over the misinformation. I've sent him e-mails that never been answered (or fixed), and like, it's fair, he's only one guy and this is all very, very subtle errors. But there's no way you somehow miss every single e-mail about this game (when it such a major error with the biomes) over two decades.
God, the pokedex bit is actually really brilliant. So many pinball tables have tons of secrets, because they figured out pretty early in the history of pinball that it feels _good_ to do clever shit to get higher scores--and then someone came up with "Wizard Mode", the idea of a super special game state where _everything is active at once_ and you can keep going until you lose a ball... So, the idea of building the entire game around hunting for those secrets, as part of trying to catch specific pokemon, is _brilliant._
BTW, _really_ interesting that all of your catches happened when you were out of lives. I wonder if there's some kind of special RNG adjustment for that?
@@TehNoobiness The no remaining lives bit may just be an artifact of gmedley's level of play, given the five captures/evolutions requirement tied to those rare encounters.
A lot of modern pinball games actually play with this concept. It's common nowadays to have to start or complete a bunch of "modes" (basically minigames with special start conditions) to progressively unlock access to increasingly powerful modes. These may or may not be multiballs, which end when you drain down to 1 ball, or if not, they may be timed instead. Wizard modes, which are basically equivalent to a final boss, nearly always are multiballs, and sometimes they're even timed with unlimited balls (which relaunch into the playfield immediately if drained). They don't necessarily activate every board mechanic (though the first ever one in Black Knight 2000, known as King's Ransom, did), but they're almost always super high scoring and worth aspiring to. The modern school of design almost always makes wizard mode priority, your score there will be a *huge* portion of your overall score. There's even a small handful of modern games that can be "beaten" like a traditional arcade game, where completing the wizard mode actually ends the game. After all, there's pretty much no way you're getting to it twice because of how intense the unlock requirements are. On that note, some games even have official flowchart PDF's for mode completions, and they can get so convoluted - look up the Wizard of Oz or Toy Story 4 rulesheets if you want a real trip. There's even a couple older games like this - Simpsons Pinball Party and Lord of the Rings come to mind. Of course, not every game is like this - old and new alike, you can find every level of complexity you might want in a game. You just gotta look around with 'em and find out.
@ I really love Wizard Mode as a concept. There's a game called Projections that has a similar idea, in the form of Focus Mode, where enemies spawn indefinitely and the wave doesn't end until you take a hit (although there's a special enemy type unique to Focus Mode that basically exists as the ultimate parry timing check). I honestly kinda wanna make an arena FPS that borrows from advanced pinball rules. Kinda like Black Ops Zombies' secrets. Oh, I could take inspiration from Nerf Arena Blast's score targets, too...
watching the pinball community form and solidify through this is crazy, what a treat months & months of effort and it shows so clearly in this video, phenomenal work
Fun little bonus fact: there were plans to include a 4th gen pokemon pinball game with designs of a pinball board, but was scrapped incredibly early along with the game.
@felixdaniels37 That's what I always thought! I loved this game, and now if Pokémon puts out another pinball game, they've squandered the chance that they had to put it on a DS system!
Switch seems perfect for it again though. Make it so you have to play with joycons detached or with a controller and just work with the screen flipped vertical... Badabing badaboom. Goldmine.
So great to see love for digital pinball games. If people are looking for more pinball games, Jupiter actually made another pinball game between Pokemon Pinball GBC and Pokemon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire. Super Robot Pinball for the GBC was Japan only, but has an english patch, and you can really see the steps they take between the two Pokemon pinball games. All three of their pinball games are gems.
I need to personally thank you for this, I've been a big fan of Pokemon Pinball R/S for years and had NO clue there was a Super Robot Pinball game from the same people... I'm a huge fan of Getter Robo and am always scrounging for new content, so sitting down and playing this for a few hours made my day
Dude was probally feeling like a maniac slowly finding out everything recorded was wrong. I remember as a kid I would read neoseeker posts of blatantly wrong info and being baffled on how no-one noticed.
it is sadly an unfortunate fact that spinoff game guides on serebii, no matter how recently the game released, are full of misinformation (if not big gaps in information entirely) no matter how quickly others reached out to help correct it within the game's early lifespan. New Snap not only suffered deeply within its early days, but also remains to this day full of huge gaps and incorrect info. Shoutouts to Jungle Day, where a segment for a Beautifly location just cuts off midsentence! It wasnt missing critical info, but it's telling of the neglect in quality some guides suffer. Those beautifly, in fact, sure "will appear, and will". Nowadays, speedrunner communities are where it's at. c: Your work, and the work of that wonderful decomp team, are doing significant things for archival and educational purposes. thank you for helping to bridge the gap in knowledge with an easily digestible video!
Yeah, it's basically a given that if Joe isn't all that interested in a spin off (which typically seems to be the case) he doesn't really put that much care into the pages on said games. I know that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX pages had a lot of misinformation on them as well. And as far as I'm aware was never corrected, even through multiple people gave him the correct info (and even offered to basically write the updated pages)
I called out a few errors on Twitter and he told me not to throw shade and that all websites have errors. He told me to report them on his discord instead, so I did They still haven't been fixed
Messed up that of the biggest sources of Pokemon info is just unreliable sometimes due to personal desiterest from the main guy. But he will def try focus on twitter fights tho lmao
@@thenewranger1234 i remember playing pokemon conquest and trying to use the serebii guide and finding tons of things that were wrong, it made the game a lot harder 😭
Thank you for pointing out how Serebii has a lot of issues with older stuff, I tried bringing this up a few years ago on the forums, but didn’t get any traction
I'm not typically a fan of pinball games, but Pokémon Pinball kept me hooked because of the collecting element. It's criminal that Pokémon never released any more after Ruby & Sapphire.
while a 1% boost with the Rayquaza flag doesn't seem like that much, it essentially cuts the number of encounters needed to see super rare pokemon in half. That combined with some luck makes me feel like your experience of finding the starters+Aerodactyl isn't all that anomalous, and that there probably isn't anything unknown or unusual which explains it which you dont already know, at least without any evidence to suggest that's the case, anyways. Also, this video was amazing. Super well put together
Percentages are always incredibly easy to underestimate, so I'm not surprised why a lot of people would think that going from 1% to 2% isn't that big. It's not a big number! Two comes after one, how could it make any difference at all? But ever since I first played Balatro, I've found it immensely helpful to think of percentages as... I don't know what to call it, but for example, 1% is 1 in 100 and 2% is 1 in 50. The increase is vast and much easier to see when put like that.
