Making plans for completing the gen 3 pokedex, need opinions and advice.

[OilFreak]

Pretty soon here I'm going to be starting gen 3 with the plan of completing the pokedex on official hardware. My plan is:
Use already owned GBA SP for playing
Acquire Wii U, gba to Gmecube link cable, Gamecube to usb adaptor
Mod Wii U to play Gamecube games
Use Wii U for Colosseum, XD Gale of darkness, and pokemon box.
Now here's where I need advice and knowledge

What form do I play the actual GBA games on?
Ideally there would be a way to use GBA flashcarts with the gamecube link cable, but I don't know how that would work. If that is possible, I would simply get a flashcart and use that to connect to the gamecube games. If not, I'd have to aquire real copies of the games, and probably change out the batteries (which I am totally capable of).
Moreover, I need to know if the Gamecube to USB cable can't actually be used on a modded Wii U.

For those not in the know, the Wii U contains Wii hardware, allowing Wii games to be played natively. The Wii was just an upgraded Gamecube, so backwards compatibility works perfectley. Even though gamecube compatability was nixed in later Wii models and the Wii U, it's still possible through modding.
However, the only way I could use a gamecube link cable is though the USB adaptor, and USB creates lag. The amount of lag is very small, but I'm worried it's enough to make the communication between the GBA and the Gamecube not work properly. If anyone is able to test this, i would be infinitely greatful.

I'm open to advice, thoughts, and opinions on my plan. Let me know if you have a better way of doing things, or something I should know.
Thank you!

Edit: It has come to my attention that the GBA link cable will not work with the usb adaptopr. I will be opting to get a model 1 wii instead. (They're probably cheaper anyways)

 

[G25900]

Omega DE can be used for GCN links in its Mode B setting (Apparently can work in A too with soft resetting with the Pokémon games but B is literally made for this purpose) so that will do you.

Also the batteries in Gen 3 games are only used for berry growing, the save doesn't require one, so you don't need to change unless you need berries.

Also you planning on just completing the Dex or making a living Dex?

https://i-made-a.website/pokemon_gen3/pokedex_tracker was made for making a living Dex but it also a decent way to track stuff, eventually will have a full guide like the first two gens but has enough to help already.

I'm currently building a living Dex for Home with each mon/forme caught in it's debut gen, I'm done with gens 1/2/3 and currently working on Gen 4. Gen 3 required linking to Pokémon Channel so I can confirm that GCN link works with the DE.

 

[MikaDubbz]

Honestly, I would just use PKSM on a hacked 3DS. It can take your pokemon from a gen 3 VC inject you made (note, VC GBA games on the 3DS are not emulation, but are GBA game files being played natively) and transfer it to any gen 3-7 game on your 3DS. So play gen 3 on your 3DS, when you're ready to transfer, use PKSM to get them into a gen 6 or 7 title, and then use Pokemon Bank to transfer them to Pokemon Home. And for gens 1-2 you can use the official VC titles (or injects if done properly) with Pokemon Transporter to get those Pokemon to Pokemon Home as well. That's what makes the 3DS so amazing for Pokemon, through the combined work of both official means and amazing work by the homebrew scene, any Pokemon you catch from any gen 1 through 7 game you play on your 3DS can quite easily be transferred into Home. Making a nice hacked out 3DS the ultimate gen 1-7 Pokemon gaming machine.

 

[G25900]

OP was specifically asking about doing it on official hardware.

I did it on official hardware just for the fun of it as I have a modded GBA, plus Gen 1 is handled better as the VC emulator is subpar like not supporting hardware colour pallettes.

I'll be transfering the saves over to 3DS copies to transfer to home though as 3>5 takes forever without PKSM. I do need to test that PKSM moves in a legitimate way though, like I know it allows HM moves to be moved which isn't possible, so they need to be deleted before moving gens.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Is the gamecube required to get a complete pokedex? I thought you just needed two GBA games to trade the pokemon missing from the other. That should be enough for the regional dex.
National dex requires the pokemon from the first two games. So fire red or leaf green would also be required to trade with. So that's like four games. Also those missing event pokemon, E-reader for the eon ticket...

 

[RAHelllord]

Nintendont does not support the GC Link Cable on a Wii U, you can only use it on a regular Wii with the GC controller ports directly on the console. Using one of the adapters that connect via USB does not work on either Wii or Wii U.

