pokejungle’s note: We do NOT condone hacking Pokémon, views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer. Any links to hacking sites or software will be removed in the comments. This article is for discussion about the topic only and is not meant in any way to encourage activities which are contrary to the way GameFreak has designed.
Many individuals speculated upon the initial release of Pokémon Bank was that the reason why it was delayed for so long was that it A.) had a ridiculous server load and B.) Didn’t come close to stopping hacked ‘mons. Well, Game Freak finally released it in the west with some impressive results; the servers run (relatively) smooth and there are plenty of checks to block hacked Pokémon from entering. Does it work? Yeah, and it does a decent job. Is it perfect? Far from it.
Why I Hack
I’m a Pokemon hacker. Yes, I admit it. I’ve been hacking ‘mons since the days of Ruby and Sapphire (I only played the rom and never owned a GBA). I’ve never had events readily available until recently, so Pokémon like Deoxys and Darkrai were never in my PC box. Having all three starters was a far stretch of a possibility, as was filling the Pokédex by the means of trading. I used Action Replays and (only recently) programs like Pokégen to experiment with teams and play with some of the more elusive Pokémon in-game. Never have I hacked abilities, moves, and IVs to create some impossible Pokémon to abuse online. I just do it for the fun solo gaming experience and to test out some new teams combinations without the time constraint that often plagues EV training and move breeding.
When Pokémon Bank announced that they would block hacked Pokémon from their servers, I was a bit distressed. How will I manage to obtain the starters without spending time replaying old games and stalking the trade boards? What about all of the cool events that I’ve missed in the past like Shaymin and Keldeo? I immediately started searching online just to see how well this hack blocking worked. If there’s a will, there’s a way, right?
The Hacking Check
It turns out that there is a hacking check in Transporter and in Bank. If you try to transfer a hacked Pokémon like, say, a Shiny Chimchar with perfect nature and maxed out IVs, it will probably be flagged because the chances of obtaining one of that quality are outstandingly low (obviously hacked abilities and moves sets that the original Pokémon can’t learn will be flagged as well). However, if you decide to be modest with the IVs, maybe forego the shiny coloring and tweak the the location / date met, it’ll probably bypass the check. It’s a bit tricky, especially with event Pokémon, but there are sites out there like Pokédit and programs such as Pokégen that have special event Pokémon that are specifically built to bypass any anti-hacking programs. And, as far as I know, these Pokémon can be used online in battles. I haven’t tested these boundaries fully, but I have used a hacked event Meloetta in an online battle to see if it would work, and it passed through easily.
Exceptions
The chances of getting a shiny with perfect stats is low, but not impossible, right? This is a problem that the few lucky trainers out there have been experiencing. I’ve been carousing a few message boards for information and theories of how the hack check works and have found a number of individuals who actually did receive a perfect shiny starter. They did legitimately catch that Shiny Modest Kyogre and it did happen to have amazing IVs. Well, Pokémon Bank flagged their precious teammates as hacked when they were apparently legitimate. I don’t know how honest those few people are, but I recall reading more than one incident of legit Pokémon not being able to be transferring. I suppose that Gamefreak needed to add a no-exception policy as to rule out the numerous hacks out there that ruin the delicate balance of the game. Unfortunately, this does affect those very small few who were actually lucky enough to obtain these excellent Pokémon legitimately. I guess Gamefreak was willing to make this sacrifice. From the looks of it, the fans haven’t been too horribly upset as it seems like a lot of them were only transferring these Pokémon for the sake of transferring them and don’t actually use them in battle, but I’m sure it’s pissed off its share of players.
So, to put it simply, Gamefreak makes a solid attempt to limit the amount of hacking that has overrun the late Pokémon games, but in the end it still exists. It will probably always exist – with new technology comes new loopholes for people to discover and exploit. Hopefully these loopholes will not affect the metagame too much, but I do appreciate the additional accessibility that these sites and services provide!
What do you think about hacking? For it? Against it? Leave your (constructive) feedback below with your personal opinion.