I finally have an answer to why Pichu has eluded me so long on my attempted 100% Pokédex file when I had no problems getting it as a kid!! Thank you so much for this video, and thanks to all the researchers in the Discord!
29:57 Actually the instructions for the e-Reader screen are plainly stated on the back of each and every e-Reader card for the game and it's a requeriment to get the Johto starters at all, dunno how they missed on that detail (I suppose because they're looking at raw code without any context)
After picking up my cart after a few years after my last go at it, I completed the RS Pinball dex just a few days ago! Had to dig for some answers on how to catch the last few fellas, so to have a vid like this show up now really is something.
I remember stumbling on one of your streams of this while scrolling tiktok before bed one night. Was the only time I ever stumbled across a live that I just couldn't turn away from. Since then, I started playing Pokemon Pinball RS as well, and I love it! Glad I was able to stumble across your content again!
it blows my mind that the ruby board myth was ever even a thing lmao, it was SO obvious it was talking about them as board elements the second i read that description
It's not that they are trying to mislead people, it's just that they themselves misinterpreted their own data (like all of the people claiming to have found the starters without e-Reader despite of being exclusive to the cards more than certainly were playing with cheats on an emulator)
I know they aren't misleading people, but its very intriguing to me as someone who likes thinking about information in a historic way (not really in an old history way more of an appreciation of how things lead to this point) It intrigues me not in a way that they did us wrong, but in a way that there's way more possibilities even in the oldest things we thought were understood. With how its presented in these websites of information, you'd the work is done but its not, even when its marked as complete! Research never stops and it makes me think about a lot of the websites that had put down unreliable or false information. Its fun to think about that, at some point, somebody will come in and pick up the research again and verify whats true and whats false and wrongly understood, and correct it later! Who knows? Thinking about how events lead to more events is just something that always strikes me.
"If you severely neglect your dog's they'll run away, and there's a chance they'll come back with a kitten!" This was about Nintendogs. None of this is true, not even that the dogs will run away...they'll get fleas and be sad and hungry, and even bark at you and refuse to listen/come near you if you "hit" them, but they won't run away. There's also no indication anywhere that kittens are in the game. But it was repeated on so many "tips and tricks" sites for the original Nintendogs series that I tried to get a dog to run away just to see what happened, because why would it be repeated so many times with such confidence if it was blatantly false? I still wonder how that all got pieced together. The "if you neglect your dogs they'll run away" part I can see being theorized but why state it as fact? Then where tf did "there's a chance they'll come back with a kitten" come from??? When Nintendogs + Kittens came out later...I half wondered if Miyamoto saw that rumor. 😂
Just so you know, many real pinball machines feature things like minigames, levels, and bossfights. They have a lot going on that people aren't aware of of because they just mash the flippers :)
If there’s any sign of RUclips’s algorithm working, it’s the fact they recommend me this vid shortly after getting addicted to this game for the first time. Good work!
This was so fun to watch and I love the dedication to finding out so much information on a game most people haven’t played in years !!! Thank you for always making quality and exciting content :)
I feel so seen by the algorithm right now I played this game relentlessly as a kid, but I wasn't good enough at it to really get far. I encountered Rayquaza a handful of times, and that's about it. But it's a really nostalgic game for me, and seeing a mechanical deep-dive on it get recommended to me basically at random makes my inner child very happy. I look forward to watching this all the way through.
42:15 SO IT MATTERED?? I always thought it didn't mattered if I had two or three lights for the catch 'em mode! That information is anywhere, not even on the speedrunning guide I was using! I still managed to complete the pokedex, but I guess I just got lucky with those pokemon!
I love to see this stuff. There’s so many little details that haven’t been recorded properly or having fake information spread. Sometimes a simple question about shiny odds can lead to rabbit holes about how to shiny hunt correctly. Beautiful stuff you did here.
This is such a fascinating timeline of a hyperfixation: "Let's play this Pokemon Pinball game, that'll be fun." "Huh, a bunch of the data online appears to be incorrect." "Let's see if I can forcibly disprove some of these rumors about this game I once thought I'd be playing for fun." "I WILL BREAK THIS GAME OR IT WILL BREAK ME." "Okay! I beat it! I beat the game....... but now I must dig into the CODE!" 😆
Caught a couple of these streams like I’m sure everyone else did. “Oh sick, pokemon pinball!” And I’m delighted to get recommended a complete video on your journey! Really love the format and presentation in video form and I’m excited to see what else you put out. Thanks for your time and effort!
This is quite the breakdown! I've been thinking about doing a series of videos (Or maybe streams) of this game thanks to you, and this video will come in VERY handy if/when I do! I've also dabbled in the pret Discord, but in my case it was for trying to see if I could edit the PokeWalker data for HGSS (I wanted to make a "Ye Olde Pokemon Go" where every Pokemon would be catchable through the Walker and you couldn't get any Pokeballs in-game so that wild grass would only be for level grinding. Nothing came of it, though; The PokeWalker code still isn't well enough understood, and I'm not a programmer!)