So, if you want to use real hardware for anything you'll either want a GC or a Wii, and a Wii would probably be cheaper if you don't have copies of the pokemon games flying around.

As for flash carts, I only tested battles on my GC with the link connection but it did connect just fine booting the emerald directly from my EverDrive GBA Mini. I haven't tested my regular EZ Flash Omega, but it should work as well, just start the rom when the GC game tells you to turn your game boy on. It should boot and properly perform the handshake for the connection.

Is the gamecube required to get a complete pokedex? I thought you just needed two GBA games to trade the pokemon missing from the other.

There are a few exclusive pokemon to the GC games that you can trade over, but they don't count for the pokedex afaik. Though I haven't looked into it too much yet since I'm still waiting on a few pieces for my GC to arrive.

 

[MikaDubbz]

OP was specifically asking about doing it on official hardware.

I did it on official hardware just for the fun of it as I have a modded GBA, plus Gen 1 is handled better as the VC emulator is subpar like not supporting hardware colour pallettes.

I'll be transfering the saves over to 3DS copies to transfer to home though as 3>5 takes forever without PKSM. I do need to test that PKSM moves in a legitimate way though, like I know it allows HM moves to be moved which isn't possible, so they need to be deleted before moving gens.

Yes I'm aware of all of this. But when you're talking GBA games on a 3DS, it's hard for me to not consider it official hardware. Those GBA games aren't being emulated, they're being handled natively, though you need digital copies of the games in question, much like using Nintendont to play GameCube games on a Wii U. For me, I'd consider such playing of a Nintendo game on a Nintendo system as official as it gets without being legitimately official if that makes any sense lol.

To your other point, about Gen 1 games on 3DS, you can mod in a single GBC color palette for any Game Boy game with the injector while maintaining the ability to still transfer Pokemon legitimately, though the colors wont adapt and change based on what you're doing like they do in the official GB games on a GBC or Super Game Boy, but I dunno, I made my copies of Red, Blue and Green each have their own Red, Blue, or Green palette respectively, and it's pretty satisfying, and of course, Yellow was programmed as a Color game (though it's color schemes are more akin to a normal Game Boy game on a GBC), so that one natively does have the adapting palette thing I was talking about on 3DS. And then I also found fan-made DX versions of Red and Blue that give the games full color which I also installed to my home menu, and with a little tinkering in the injector, you can still maintain the ability to transfer those Pokemon from the romhacks and having the whole process believe they're vanilla Pokemon games and allow transfers to occur without issue.

 

[G25900]

Yes I'm aware of all of this. But when you're talking GBA games on a 3DS, it's hard for me to not consider it official hardware. Those GBA games aren't being emulated, they're being handled natively, though you need digital copies of the games in question, much like using Nintendont to play GameCube games on a Wii U. For me, I'd consider such playing of a Nintendo game on a Nintendo system as official as it gets without being legitimately official if that makes any sense lol.

To your other point, about Gen 1 games on 3DS, you can mod in a single GBC color palette for any Game Boy game with the injector while maintaining the ability to still transfer Pokemon legitimately, though the colors wont adapt and change based on what you're doing like they do in the official GB games on a GBC or Super Game Boy, but I dunno, I made my copies of Red, Blue and Green each have their own Red, Blue, or Green palette respectively, and it's pretty satisfying, and of course, Yellow was programmed as a Color game (though it's color schemes are more akin to a normal Game Boy game on a GBC), so that one natively does have the adapting palette thing I was talking about on 3DS. And then I also found fan-made DX versions of Red and Blue that give the games full color which I also installed to my home menu, and with a little tinkering in the injector, you can still maintain the ability to transfer those Pokemon from the romhacks and having the whole process believe they're vanilla Pokemon games and allow transfers to occur without issue.

3DS gen 3 games don't allow trading so whether their clever usage of hardware designed for DS BC to run GBA games is considered official hardware or not is irrelevant (I'd say it might as well be legit as well but it lacks link so it's out). There's no way to finish either full Pokédex or full living Dex (Or in my case all Pokémon first appearing in Gen 3) without trading unless you either manually change it via PKSM or use a rom hack. Now if I'm going to start changing Pokémon via PKSM then I might as well just start injecting version exclusives and other stuff as well, the whole point of what I'm doing is to catch everything in the games themselves. Rom hacks are out because any Pokémon a hack would be useful for getting would be either illegal or easily indentifiable as coming from a non-vanilla source without even more breeding than what's already required.