[poll id=”72″]
– Mr. Bojingles
I’m BIG on Manipulation.
Gen 5 I learned how to RNG, which is the only method of obtaining high-IV’d legit shinies without the use of a device. You didn’t have to connect anything to your DSi to abuse your game, you just used a program called RNG Reporter that told you when to power up your game and encounter the seed. I never purchased an action replay or used one but I’m sure its not hard.
The only time I ever once hacked is getting illegal HA pokemon over to XY since Nintendo have been hanging on to them for a while. Ala Sheer Force Dile/Contrary Snivy. Besides that, its impossible to hack anything else-XY and the games provide you with easy methods to RNG easier now – with destiny knot/friend safari etc.
Everything feels much rewarding when you hatch/encounter it or trade for something legit on your own. 120+ Shinies with pentagon and counting! 🙂!
EDIT: Wow, cool to have first comment!!
I’ve been reading about RNG being used, especially for XY these days. It’s an interesting concept, but I think that it would constitute as a form of “hacking” to a degree!
nope. if you have a 6IV Ditto and breeding with destiny knot, thats RNG in XY… so are you hacking?
If you got that 6IV Ditto legitimately through Friend Safari or WildWild then no, using Destiny Knot is an in game method. If you are RNGing that 6IV ditto that is not legitimate and is a form of abuse/hacking. destiny knot is an item to help assist with the breeding scene added by GameFreak. RGN is third party. If you’re lucky enough to get that 6IV that congrats but its hacking no matter which way you look at it as far as RNG is concerned.
RNG isn’t a third-party application, it’s the way computers emulate luck. Hacking is altering the game’s code to do something unintended. RNG manipulation is exploiting the game’s own mechanics with no outside influence other than you pressing the buttons on your game system.
An example of this is that you can start a new game on HeartGold on a specific frame that will give you the exact ID to win a Master Ball at the lottery and also give you a decent IV Cyndaquil.
whats rng exactly?
random number generator – meddling with the game’s mechanics to spawn the poke you’re looking for
I honestly love hacking. Now making “monsters,” that’s the hacking I hate. But, high IV, already EV trained and maybe some hard to get moves, that’s the kind i can handle. Maybe competitive ready shinies too or missed legendaries, but that’s it haha.
ammy, you here? gg!
also interesting article! I’m not too sure how i feel about hacked pokemon when it comes to online battling since, for years, i only had them for fun then pushed it aside. so far, i only find it a problem when it deals with legendaries, but of course…theyre legendaries xD
I think it’s fine if it’s just used for single player purposes. You want to finish your pokedex and have a hacked Mew? Okay. Whatever.
It’s when “Perfect” pokemon are hacked into the game for the purposes of online battling or even competition.
hacking for personal use? to each his own, no big deal.
but hacking for online use, that’s where the issue starts to arrise.
I think you should have a poll on what we think; if it is okay to generate perfect pokemon with 510 EV’s and legit moves and abilities for the sole purpose of not spending days on breeding. I personally think this is alright as long as they’re not shiny
Although I’ve never done it
Good idea! I’ll get on that.
Cool thanks!
I actually have no problem with hacking in battle ready Pokemon.
(PSA: Testing your team on Showdown is faster than hacking in a team then finding out it doesn’t work.)
I don’t think “days breeding” is a fair assessment all the time. Here are my experiences:
1. First 5IV in an egg group: 2 days. (With fast hatching mon e.g. Magikarp, plus Ditto Safari and 1 page of 2-3IV dittos.)
2. Next 5IV in an egg group: 2 hours. (Maybe 3-4 hours if 12.5% gender ratio, or only replacing female due to gunning for a specific Pokeball design.)
3. First parent with 4 egg moves: 1-3 hours. (12.5% gender ratio is a pain.)
4. Getting 4 moves on Smeargle: 1 hour. 3 heart scales.
5. Checking IV’s: 1 minute.
6. Checking specific IV’s: 5-10 minutes, 1 soft reset.
7. Getting hidden power or 6IV’s: 1-2 days AFTER #1 and #3or4.
I don’t mind that at all. Shiny or not.