That's awesome you should definitely try it out! I'll keep saying that the more people that post / stream about this game the better for all of us haha (sequel plz pokemon company hi). The pret discord is awesome I wish I knew about it sooner (might have to cover other projects in there in the future)
I feel the introduction with some Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, like I was trying to find more details on Move EXP from the later games recently and I feel it's impossible to find anything more detailed than "Use move against Pokémon, it goes up in Power, PP and Accuracy"
This is the only pinball game I really have gone to sit and understand, and... Everything about the physics and animations feels right. You just have to take a few minutes to familiarize yourself and feel how smooth the whole thing is and how many little interactions every board has. I sank so many hours in that I did complete the Pokédex, and there would be runs that went so far as to catch Rayquaza twice (each Rayquaza catch is a cycle of winning 10 non-Spheal bonus stages, so make it 20 in this case). However, I barely had heard about the main topic here. I had read about the Johto starters and Aerodactyl being programmed as rare catches, but I never saw them despite having caught the Latis 2 or 3 times each, so I took it as internet gossip that was actually impossible and moved on. Turns out I was right, but only partially, as they in fact are impossible for an average person. So many hoops to get them means people like me never had a chance. This was very nice to learn about.
Dude this video is so well edited and put together. I thought it would have 100x more views. Thank you for your work. I hope serebii updates the website after this!
What an incredible first video to see from a creator, my gosh! This game was is so beloved and this is a fascinating look into what data mining looks like for this era of games.
I love Pokemon Pinball RS so much. Still play it regularly, such a treat to see an essay on it. The whole video I was gaslighting myself on whether I'd seen Aerodactyl and the rest, or if I was telling a self lie. I won't reveal the answer so as to not spoil the video!
I attempted a completionist run a couple years ago. You sir have vindicated all of the questions and frustrations I experienced while doing so. That serebii page threw me off for hours! Eventually I decided the ambiguity surrounding the Johto starters' availability just wasn't worth it and quit looking, and now I can say that I'm glad I did. Thanks for the ride!
This video has a criminally low amount of views. Absolute banger, going to binge your other videos after watching this! Out of curiosity, who did art for the thumbnail? It looks great!
You have no idea how much I appreciate this video. This is one of my top comfort games which I come back to and obsess over every now and then. After years of chasing vague, dead-end rumors about the criteria to make the Johto starters spawn, it's fantastic to see that someone finally has made a video debunking the whole thing. Even though I've already managed to 100% the dex last year via record sharing from an imported save onto an R4 cart, it truly warms my heart that no one should have to go on the same wild goose chase as I have over the years.
Absolutely excellent video - super informative, thorough, well put together, great editing, music, pacing, delivery. AND answering genuine questions and mysteries! Thank you for your hard work! I too find the 1% spawn rate suspicious compared to your experience. I don't know if you thought to do this (or someone can hack a save?) but I'd be keen to see someone go back to that save state of starters seen, 100+ mons in dex, and see if anyone else finds them quickly or not.
Fantastic video. I also went to the TCG section of that Discord and they're super nice. It's how I found out about Phantom Venusaur's code being bugged, making it impossible to get legitimately via the intended Card Pop.
It has alway been my dream to build a physical pinball machine out of this game. Have it render horizontally on a tv screen built into a pinball cabinet with the score and timer assets on a secondary display scoreboard.
I empathise with the need and want for there to be someway to naturally get the johto starters outside of using the ereader. It's like you're holdig on hope for the game developers to have looked out for the common player into the future, this is exactly how I feel too. Part of me still hopes it so as well, logically it makes sense these are locked as exclusive promos, it's nothing new in the franchise, but it would be so cool if you could somehow unlock it through natural play.
INCREDIBLE timing. just found this in my recommendations right now, but got randomly got into pinball rs (and even investigated into and successfully used some e-reader dotcodes with my emulator!) shortly before this vid was uploaded. stupidly enthused and even more hyped now
This was such an interesting watch. I grew up with this game, and while i dont have my childhood copy i do own the game physically. Got it for cheap in a hometown store a decade ago. I believe it has a full pokedex with even the bonus 4. Ill have to double check! Cheers mate.
Dude this video makes me want to play this game again. My older brother had it when we were kids and loved it, but it wasn’t my game so I couldn’t play it much haha. I’ll for sure be trying this out again.
It _should_ be possible to generate a US version compatible e-Reader card that will unlock them like the Japanese card does, which would be nice, but I wonder if it's possible to generate a card that just unlocks the pokedex entries as seen so you can catch them naturally, which would be better 🤔
As far as I know how the cards work, the games are coded with hooks only for the existing cards as they were designed. The cards don't execute arbitrary code and just act as digital keys. So unless there were any pre-existing cards for "unlock X dex entry as seen" that could be exploited, a new feature like that would need to be modded in, which would require the full decompile.
Thank you for the work you've done. Also, thank you for highlighting the hard work done by the decomp community to uncover and preserve old games that we cherish.
Additionally, if you want another vaguely-related Pokémon Pinball experience, I highly reccomend Pokémon Emerald Seaglass! In it, you can play the bonus stages of Pinball 1, to get points to redeem for Alolan Eggs! Arceus knows what sort of technical wizardry was required to make THAT feature remotely possible, but...they did it! :p
At first I was like "hey, this is that game I watch that one dude on TikTok play all the time, this should be informative" and then 10 seconds later I was like *oh it IS that dude? cool!"
I remember being like 13 years old and completing the Pokedex on this game, and literally had no idea what the rhyme or rhythm there was for catching which pokemon in which board. I just loved playing the game so much that I just ended up catching everything!