Yeah I'm aware of ways to colourize them which I could do or I could just play the games that I already have on hardware that runs it properly with zero work, have it run at a correct resolution without a static overlay (or mess around removing it), and not have a big dumb blank screen underneath it the whole time, resolution issues also apply to gen 3. I have N3DS XL so these issues are literally bigger than with a standard model.

Side note Yellow is only programmed to be colour over here, Japanese version needs the hardware palletes, which is why the JP 3DS version is in black and white, because Nintendo sucks at emulating their own hardware.

I've specifically set out this home living Dex to have everything caught on vanilla versions of the game and be as close to original experience as possible, playing Channel for Jirachi for example, with everything caught in it's debut generation, including alternate formes and female differences (Gen 1-3 mons with gender differences had to be male in their gens then females caught in Gen 4 as that's when they debuted). This did create the fun activity of playing through the entirety of Leaf Green along with catching 60 Pokémon I didn't need just to get two fucking Unown with a 1% encounter rate each (!? Unowns), I'd also need to do HGSS just for a female Torchic at the very end, so I decided Gen 1 and 2 females will be caught there instead of Platinum.

PKSM use for transfer is still a maybe until I'm satisfied it transfers up as it should. I've been able to get Pokémon that are almost legal but not quite transfer to home fine and it's only when fully inspecting them via PKhex that illegality is visible. PKSM is great but it does still have issues especially with it's 3rd gen support, that can cause issues with complete legality.

 

[MikaDubbz]

3DS gen 3 games don't allow trading so whether their clever usage of hardware designed for DS BC to run GBA games is considered official hardware or not is irrelevant (I'd say it might as well be legit as well but it lacks link so it's out). There's no way to finish either full Pokédex or full living Dex (Or in my case all Pokémon first appearing in Gen 3) without trading unless you either manually change it via PKSM or use a rom hack. Now if I'm going to start changing Pokémon via PKSM then I might as well just start injecting version exclusives and other stuff as well, the whole point of what I'm doing is to catch everything in the games themselves. Rom hacks are out because any Pokémon a hack would be useful for getting would be either illegal or easily indentifiable as coming from a non-vanilla source without even more breeding than what's already required.

Not sure why it's irrelevant, it's legit Nintendo hardware natively playing gen 3 games. You can't trade within those Gen 3 games, true, but you can play both versions on the 3DS without issue, and again use PKSM to transfer them to a later game like gen 7 where you can trade the Pokemon to another gen 7 game and make them legit evolve, frankly that's probably way more feasible today than to find 2 GBAs and a link cable. Not that the latter is impossible now, but if you don't already have the hardware you need, you'll have a much easier time in this day and age getting together with another 3DS than you will to get another GBA and GBA link cable.

Yeah I'm aware of ways to colourize them which I could do or I could just play the games that I already have on hardware that runs it properly with zero work, have it run at a correct resolution without a static overlay (or mess around removing it), and not have a big dumb blank screen underneath it the whole time, resolution issues also apply to gen 3. I have N3DS XL so these issues are literally bigger than with a standard model.

Not sure what's not to love about the static overlays, frankly I went out of my way to give each GB/C Pokemon game on my 3DS a static overlay that reflects the game I'm playing (Pokemon Red has a Red Gameboy overlay, blue has a blue Game Boy, etc. etc.), though I mostly play with the larger resolution without the overlays, I mean it's not like the image gets distorted in any noticeable way at all, and I much prefer a larger N3DXL screen for GB/C games than an actual Game Boy's screen.

Side note Yellow is only programmed to be colour over here, Japanese version needs the hardware palletes, which is why the JP 3DS version is in black and white, because Nintendo sucks at emulating their own hardware.

Well I'm sure this is a major issue, as we all prefer to play in Japanese over English lol.

PKSM use for transfer is still a maybe until I'm satisfied it transfers up as it should. I've been able to get Pokémon that are almost legal but not quite transfer to home fine and it's only when fully inspecting them via PKhex that illegality is visible. PKSM is great but it does still have issues especially with it's 3rd gen support, that can cause issues with complete legality.