I disagree. There are hardcore players that spend those hours they put in to breed those perfect Pokémon. I myself was one of those people but I stopped because I got lazy. If those people can do it, what is stopping the hackers?
I personally play against friends with pokemon I like, regardless of stats. Since the surge of competitive battling this gen, I decided to do so as well. I have never hacked but since realising the time consuming process of producing 5 iv pokemon (I have 4) I can understand why some would hack. But in a perfect world I would have hoped it was never possible to hack
Note that the chance of catching a 6x31IV in the wild is actually just the same chance as 6x0IV or 22/24/1/4/11/30 or any IV combination out there.
I don’t think the Pokemon Transporter hack checker tracks Pokemon “quality”. It does consider other things like obvious mistakes (wrong ability, invalid move, underleveled evolution, born with an abnormal Pokeball) maybe even caught area/egg hatched area and level met. Legends are typically harder to hack in for this reason. You need to know parameters like these and whether the legendary in question is shiny locked. (Bulbapedia is a good source for location and level met data.)
I tried doing it, I actually managed to slip in a genned 6IV Shiny Eelektross with 4 tutor moves on the first try. I stuck with correct ability, caught area and level met. I have yet to check if it can go online battling, or if it can be seen on the GTS by other users. I was able to trade it over the internet directly to a buddy though.
See, I tried sending through a normal Snivy; no shiny, no crazy IVs, just a normal Snivy. Hatched in front of the daycare and proper parameters and all that stuff. For some reason, it was blocked. it’s so inconsistent!
Yes, I can say I’ve had random things refused too, hacks or not. Like a totally legit random IV lv100 pick up Linoone. -_-
This weekend I was able to transport a hatched Adamant 5IV Conkeldurr with Guts, 2 egg moves 2 tutor moves (obviously the set that everyone uses: Knock Off, Ice Punch, Drain Punch, Mach Punch).
I don’t have access to the data right now, but lemme help out. I think the egg must be received from Day-Care Couple, met at Lv 5 (not 1), the Pokemon must be lv5 or up (higher if pre-evolved), hatched at wherever you desire (I always choose Skyarrow Bridge, love that place) and trash bytes should be Egg rather than Wild Encounter. Also if the generator has “fix PID”, be sure to enable that.
Also, may I refer you to fake GTS I used, pokecheats.net – your results may vary.
I used pokedit to hack a crapton of Pokemon I didn’t have to complete my pokedex and literally every single one of them got through. Including a bunch of shiny starters with perfect IVs. I don’t battle online or trade with people so I don’t know if I’d be able to trade them/battle with them (and don’t really care) but IMO, the standards they use have to be pretty lax. The only thing that didn’t make it through was a regular Kyogre that I got from someone else years and years ago. It must not have been legitimate but I don’t know how to tell that for myself so I didn’t know, but it’s probably not good that I could fake up a bunch of Pokemon and the only thing that didn’t make it was a Kyogre that wasn’t made on Pokedit.
I have a lot of hacked pokemon to be perfectly honest. They are really for personal use, but the ones that could be gotten normally, I would use online/competitively if given the chance. I don’t mind hacking if it’s for legends you missed, or competitive ready shinies, or things like that. I do have my limits, but I can’t really put them into words (not good with words so..yeah haha).
Hacking doesn’t really bother me,
Since I don’t really GTS trade, WT, or Competitive Battle.
I suck at competitive battling. Maybe X will turn the tables a bit.
I’ll admit, several times I’ve hacked shiny Pokemon like Patrat simply for the sake of tranferring and Wonder Trading, but that was just about making people happy. Would you have done that? I probably won’t do it any more.
I did that with a mudkip, i went on tumblr, searched up shiny mudkip to see if anyone was trading theirs and i find a post that says “Just got a shiny mudkip from wonder trade!” That is an awesome feeling.