My eyes shot wide open seeing this on my recommend. Always love seeing appreciation for this game. I've been painstakingly waiting over 2 decades for a new Pokemon Pinball game. The copium has consumed me.
Some how I've also never heard of this game despite my love of pokemon but seeing it here I clearly missed out. The art and animations look amazing and the mechanics and pokedex filling seem fun. With all the "pokemon clones" that have been made over the years that change and build upon the "pokemon formula" I'm surprised there's never been Pokemon pinball clones that do the same.
Firstly let me just say this was a fantastic video! I don't think I've ever seen anybody talk about this game outside of my circle of friends before and the depth you went into on the nuances of this games mechanics was fascinating and really got my nostalgia going. XD When I was a kid I picked up a used Copy of RS Pinball and seeing this video made me curious because I remember the save file it came with (which I never erased) had a 100% completed PokeDex. Booted it up and Low and Behold Totodile, Cyndaquil, Chikorita and Aerodactyl are caught and recorded! Though considering the highest score on the Ruby board, set by "AAAA", was and still is 999,999,999,999 something tells me the previous owner probably used an action replay at some point. (Highest score I ever got was 521,096,300)
I miss pinball games by nintendo, metroid prime pinball is also amazing Also its very much worth getting into pinball in general, most modern pinball games can be completed and arent only about high scores
Now that romhack just needs to remove the pokedex requirement from the johto starters and aerodactyl. Also, thanks for the info. Props to the team as well.
Correction: 00:31:23 @JohnGamefreak was actually a temp username for @red031000, my apologies to her and wanted to be sure she was given proper credit! (thank you for your service to our galaxy 🙏)
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:22 Why do people love this game so much?
00:05:14 The mysteries begin…
00:08:21 Serebii couldn’t be more wrong
00:10:47 How to force the Johto starters to spawn
00:13:40 …what if there is another way?
00:20:28 The real hunt begins.
00:23:45 Debunking the Ruby Board myth
00:27:47 What is the “pret” discord?
00:33:55 The code behind the mysteries.
00:38:39 A deep dive into spawn mechanics.
00:42:37 Final Suspicions
00:44:39 Thanks for all the support! (on streams, videos, and Patreon!)
Why not put this in the video description so the video itself has the chapter markers?
@@gunfighter009 woops meant to do that also thanks for the reminder!
Might be worth mentioning to people in a short or something that the guy who’s selling the ereader cards noticed the extra traffic and has significantly raised his price. I think it was around 60usd, now it’s 100usd
Hey man, Great Video and congrats on clearing up decades of misinfo on this game!
I live in Lee County and know how bad those 2 hurricanes were! We got lucky this time and only lost power for 2 days instead of the 2 weeks like last time... We even went out and bought a generator before this hurricane season but, knock on wood, didn't really need it... This time!
Keep up the great content, brother. I'm looking forward to your next vid!
31:48 in case it wasn't obvious, hi, i'm the spirit of pikalax aka pikalaxalt and i demand recognition for being the bearer of bad news in this instance
Let it be known that our current high score (on cartridge) is 12.7 billion and we are coming for you saxman.
OOOOOOOOOO
Never did I ever think I'd find the official channel for a NFL team beefing with a random guy over the internet about a high score in a handheld spin-off Pokemon game. What a magical world we live in.
Gmedly breaking the rumor cycle by encountering Chikorita and Aerodactyl on the Sapphire board is an absolute powermove and iconic moment in gaming history
The way you kept mentioning it, I was waiting to find out that being at zero lives is some kind of trigger for rare pokemon.
I'm posting about that too.
Might be the unc12b itself
same idk why 😂
HAHA god could you imagine (truly a hunt only I would be capable of)
I have been in contact with the Serebii admin. He said he never got your email. He said he is working on fixing the Pinball pages and clarify the Johto starters page.
All the old pages really need to be updated, especially things like Pokemon Channel
@@haxx64 And the manga pages! Good lord I swear they haven't been updated in 15 years.
@@MasherfulIsn't Serebii administered by just one dude?
Of course just one person cannot update everything, specially a series so huge like Pokémon.
@@nidohime6233 Pretty sure you're right, and surely they couldn't. They actually have gone up to SM so I'm just talking about the character bios. I remember pouring over those as a kid and being excited for the DP characters to get added but they never did. But you know maybe that's a good thing, it's like a little time capsule.
@@nidohime6233 I'm pretty sure Joe only is working on updating this because of being called out. There's no way this was the only e-mail over the years over the misinformation. I've sent him e-mails that never been answered (or fixed), and like, it's fair, he's only one guy and this is all very, very subtle errors. But there's no way you somehow miss every single e-mail about this game (when it such a major error with the biomes) over two decades.
God, the pokedex bit is actually really brilliant. So many pinball tables have tons of secrets, because they figured out pretty early in the history of pinball that it feels _good_ to do clever shit to get higher scores--and then someone came up with "Wizard Mode", the idea of a super special game state where _everything is active at once_ and you can keep going until you lose a ball...
So, the idea of building the entire game around hunting for those secrets, as part of trying to catch specific pokemon, is _brilliant._
BTW, _really_ interesting that all of your catches happened when you were out of lives. I wonder if there's some kind of special RNG adjustment for that?
@@TehNoobiness The no remaining lives bit may just be an artifact of gmedley's level of play, given the five captures/evolutions requirement tied to those rare encounters.
A lot of modern pinball games actually play with this concept. It's common nowadays to have to start or complete a bunch of "modes" (basically minigames with special start conditions) to progressively unlock access to increasingly powerful modes. These may or may not be multiballs, which end when you drain down to 1 ball, or if not, they may be timed instead. Wizard modes, which are basically equivalent to a final boss, nearly always are multiballs, and sometimes they're even timed with unlimited balls (which relaunch into the playfield immediately if drained). They don't necessarily activate every board mechanic (though the first ever one in Black Knight 2000, known as King's Ransom, did), but they're almost always super high scoring and worth aspiring to. The modern school of design almost always makes wizard mode priority, your score there will be a *huge* portion of your overall score.