There is a great legality checker hidden away in PKSM that can verify if your Pokemon is legit or not, even for gen 3 Pokemon, I've had such gen 3 Pokemon sitting in my home for quite awhile at this point, and I haven't been banned from the service or anything like that, so the legality checker definitely does it's job.

 

[G25900]

Not sure why it's irrelevant, it's legit Nintendo hardware natively playing gen 3 games. You can't trade within those Gen 3 games, true, but you can play both versions on the 3DS without issue, and again use PKSM to transfer them to a later game like gen 7 where you can trade the Pokemon to another gen 7 game and make them legit evolve, frankly that's probably way more feasible today than to find 2 GBAs and a link cable. Not that the latter is impossible now, but if you don't already have the hardware you need, you'll have a much easier time in this day and age getting together with another 3DS than you will to get another GBA and GBA link cable.


Not sure what's not to love about the static overlays, frankly I went out of my way to give each GB/C Pokemon game on my 3DS a static overlay that reflects the game I'm playing (Pokemon Red has a Red Gameboy overlay, blue has a blue Game Boy, etc. etc.), though I mostly play with the larger resolution without the overlays, I mean it's not like the image gets distorted in any noticeable way at all, and I much prefer a larger N3DXL screen for GB/C games than an actual Game Boy's screen.


Well I'm sure this is a major issue, as we all prefer to play in Japanese over English lol.


There is a great legality checker hidden away in PKSM that can verify if your Pokemon is legit or not, even for gen 3 Pokemon, I've had such gen 3 Pokemon sitting in my home for quite awhile at this point, and I haven't been banned from the service or anything like that, so the legality checker definitely does it's job.

It's irrelevant because it doesn't satisfy all criteria of the task, the point is to complete the Dex's in legit hardware which the 3DS does not allow without the use of homebrew applications outside of the games and transfering to and from later gens for Evos (transfering back is an illegitimate move, so excluded from a legit Dex in the original games). Arguing the hardware is legit is irrelevant because it requires illegitimate methods to complete what's being set out to be done. Sure it's easier if all you have are two 3DS's (Which isn't a given) but it should be a given that if someone is attempting it on original hardware that they actually have that hardware available in the first place.

I don't need still images being displayed around the game, the part I'm paying attention to is the game, anything outside of that is irrelevant space and doesn't need filling. Filling up what should be black space with colourful images is just drawing attention to irrelevant parts of the screen at best, it's no different to stretching 4:3 to 16:9 just to fill the screen, it's actively making the image worse for little gain.

I actually do play the Japanese games so one being worse because their emulator sucks is an issue. It also points out that the only reason we got Yellow in colour on the VC is because we were lucky enough to have our original version come out after the GBC.

I'm well aware of the legality checker, the issue is certain things that are technically legal that pass fine aren't actually legitimate, like the previously mentioned HM moves, it's legal to be in a later gen with that move but you actually shouldn't have been able to get it there in the first place, if you didn't teach it the HM move in the gen you moved it to after the fact it's not legit. Once again the aim is to be as close to vanilla as possible.

I have Pokémon like this in Home so I know they're fine in there, but I know they're not 100% legit, so I've decided to do a full replacement of every non-event mon in there, along with additions I've wanted to do for a while. PKSM is going to be purely for time saving in transfering and even then I'm not really happy about that, so I might actually do it fully legitimate via in-game transfering, which absolutely sucks tbh, but it's the vanilla way.

 

[MikaDubbz]

It's irrelevant because it doesn't satisfy all criteria of the task, the point is to complete the Dex's in legit hardware which the 3DS does not allow without the use of homebrew applications outside of the games and transfering to and from later gens for Evos (transfering back is an illegitimate move, so excluded from a legit Dex in the original games). Arguing the hardware is legit is irrelevant because it requires illegitimate methods to complete what's being set out to be done. Sure it's easier if all you have are two 3DS's (Which isn't a given) but it should be a given that if someone is attempting it on original hardware that they actually have that hardware available in the first place.