Much like Justin, I hack event pokemon from events that i missed. I used to have diamond when it came out but traded it in to gamestop when i got an R4. (Stupid idea, i was younger) I thought i wouldn’t need it anymore. All the other pokemon games i played were on roms. I honestly did not know if those pokemon would transfer or count as “Legit”. I’ve deleted save files many times to start a brand new adventure on these games. Recently, i hacked for the event pokemon to fill the remaining 10 spaces on my Pokedex because other people make them nearly impossible to obtain and my DS WI-FI never worked (I have B2 and X so i have no reason to hack for pokemon that are obtainable in both of those games). I’ve also only hacked one shiny which was a shiny mudkip named “Noel” It has 6 IVs and the right egg moves. I hacked this one to use as a placeholder for my swampert (Adamant with 5 IVs) as i forgot to breed in Wide Guard and needed to rebreed it, I was interested in MM-ing for a Shiny Mudkip. I’m not really big on hacking pokemon , it does annoy me slightly, but i do it sometimes. It feels much more rewarding to say that you’ve hatched this many eggs to get the perfect pokemon or to have a pentagon shiny that required you to spend hours using o-powers and IV breeding to make them competitive. Now that i have Pokemon X and good WI-FI , i will no longer miss events and have no reason to hack.
I hacked once to get jirachi and few japanesse events, and in black 2 i spents hours making my dream team look so nice and still make them suck bank didnt let it go through
Hacking Japanese events is reasonable. They don’t share their nice things with us. (Nobunaga’s Rayquaza, Shiny Genesect, etc)
XD ikr
yeah, i love hacking the japanese events and love it even more when i see them transfer. they can’t keep things from me!!
I learn’t how to hack my game in DP with an action replay but I wasn’t very interested in using it until I missed Shaymin. The reason I missed Shaymin is because I didn’t have WiFi at the time. Ever since then, I’d been using Action Replay to get Shaymin but no matter what, the game knew it was fake. But in X & Y that changed. No, I didn’t manage to get a fake one over, someone had somehow (I believe he cheated) gotten a lv 30 shiny Shaymin and he was kind enough to trade it to me. He also traded me a shiny lv 30 Deoxys (probably also cheated). I also cheated to get a lot a shinies in BW but I didn’t learn how to EV train Pokemon until BW2 so the game let me transfer them but I don’t really care about them as it’s quite easy to breed them now. Does anyone else have a story similar to this.
P.S: On a different note, what is your favourite event Pokemon that you still have (not something like a normal event Darkrai or something similar)? My Favourite event Pokemon that I have at the moment is my two lv 5 Jirachi with Draco Meteor. Big W was having a event for HGSS and I had both so I got two.
I had a legit DPP Deoxys. It’s gone now q.q
But i get what you mean with the wi-fi. The DS had terrible internet.
No I mean like we hadn’t bought a modem at the time
Ah. The DS still had really bad internet ._.
im going to admit when i see a long comment i read like parts of it
Hacking never really bothered me, but yeah I see why people get upset with it. Not very rewarding getting pokemon through hacking imo tho. Anyways, how well do you think an Eviolite Adamant Zweilous w/ DD do competitively? Just a thought that occured to me while breeding for Deinos haha
I’m not
against pokemon hacking. I myself hacked some pokemon. In my case I hacked only
legendaries and event pokemon cause I did not have the opportunity to get Mew,
Darkrai, Keldeo and others. The only ones I had were Celebi from PokeBank and
Deoxys from BW2. So I hacked the other. I’m not against if people used hacking
for personal use, just like event pokemon or fulfilling their pokedex. But for
competitive use I’m totally against. Past year I saw so many times people with
Shiny Latias/Latios, monstrous Landorus in competitive battle. I was innocent
thinking “wow…. how much time these people spent to get those pokemon,
They are crazy”. Some days after I realized they were all hacked. I felt
it was just unfair as I lost a lot of battles for fake beasts like these. I
spent much time training my pokemon. I’m not that good for competitive, but
faking them to battle to defeat others, for me, is unfair. But as pokemonBank
does not recognize all pokemon, these fake beasts will continue to appear.