There's even a small handful of modern games that can be "beaten" like a traditional arcade game, where completing the wizard mode actually ends the game. After all, there's pretty much no way you're getting to it twice because of how intense the unlock requirements are. On that note, some games even have official flowchart PDF's for mode completions, and they can get so convoluted - look up the Wizard of Oz or Toy Story 4 rulesheets if you want a real trip. There's even a couple older games like this - Simpsons Pinball Party and Lord of the Rings come to mind. Of course, not every game is like this - old and new alike, you can find every level of complexity you might want in a game. You just gotta look around with 'em and find out.
@ I really love Wizard Mode as a concept. There's a game called Projections that has a similar idea, in the form of Focus Mode, where enemies spawn indefinitely and the wave doesn't end until you take a hit (although there's a special enemy type unique to Focus Mode that basically exists as the ultimate parry timing check).
I honestly kinda wanna make an arena FPS that borrows from advanced pinball rules. Kinda like Black Ops Zombies' secrets. Oh, I could take inspiration from Nerf Arena Blast's score targets, too...
Reddit comment
watching the pinball community form and solidify through this is crazy, what a treat
months & months of effort and it shows so clearly in this video, phenomenal work
no u
Fun little bonus fact: there were plans to include a 4th gen pokemon pinball game with designs of a pinball board, but was scrapped incredibly early along with the game.
That's a shame, because the DS would've been perfect for a Pokemon pinball game. Heck even Metroid got a DS pinball game, and it was loads of fun.
so dumb that got cancelled but dash actually released
@felixdaniels37
That's what I always thought! I loved this game, and now if Pokémon puts out another pinball game, they've squandered the chance that they had to put it on a DS system!
@@felixdaniels37it wouldve been made by the same people
Switch seems perfect for it again though. Make it so you have to play with joycons detached or with a controller and just work with the screen flipped vertical... Badabing badaboom. Goldmine.
4:32 You know the devs know their stuff when you can pull off the forbidden ball saving techniques in game.
That Hank Hill bwaa at 21:15 caught me so off guard 😂
Yeah that's a problem with Serebii, they really need someone to update the older post. Especially for the spin-offs.
So great to see love for digital pinball games. If people are looking for more pinball games, Jupiter actually made another pinball game between Pokemon Pinball GBC and Pokemon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire. Super Robot Pinball for the GBC was Japan only, but has an english patch, and you can really see the steps they take between the two Pokemon pinball games. All three of their pinball games are gems.
I need to personally thank you for this, I've been a big fan of Pokemon Pinball R/S for years and had NO clue there was a Super Robot Pinball game from the same people... I'm a huge fan of Getter Robo and am always scrounging for new content, so sitting down and playing this for a few hours made my day
@nyanmaster99 always glad to spread the news. When I found out there was more pinball it was like a birthday gift
Dude was probally feeling like a maniac slowly finding out everything recorded was wrong. I remember as a kid I would read neoseeker posts of blatantly wrong info and being baffled on how no-one noticed.
it is sadly an unfortunate fact that spinoff game guides on serebii, no matter how recently the game released, are full of misinformation (if not big gaps in information entirely) no matter how quickly others reached out to help correct it within the game's early lifespan. New Snap not only suffered deeply within its early days, but also remains to this day full of huge gaps and incorrect info. Shoutouts to Jungle Day, where a segment for a Beautifly location just cuts off midsentence! It wasnt missing critical info, but it's telling of the neglect in quality some guides suffer. Those beautifly, in fact, sure "will appear, and will".
Nowadays, speedrunner communities are where it's at. c:
Your work, and the work of that wonderful decomp team, are doing significant things for archival and educational purposes. thank you for helping to bridge the gap in knowledge with an easily digestible video!
Yeah, it's basically a given that if Joe isn't all that interested in a spin off (which typically seems to be the case) he doesn't really put that much care into the pages on said games. I know that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX pages had a lot of misinformation on them as well. And as far as I'm aware was never corrected, even through multiple people gave him the correct info (and even offered to basically write the updated pages)
I called out a few errors on Twitter and he told me not to throw shade and that all websites have errors. He told me to report them on his discord instead, so I did
They still haven't been fixed
Messed up that of the biggest sources of Pokemon info is just unreliable sometimes due to personal desiterest from the main guy.
But he will def try focus on twitter fights tho lmao
@@thenewranger1234 Joe was never the same after the Nintendo Badge Arcade.
@@thenewranger1234 i remember playing pokemon conquest and trying to use the serebii guide and finding tons of things that were wrong, it made the game a lot harder 😭
Thank you for pointing out how Serebii has a lot of issues with older stuff, I tried bringing this up a few years ago on the forums, but didn’t get any traction
I'm not typically a fan of pinball games, but Pokémon Pinball kept me hooked because of the collecting element. It's criminal that Pokémon never released any more after Ruby & Sapphire.
while a 1% boost with the Rayquaza flag doesn't seem like that much, it essentially cuts the number of encounters needed to see super rare pokemon in half. That combined with some luck makes me feel like your experience of finding the starters+Aerodactyl isn't all that anomalous, and that there probably isn't anything unknown or unusual which explains it which you dont already know, at least without any evidence to suggest that's the case, anyways.