I mean that's my entire thesis, that a modded 3DS is capable of being a gen 1-7 machine able to transfer Pokemon through all gens with the use of both legit apps like Bank and Transporter, and of course a huge key piece of homebrew in PKSM. Yeah you can't trade directly with gen 3 games, but to argue that its impossible to legit evolve trade pokemon from gen 3 on a 3DS is a bit of a lie. Just transfer it to a later gen and then make the trade. Only illegit thing here is PKSM, and I was never ever claiming it was a legit app from Nintendo or anything like that. Doesn't change the fact that every Pokemon you deal with in the app can be completely legit and legal (of course you can easily change that, but you can also easily not touch anything that would change it's legality as well). Not sure why you'd want to transfer back to gen 3, isn't the idea to get a full living dex in Home? Just transfer up once to evolve the Pokemon, and then transfer to Home. Not saying it's a given that you have 2 3DSs, just that its easier to come by 2 3DSs today than it is to come by 2 GBAs and a GBA link cable, in the event you only have 1 of either piece of hardware.

I don't need still images being displayed around the game, the part I'm paying attention to is the game, anything outside of that is irrelevant space and doesn't need filling. Filling up what should be black space with colourful images is just drawing attention to irrelevant parts of the screen at best, it's no different to stretching 4:3 to 16:9 just to fill the screen, it's actively making the image worse for little gain.

Talk about a non-issue. You can simply remove the borders when you make your inject, or if you're like me, you actually enjoy those borders when you choose to play in the true original aspect ratio so you can keep or alter them.

I actually do play the Japanese games so one being worse because their emulator sucks is an issue. It also points out that the only reason we got Yellow in colour on the VC is because we were lucky enough to have our original version come out after the GBC.

To each their own I suppose. Not sure what you're getting out of Japanese Yellow that makes you prefer it over the English color version, but you do you I guess.

I'm well aware of the legality checker, the issue is certain things that are technically legal that pass fine aren't actually legitimate, like the previously mentioned HM moves, it's legal to be in a later gen with that move but you actually shouldn't have been able to get it there in the first place, if you didn't teach it the HM move in the gen you moved it to after the fact it's not legit. Once again the aim is to be as close to vanilla as possible.

Then don't teach Pokemon HM moves after you've transferred it? Again, isn't the idea here ultimately to get all of these Pokemon into Home? The only thing that should be happening is Pokemon from earlier gens get transferred into a gen 6 or 7 game, traded if needed to evolve, and then immediately trasferred to Home. I certainly don't mess with any Pokemon I move from earlier gens to gen 7 before bringing them to Home.

I have Pokémon like this in Home so I know they're fine in there, but I know they're not 100% legit, so I've decided to do a full replacement of every non-event mon in there, along with additions I've wanted to do for a while. PKSM is going to be purely for time saving in transfering and even then I'm not really happy about that, so I might actually do it fully legitimate via in-game transfering, which absolutely sucks tbh, but it's the vanilla way.

I don't see why you'd have to do it the vanilla way, just don't fuck with your Pokemon after transferring them to a later game in PKSM (beyond trading to evolve if you need to) and then transfer immediately to Home as mentioned above. Will save you a lot of time and be completely legit.

 

[G25900]

I mean that's my entire thesis, that a modded 3DS is capable of being a gen 1-7 machine able to transfer Pokemon through all gens with the use of both legit apps like Bank and Transporter, and of course a huge key piece of homebrew in PKSM. Yeah you can't trade directly with gen 3 games, but to argue that its impossible to legit evolve trade pokemon from gen 3 on a 3DS is a bit of a lie. Just transfer it to a later gen and then make the trade. Only illegit thing here is PKSM, and I was never ever claiming it was a legit app from Nintendo or anything like that. Doesn't change the fact that every Pokemon you deal with in the app can be completely legit and legal (of course you can easily change that, but you can also easily not touch anything that would change it's legality as well). Not sure why you'd want to transfer back to gen 3, isn't the idea to get a full living dex in Home? Just transfer up once to evolve the Pokemon, and then transfer to Home. Not saying it's a given that you have 2 3DSs, just that its easier to come by 2 3DSs today than it is to come by 2 GBAs and a GBA link cable, in the event you only have 1 of either piece of hardware.


Talk about a non-issue. You can simply remove the borders when you make your inject, or if you're like me, you actually enjoy those borders when you choose to play in the true original aspect ratio so you can keep or alter them.


To each their own I suppose. Not sure what you're getting out of Japanese Yellow that makes you prefer it over the English color version, but you do you I guess.