People should be conscious about that and not insert these pokemon in
competitive battles.
It effectively doesn’t matter if you use them in competitive battles or not because on top of noting allowing Pokemon with illegal moves and other things, Pokebank doesn’t let in perfect IV Shinies, so we don’t have to worry about that much.
Haha, yeah, it lets in perfect IV shinies haha.
im sorry if this off topic
im crying off the fact im playing the hoenn wild theme over my wild RE
I’ve hacked before when I was in middle school to get stuff like oaks letter and the azure flute. I’m a senior in HS now and I haven’t hacked since. Hacking is a terrible thing, and is the reason why we’re paying for it now.
Chico 😀 at least u admit it
When i was younger, my brother really wanted to get a gameshark because he thought it would be cool to get a level 100 typholosion and shiny charizard near the beginning of the game. (It’s cool and all but in the BEGINNING of the game?? That takes away all the fun)
Around 6th grade, or so. Pokemon DPP was popular around my school and one of my friends showed me his Arceus and Shaymin that he got through action replay. I had never seen these pokemon before and i was shocked. My friend let me borrow the AR so i had fun walking through walls and obtaining my legendaries.
i used my level 100 in Soul silver
it was pain in the pain in arse
Even though I’ve hacked my share of Pokémon in Platinum, I haven’t transferred them to White and will never hack my game. Because, this is just my opinion, I believe hacking destroys the game (not literally). I think it ruins the spirit of the game and makes it too easy.
if u do it right it not the easy.i take time and passion to make mine sucky as hell
I agree because I was bored with my Pokemon Soul Silver (I had Heart Gold) so I cheated and completed everything in the game but after that, I never really wanted to pick it up again.
What’s with the old article?
Exceeded 10,000 comments.
thats what happens XD
Why does that always happen? Disqus needs to fix that.
This article feels like one of those circles where people talk about their past and nod heads and clap. xD I honestly can’t remember what they’re called.
HI everyone this this John he will be joing us, Tell them we are here
“i hack pokemon”
Good good we are making progress Clap for john
LOL! For some reason this description of it makes it sort of sound like a group for people with problems and low IQ.
but we are talking about our promblem and i think we have low IQ XD
Sorry, I just mean that the line “good good we are making progress clap for john”.
i know ur joking 😛
“Hello. My name Is John.
Two years ago i got addicted to hacking.
First it was all fun and games. Then i started hacking for IVs and shinies. Now i have 10 boxes full of shiny 6iv legendaries. I don’t even use them.
I realized how bad my hacking got when i found that Magikarp had flamethrower and roar of time and so i came here to seek help.”
Good job john. Hope things get better, you’ve come to the right place.
*Clapping*
Hi im a Cindy
Two years ago i got addicted to Eggs
First it was all fun wartchig ditto make babies with a eevee but then i got a shiny off so i couldnt stop i hatch 5000 eggs a day.
i need help
“that why we are here cindy to cope you Drug i mean egg adddiction”
*claps*
Hi I’m Cindy
and Girls just want to have fun..
i can see the therapists being some mellow pink hair guy XD
In the Pokemon World? Of course.xD
A guy who looks like Nurse Joy? HAHAHAHAHA!
-Really Deep Voiced Man- Hello my name is Nurse JOY and i will heal you sick people.
its a independent black guy
For some (obvious) reason, I struck speechless.
You mean in thos rehab centers or wreck it ralph?
Yes.
is sad that we broke the last article XD
yep XD
Yes.
IDK why but as soon as i hear hacking this plays in my mind Seto KAiba ftw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE5iTcLAcr4
hheres a better version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaxrnUE2WzE
But es yugioh D:
so? cant i enjoy other shows? or themes
I’m joking. .-.
i know xD