Also, this video was amazing. Super well put together
Percentages are always incredibly easy to underestimate, so I'm not surprised why a lot of people would think that going from 1% to 2% isn't that big. It's not a big number! Two comes after one, how could it make any difference at all? But ever since I first played Balatro, I've found it immensely helpful to think of percentages as... I don't know what to call it, but for example, 1% is 1 in 100 and 2% is 1 in 50. The increase is vast and much easier to see when put like that.
going from percentages (1% or 2%) to odds (1:100 or 1:50) can be a lot more intuitive!
This is amazing. The concept of digital archeology is insane, helluva nice job 👍
I finally have an answer to why Pichu has eluded me so long on my attempted 100% Pokédex file when I had no problems getting it as a kid!! Thank you so much for this video, and thanks to all the researchers in the Discord!
29:57 Actually the instructions for the e-Reader screen are plainly stated on the back of each and every e-Reader card for the game and it's a requeriment to get the Johto starters at all, dunno how they missed on that detail (I suppose because they're looking at raw code without any context)
After picking up my cart after a few years after my last go at it, I completed the RS Pinball dex just a few days ago! Had to dig for some answers on how to catch the last few fellas, so to have a vid like this show up now really is something.
I remember stumbling on one of your streams of this while scrolling tiktok before bed one night. Was the only time I ever stumbled across a live that I just couldn't turn away from. Since then, I started playing Pokemon Pinball RS as well, and I love it! Glad I was able to stumble across your content again!
it blows my mind that the ruby board myth was ever even a thing lmao, it was SO obvious it was talking about them as board elements the second i read that description
I clicked because of the stunning thumbnail and stayed for the content! Keep up the great work!🎉
Agreed!
Makes me realize how many websites that just put down false information that people just believe because they were the first to report the information
It's not that they are trying to mislead people, it's just that they themselves misinterpreted their own data (like all of the people claiming to have found the starters without e-Reader despite of being exclusive to the cards more than certainly were playing with cheats on an emulator)
I know they aren't misleading people, but its very intriguing to me as someone who likes thinking about information in a historic way (not really in an old history way more of an appreciation of how things lead to this point)
It intrigues me not in a way that they did us wrong, but in a way that there's way more possibilities even in the oldest things we thought were understood.
With how its presented in these websites of information, you'd the work is done but its not, even when its marked as complete!
Research never stops and it makes me think about a lot of the websites that had put down unreliable or false information.
Its fun to think about that, at some point, somebody will come in and pick up the research again and verify whats true and whats false and wrongly understood, and correct it later!
Who knows? Thinking about how events lead to more events is just something that always strikes me.
Bro learning how mass media works.
Wait till you hear about the news.
Yeah this isnt news this is called video games
"If you severely neglect your dog's they'll run away, and there's a chance they'll come back with a kitten!"
This was about Nintendogs. None of this is true, not even that the dogs will run away...they'll get fleas and be sad and hungry, and even bark at you and refuse to listen/come near you if you "hit" them, but they won't run away. There's also no indication anywhere that kittens are in the game. But it was repeated on so many "tips and tricks" sites for the original Nintendogs series that I tried to get a dog to run away just to see what happened, because why would it be repeated so many times with such confidence if it was blatantly false?
I still wonder how that all got pieced together. The "if you neglect your dogs they'll run away" part I can see being theorized but why state it as fact? Then where tf did "there's a chance they'll come back with a kitten" come from???
When Nintendogs + Kittens came out later...I half wondered if Miyamoto saw that rumor. 😂
While 出演 (shutsuen) translates to english as appearance, it literally means to appear in a play or show and clearly implies that they cant be caught.
So would a more accurate translation be that they "make a cameo"?
@ i guess yeah but idk how many kids would have understood that haha
Just so you know, many real pinball machines feature things like minigames, levels, and bossfights. They have a lot going on that people aren't aware of of because they just mash the flippers :)
Real ones doesn't help either by how much money there end costing 😅
@@nidohime6233 And just how prone balls are to flinging themselves into the outer channels.
Certainly doesn't help that IRL pinballs love flinging themselves into the outer channels.
If there’s any sign of RUclips’s algorithm working, it’s the fact they recommend me this vid shortly after getting addicted to this game for the first time.
Good work!
This game means a lot to me, so I’m glad to see it finally got proper documentation. AMAZINGLY well done video!
This was so fun to watch and I love the dedication to finding out so much information on a game most people haven’t played in years !!! Thank you for always making quality and exciting content :)
Thank you for tagging along with it all! Can't wait to explore even more.
why yes, i’d love to watch an almost-hour long video about one of my absolute favorite games. thanks for this
I feel so seen by the algorithm right now
I played this game relentlessly as a kid, but I wasn't good enough at it to really get far. I encountered Rayquaza a handful of times, and that's about it. But it's a really nostalgic game for me, and seeing a mechanical deep-dive on it get recommended to me basically at random makes my inner child very happy. I look forward to watching this all the way through.
such a lovely journey to watch progress. Seeing you progress from being so clueless to all this knowledge is amazing!
oh it was embarrassing watching old footy of myself like i sucked LOL (spoilers I still do)
42:15 SO IT MATTERED?? I always thought it didn't mattered if I had two or three lights for the catch 'em mode! That information is anywhere, not even on the speedrunning guide I was using! I still managed to complete the pokedex, but I guess I just got lucky with those pokemon!
RUclips recommended finally understands what I want god bless
I love to see this stuff. There’s so many little details that haven’t been recorded properly or having fake information spread. Sometimes a simple question about shiny odds can lead to rabbit holes about how to shiny hunt correctly. Beautiful stuff you did here.
incredible work, excellent storytelling, and an invaluable resource to boot!
thank you exactly what I was hoping to achieve with this one!
This is such a fascinating timeline of a hyperfixation:
"Let's play this Pokemon Pinball game, that'll be fun."
"Huh, a bunch of the data online appears to be incorrect."