Then don't teach Pokemon HM moves after you've transferred it? Again, isn't the idea here ultimately to get all of these Pokemon into Home? The only thing that should be happening is Pokemon from earlier gens get transferred into a gen 6 or 7 game, traded if needed to evolve, and then immediately trasferred to Home. I certainly don't mess with any Pokemon I move from earlier gens to gen 7 before bringing them to Home.


I don't see why you'd have to do it the vanilla way, just don't fuck with your Pokemon after transferring them to a later game in PKSM (beyond trading to evolve if you need to) and then transfer immediately to Home as mentioned above. Will save you a lot of time and be completely legit.

You can't evolve in later gens with what I'm doing because of abilities, if a Pokémon has received a new ability later on then it can end up with an ability that didn't exist in it's origin gen, meaning it's no longer a debut gen version. The simple fact is I've spent over a month panning this living Dex and you've known about it 5 minutes so I've already been through every option and planned every part out and for what I want the 3DS isn't ideal for earlier gens. It's also no ideal for OP because they would need to transfer back because their goal is to complete the gen 3 Dex in a gen 3 game, which could also run in to ability issues and require editing, which would mess the PID up and require fixing or be stuck with an illegal Mon.

Already stated about removing borders, once again additional work that I don't need to do because I already have the games on a Gameboy, you're arguing to do more work to end up with what I already had now with added big blank screen underneath.

JP Yellow has script differences for a start, along with glitches and stuff fixed in ours, so it has its own merits over ours.

Way to completely misunderstand the HM move point, part of the transfer is ones I've used in my team, they have HM's, PKSM would transfer them up fine, legitimate transfer wouldn't allow it, thus them being in a late gen with HM moves is illegitimate without deleting first. This is merely one example of the issues with PKSM transfer. The simple fact is it has minor issues that even if you transfer straight as you said could make Pokémon illegitimate without additional work because there is a difference between legal and legitimate that PKSM doesn't account for.

The point as I've explained several times now is to not simply have the Pokémon in Home, it's to have every one be exactly as it is in its debut gen, so the only Mr. Mime would be Marcel from Gen 1 for example. Any variation of this is unacceptable no matter how more convenient it may be.

 

[OilFreak]

As for flash carts, I only tested battles on my GC with the link connection but it did connect just fine booting the emerald directly from my EverDrive GBA Mini. I haven't tested my regular EZ Flash Omega, but it should work as well, just start the rom when the GC game tells you to turn your game boy on. It should boot and properly perform the handshake for the connection.

Thank you!!!! Everything I seem to read online says otherwise, so to have someone who can comfirm firsthand is very much appriciated! That's gonna save me a lot of money.

To MikaDubbz, I want to use an actual cartrige for a variety of reasons. One of them is definable connectivity to the GC and DS. I know both of those can be done in Emulators but to be honest I prefer playing on og hardware (or FPGA's) when possible, ESPECIALLY with games that connectivity to other games.
GBA link cable emulation is very janky, even more so with GC link cable emulation. I tried to complete the gen 3 regional-dex over an emulator one summer and I could only get it to successfully work 10% of the time. My computer isn't even powerful enough to run the Dolphin Emulator, and I've just started saving up for a more powerful machine.

Thank you everyone for your input. I'm still in the planning stages of this operation (I'm replaying gen 2 and completing the gen 2 dex lol), so I'm glad I'm able to get this squared away so soon.
Once I'm ready to start gen 3 I'll post my finalized plans and open them up to critique. I look forward to seeing everyone then.

Post automatically merged: Feb 25, 2023

There are a few exclusive pokemon to the GC games that you can trade over, but they don't count for the pokedex afaik. Though I haven't looked into it too much yet since I'm still waiting on a few pieces for my GC to arrive.

Some pokemon such as the gen 2 startes are made far easier on the gamecube games. i also only have one GBA so I'm gonna be using Pokemon box on the gamecube to transfer my pokemon.

 

[RAHelllord]

Thank you!!!! Everything I seem to read online says otherwise, so to have someone who can comfirm firsthand is very much appriciated! That's gonna save me a lot of money.

I finally got everything crucial for my GC so I was able to do some more testing. Running Pokemon Box via SWISS and connecting it to Ruby on both my ED GBA Mini and EZ-Flash Omega (non-DE) works perfectly fine. Both the Box itself and Adventure run without issues. You can even turn the GBA off once it tells you to, starting the ROM on either cart will properly perform the handshake to save at the proper times. Even works on an Analogue Pocket using the OpenFPGA core for GBA games, no flashcart required at all.

