Question about Legendaries

[emoninjacat]

Which legendaries are shiny locked? I know about Reshiram, but that's it.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, Arceus, Victini, Reshiram, Zekrom, Keldeo, Meloetta, Xerneas, Yveltal and Zygarde are Shiny-locked.

All of them (aside from the XY trio to the best of our knowledge) DO have shiny palettes, but there is no way to obtain them legally - their shiny palettes were programmed into the game to prevent the thing from crashing in case someone fucked around with memory values/gameshark codes - for the very same reason that Arceus had a ???-type form in Generation IV (this was removed when the ???-type was removed as a whole in Gen V).

 

[emoninjacat]

Then why do so many people offer Shiny Mew up in various trading websites?

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

The simple answer: These Mews are hacked. There are a LOT of hacked Pokémon out there, alas.

 

[Burgundy]

Hmm, I thought the Event Mew you can get on Faraway Island in Pokémon Emerald wasn't shiny checked. Is that true? Or have I been lied to? :l

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

While it IS possible to SR for a Shiny Mew via the Faraway Island, the Old Sea Map was only distributed in Japan as part of the 2005 Pokémon Festa event - meaning that in order to find a legit Shiny Mew it'd have to be a Japanese Mew obtained by someone who participated in the event, SR'd for a shiny (or got really really REALLY lucky), Pal Park'd it over to Gen 4, Transferred it over to Gen 5 and banked it (assuming it even passes gen 6's legit checker).

Apparently legit Japanese Shiny Celebi could also exist - via the Japanese Colosseum bonus disc (which required the Japanese Colosseum and a Japanese Gamecube to even run) triggering an event in Agate Village. However the chances of one appearing were astronomical enough as is - and again, same issue as Mew.

Tl;dr the window of opportunity for getting a legit one is long since gone and therefore it has a distinction of being Shiny-locked NOW even though it wasn't always.

 

[Linkachu]

I honestly had no idea that this was even a thing until reading this topic. :x

A quick Google search hasn't answered my next question so I shall ask here: does anyone know the exact rationale behind this decision? I could understand them doing this for event-only legendaries but several of the critters on that list are readily available in-game. I can only assume that in Zekrom, Reshiram, Yveltal, Xerneas's cases that it's due to them being plot devices? As in, if you're seeing a normal Zekrom outside of battle it would cause some dissonance if it was shiny when you actually battled it.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

I wish it was as simple as that - most legendaries with overworld sprites can be shiny in battle but their overworld sprite is still the basic one (which is particularly amusing in cases like, say, any of the Hoenn Legendaries). Honestly, I'm not sure what was Gamefreak's glitch when it comes to these particular species.

(Shame, though, some of them have rather lovely shiny palettes. GDI Reshiram.)

 

[FalChromiforme]

Are gen IV game corner pokemon shiny locked?

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Not exactly a relevant question to this thread. Bit of a hijack, to be honest. >>;

Either way, there's not much to discuss in this thread and so it is time for it to be laid to rest.