"Let's see if I can forcibly disprove some of these rumors about this game I once thought I'd be playing for fun."
"I WILL BREAK THIS GAME OR IT WILL BREAK ME."
"Okay! I beat it! I beat the game....... but now I must dig into the CODE!" 😆
Man, having messed around with this classic as a kid... I love this game! Thank you for the info. I might work on getting a dex...
Caught a couple of these streams like I’m sure everyone else did. “Oh sick, pokemon pinball!” And I’m delighted to get recommended a complete video on your journey! Really love the format and presentation in video form and I’m excited to see what else you put out. Thanks for your time and effort!
Ive intepreted "bonus appearance on ruby board" for chicorita as just how it's chilling in the board.
This is quite the breakdown! I've been thinking about doing a series of videos (Or maybe streams) of this game thanks to you, and this video will come in VERY handy if/when I do!
I've also dabbled in the pret Discord, but in my case it was for trying to see if I could edit the PokeWalker data for HGSS (I wanted to make a "Ye Olde Pokemon Go" where every Pokemon would be catchable through the Walker and you couldn't get any Pokeballs in-game so that wild grass would only be for level grinding. Nothing came of it, though; The PokeWalker code still isn't well enough understood, and I'm not a programmer!)
That's awesome you should definitely try it out! I'll keep saying that the more people that post / stream about this game the better for all of us haha (sequel plz pokemon company hi). The pret discord is awesome I wish I knew about it sooner (might have to cover other projects in there in the future)
I feel the introduction with some Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, like I was trying to find more details on Move EXP from the later games recently and I feel it's impossible to find anything more detailed than "Use move against Pokémon, it goes up in Power, PP and Accuracy"
It was very interesting getting those 4 special pokemon to appear was when there was 0 lives left.
As a digital pinball enthusiast, you're right about this being one of the best games in the genre, ever.
Awesome video, awesome story, awesome data. Hope to see more!
Yesss! I played the heck out of this, glad to finally see someone cover it as more that "just another version of the older pokemon pinball game"
Very cool video! It's interesting to see what game knowledge we can take for granted and how hard it is to get concrete answers.
This is a fantastic video - keep kicking ass!
This is the only pinball game I really have gone to sit and understand, and... Everything about the physics and animations feels right. You just have to take a few minutes to familiarize yourself and feel how smooth the whole thing is and how many little interactions every board has. I sank so many hours in that I did complete the Pokédex, and there would be runs that went so far as to catch Rayquaza twice (each Rayquaza catch is a cycle of winning 10 non-Spheal bonus stages, so make it 20 in this case).
However, I barely had heard about the main topic here. I had read about the Johto starters and Aerodactyl being programmed as rare catches, but I never saw them despite having caught the Latis 2 or 3 times each, so I took it as internet gossip that was actually impossible and moved on. Turns out I was right, but only partially, as they in fact are impossible for an average person. So many hoops to get them means people like me never had a chance. This was very nice to learn about.
Fascinating video, loved these games since I was a kid
Really love the dedication to everyone involved in the project
Good job everyone!
Dude this video is so well edited and put together. I thought it would have 100x more views. Thank you for your work. I hope serebii updates the website after this!
What an incredible first video to see from a creator, my gosh! This game was is so beloved and this is a fascinating look into what data mining looks like for this era of games.
I love Pokemon Pinball RS so much. Still play it regularly, such a treat to see an essay on it. The whole video I was gaslighting myself on whether I'd seen Aerodactyl and the rest, or if I was telling a self lie. I won't reveal the answer so as to not spoil the video!
I attempted a completionist run a couple years ago. You sir have vindicated all of the questions and frustrations I experienced while doing so. That serebii page threw me off for hours! Eventually I decided the ambiguity surrounding the Johto starters' availability just wasn't worth it and quit looking, and now I can say that I'm glad I did. Thanks for the ride!
Love these kinds of videos and you added a satisfying conclusion. Thanks to you and to everyone who helped make this happen
This video has a criminally low amount of views. Absolute banger, going to binge your other videos after watching this!
Out of curiosity, who did art for the thumbnail? It looks great!
You have no idea how much I appreciate this video.
This is one of my top comfort games which I come back to and obsess over every now and then.
After years of chasing vague, dead-end rumors about the criteria to make the Johto starters spawn, it's fantastic to see that someone finally has made a video debunking the whole thing.
Even though I've already managed to 100% the dex last year via record sharing from an imported save onto an R4 cart, it truly warms my heart that no one should have to go on the same wild goose chase as I have over the years.
thanks for the manual captions instead of just the autogenerated ones!!
Absolutely excellent video - super informative, thorough, well put together, great editing, music, pacing, delivery. AND answering genuine questions and mysteries! Thank you for your hard work!
I too find the 1% spawn rate suspicious compared to your experience. I don't know if you thought to do this (or someone can hack a save?) but I'd be keen to see someone go back to that save state of starters seen, 100+ mons in dex, and see if anyone else finds them quickly or not.
Fantastic video. I also went to the TCG section of that Discord and they're super nice. It's how I found out about Phantom Venusaur's code being bugged, making it impossible to get
legitimately via the intended Card Pop.
It has alway been my dream to build a physical pinball machine out of this game.
Have it render horizontally on a tv screen built into a pinball cabinet with the score and timer assets on a secondary display scoreboard.
I literally just started playing this the other day. I appreciate the save file!!! Thank you for sharing thiss!!!
I empathise with the need and want for there to be someway to naturally get the johto starters outside of using the ereader. It's like you're holdig on hope for the game developers to have looked out for the common player into the future, this is exactly how I feel too. Part of me still hopes it so as well, logically it makes sense these are locked as exclusive promos, it's nothing new in the franchise, but it would be so cool if you could somehow unlock it through natural play.