What doesn't work is trying to swap flash carts while in either the Box or Adventure mode, even if both carts use the same save. Pokemon Box will detect that and wait until you connect the proper cart with the proper save again.
But you can swap without issues on the main menu of Pokemon Box before you select either Adventure or Box.

To MikaDubbz, I want to use an actual cartrige for a variety of reasons. One of them is definable connectivity to the GC and DS. I know both of those can be done in Emulators but to be honest I prefer playing on og hardware (or FPGA's) when possible, ESPECIALLY with games that connectivity to other games.

For the connection to the DS you will need the EZ-Flash Omega DE version, the regular version (the one I own) does not support this functionality, and neither does the ED GBA Mini for that matter. Just so you're aware of that before going in blind.
An alternative to that is one of the insideGadgets flash carts specifically made for Pokemon games, but for those you need an extra flasher as well which will cost a pretty penny. Technically worth it if you plan on using them a lot but will cost about as much as the Omega DE once you factor in shipping from Australia and likely import fees.

 

[OilFreak]

Here's are two things I have thought of that may be roadblocks:
1) what will I do for pokemon that need to be traded to be evolved?
I know pokemon stadium 1&2 have a trade feature in addition to the built in PC for those pokemon, but I've never played pokemon box before so I don't know if that feature is in the game.
2) Can pokemon box unlock the national dex in RS?

If someone who can access pokemon box check on those aspects that would really be appriciated. This is probably going to be an expensive endevor and I'd rather not add in buying another GBA. Thanks.

 

[RAHelllord]

The national dex can be unlocked with pokemon box, but you can't evolve via trades, as there is no trading involved. However you can trade normally with colosseum and gale of darkness, just be sure it's an actual trade and not a transfer thing.
At least in Colosseum that's only possible after beating the game, though.

Alternatively if you want to play GBA games on a TV you could get a GB Player for the GameCube and use that as a second GBA for trading. It needs an expensive startup disc to work but if you can run homebrew that's not needed.

 

[OilFreak]

Here's a rough draft of the final plans:

• DS to play the games normally on (I already have a DS, and my GBA was a hand-me-down and it's shell is super worn)
• The aforementioned GBA (will only be used to interact with Gamecube games)
• Model 1 Wii, modded to play Gamecube games off an SD card
• Gamecube controller
• GBA to Gamecube link cable
• EZ-Flash Omega Definitive Edition

Given that I can use a flashcart I could just play on an emulator and put the save on the flashcart whenever I need to transfer stuff. I'd like to play on the DS for most of it, but if I'm grinding I'll definitliey transfer my save over to my PC and use emulator fast forward to make it go by faster

Also here's a list of all the games I'm gonna be using:

• Pokemon Emerald (technecially not nessecary but some pokemon are easier to catch in it)
• Pokemon Ruby
• Pokemon Sapphire
• Pokemon Fire Red
• Pokemon Leaf Green
• Pokemon Colleseum
• Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness
• Pokemon Box

I think you can see why I don't like Gen 3 that much

Post automatically merged: Mar 10, 2023

Also, for the legendary events I'll be using a save file editor to unlock them.
For those unaware there were events distributed to Emerald, Fire Red, and Leaf Green using the wireless communicator. Although the distribution rom has been found and preserved I don't have a second GBA or wireless communicator.

 

[cluesagi]

Save editing works fine but if you want you can actually get Jirachi and Celebi legitimately with Colosseum's US and JP pre-order bonus discs respectively

 

[OilFreak]

It really doesn't matter to me, I'm not going to be using them in battle anyways. Save file editing would be more convienent so I'm just going to use that method.

Post automatically merged: Mar 12, 2023

As I'm getting close to finishing my replay of gen 2 I'm going to start assembling the gear for the gen 3 pokedex. If the plan listed above is errorous speak now or forever hold your peace.

 

[OilFreak]

Re-Completed the gen 2 pokedex, about to start gen 3. I don't have a flashcart yet so I'm going to start by playing on my MiSTer FPGA and then later transfer my save over to a real flashcart.

Post automatically merged: Mar 21, 2023

I could probably play on an emulator but I like the filters for GBA games that the MiSTer has