This was such a good video bro! I learned so much from this that I didn't even know! I hope you get that pokedex speedrun wr soon! Your a good man 👍
4:39 Excuse me?????
Greats video, I’ve been obsessed with Pinball Ruby and Sapphire as well.
Hearing bonus appearance made me think the chance of them appearing on that board to catch may be slightly higher.
INCREDIBLE timing. just found this in my recommendations right now, but got randomly got into pinball rs (and even investigated into and successfully used some e-reader dotcodes with my emulator!) shortly before this vid was uploaded. stupidly enthused and even more hyped now
This was such an interesting watch. I grew up with this game, and while i dont have my childhood copy i do own the game physically. Got it for cheap in a hometown store a decade ago. I believe it has a full pokedex with even the bonus 4. Ill have to double check! Cheers mate.
Dude this video makes me want to play this game again. My older brother had it when we were kids and loved it, but it wasn’t my game so I couldn’t play it much haha. I’ll for sure be trying this out again.
Just wanted to mention the thumbnail is a banger. Tons of effort went into it, it clearly paid off.
As someone who played Pinball RS a couple years ago and got very confused by all the Johto starter stuff, I can't thank you enough for doing this.
It _should_ be possible to generate a US version compatible e-Reader card that will unlock them like the Japanese card does, which would be nice, but I wonder if it's possible to generate a card that just unlocks the pokedex entries as seen so you can catch them naturally, which would be better 🤔
As far as I know how the cards work, the games are coded with hooks only for the existing cards as they were designed. The cards don't execute arbitrary code and just act as digital keys. So unless there were any pre-existing cards for "unlock X dex entry as seen" that could be exploited, a new feature like that would need to be modded in, which would require the full decompile.
I'm not a fan of Pokemon and I'm not a fan of Pinball, but I watched this whole video and stayed interested throughout. Definately subscribing.
Thank you for the work you've done. Also, thank you for highlighting the hard work done by the decomp community to uncover and preserve old games that we cherish.
I had never heard of this game ever, downloading the rom immediately
THE Detroit Lions wasn't something I was thinking of hearing in a video about Pokemon, let alone on a video of a somewhat obscure spinoff game
Additionally, if you want another vaguely-related Pokémon Pinball experience, I highly reccomend Pokémon Emerald Seaglass! In it, you can play the bonus stages of Pinball 1, to get points to redeem for Alolan Eggs! Arceus knows what sort of technical wizardry was required to make THAT feature remotely possible, but...they did it! :p
great video! Really enjoy content that explores more of the pokemon franchise aside from the mainlines
This was such a great watch, I need to give this game a try
At first I was like "hey, this is that game I watch that one dude on TikTok play all the time, this should be informative" and then 10 seconds later I was like *oh it IS that dude? cool!"
I remember being like 13 years old and completing the Pokedex on this game, and literally had no idea what the rhyme or rhythm there was for catching which pokemon in which board. I just loved playing the game so much that I just ended up catching everything!
My eyes shot wide open seeing this on my recommend. Always love seeing appreciation for this game. I've been painstakingly waiting over 2 decades for a new Pokemon Pinball game. The copium has consumed me.
Been playing this lately. Gonna enjoy watching this, perfect timing lol
Absolutely top tier content my friend. You are an absolute legend.
Some how I've also never heard of this game despite my love of pokemon but seeing it here I clearly missed out. The art and animations look amazing and the mechanics and pokedex filling seem fun. With all the "pokemon clones" that have been made over the years that change and build upon the "pokemon formula" I'm surprised there's never been Pokemon pinball clones that do the same.
Firstly let me just say this was a fantastic video! I don't think I've ever seen anybody talk about this game outside of my circle of friends before and the depth you went into on the nuances of this games mechanics was fascinating and really got my nostalgia going. XD
When I was a kid I picked up a used Copy of RS Pinball and seeing this video made me curious because I remember the save file it came with (which I never erased) had a 100% completed PokeDex.
Booted it up and Low and Behold Totodile, Cyndaquil, Chikorita and Aerodactyl are caught and recorded!
Though considering the highest score on the Ruby board, set by "AAAA", was and still is 999,999,999,999 something tells me the previous owner probably used an action replay at some point.
(Highest score I ever got was 521,096,300)
Excellent video!! I logged into both of my accounts to give you a sub. Great presentation of your journey!!
thank you YT algorithm, very cool
You definitely have to be in a certain kind of mindset when playing a Pokémon Pinball game. It's just so different from your traditional pinball.
I VAGUELY remember coming across a chickorita when I was younger and failing to catch it. I'll have to double check on my cart.
Also, I pretty much exclusively played on the sapphire board and only caught Latias.
Will update in a bit when my sp charges
Turns out I never did, huh. But then again, this is a memory from over 20 years ago, so who knows
God tier video m8!
My heart skipped a beat when I saw the Cyndaquil! Sent a little something to WhenGryphonsFly for their hard work.
BALL ALERT!!!!!
There were 8 ball sized pokemon seen in this video!!!
doing gods work
There's something novel about pinball adventure games like Pokemon and Mario.
I'd love if the genre made a return.
I miss pinball games by nintendo, metroid prime pinball is also amazing
Also its very much worth getting into pinball in general, most modern pinball games can be completed and arent only about high scores
Amazing video!
I really enjoyed your video and made me want to play Pokémon pinball ruby and sapphire again :)
Thanks for showcasing, one of my favourite games from my childhood. As a kid I didn’t even entertain the idea of being able to get the Johto starters.
thanks for making this, i loved this game as a kid. just nice to see anybody caring about it
Now that romhack just needs to remove the pokedex requirement from the johto starters and aerodactyl.
Also, thanks for the info. Props to the team as well.