{"id":788150,"date":"2026-07-27T23:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T23:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/788150\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T23:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T23:02:10","slug":"pokemon-fan-explains-why-he-set-up-58-consoles-to-shiny-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/788150\/","title":{"rendered":"Pok\u00e9mon Fan Explains Why He Set Up 58 Consoles To Shiny Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes a Pok\u00e9mon fan goes to the ends of the earth to catch their favorite \u2018mon. Usually it\u2019s because they admire that monster and want to add them to their collection as a symbol of pride. For Professor Rex, however, catching a Shiny Golduck<\/a> using 58 consoles at once was a matter of \u201cmath\u201d as opposed to some deep love for the water-type duck monster.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love finding and documenting some of the rarest Pok\u00e9mon to ever exist,\u201d he tells Kotaku. \u201cI love statistics as well so I spend far too much time thinking about rare Pok\u00e9mon and what makes them rare.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Pok\u00e9mon invokes a feeling of adventure and the power of friendship, its encounters\u2014like those in many video games\u2014are determined by dice rolls and background math. Part of the challenge of those early Pok\u00e9mon games is walking through tall grass and surfing through the ocean in hopes that the Pok\u00e9mon you\u2019re looking for pops up in a random battle. That part of Pok\u00e9mon-catching has disappeared in recent years as monsters show up in the overworld now, which means that searching for the rare, alternate-colored critters called Shinies in the older games remains a collector\u2019s greatest challenge. Professor Rex, who created a massive setup of dozens of GameCubes and Wiis to shiny-hunt the rarest monsters in Pok\u00e9mon, has become pretty efficient at finding these guys. After creating the setup to shiny-hunt a Chansey in FireRed and LeafGreen, which has a 1\/806,000 chance of popping up in the game\u2019s Safari Zone, he wanted a new challenge, and he planned to install a few more consoles to make it happen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs someone who has become something of an authority on the Safari Zone, my brother and I have participated in eight \u2018Safari Week\u2019 shiny hunting events, but with the Chansey Caught\u2026 there wasn\u2019t much for me to search for,\u201d Professor Rex says. \u201cI wanted a target that I could hunt for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rex sought out a Pok\u00e9mon game he could play with his GameCube and Wii setup. Luckily, Nintendo and Game Freak released Pok\u00e9mon Box Ruby & Sapphire, which is a GameCube storage app that lets you keep your Pok\u00e9mon from the Game Boy Advance games stashed away. Along with the storage functionality, it also allows you to play the original Ruby and Sapphire games on a television. It turns out, if you take the disc out after you\u2019ve started playing the game, it can still be played to completion, meaning the disc can be used in another system at the same time. Or a few dozen, if you\u2019re trying to play the game multiple times at once in search of a shiny.<\/p>\n

\"Golduckhome\"\u00a9 The Pok\u00e9mon Company <\/p>\n

But what was all this for? What is rarer than a Shiny Pok\u00e9mon? What about a Shiny Pok\u00e9mon that is already a rare spawn, and has an even rarer spawn when it\u2019s underleveled? Golduck, the evolved form of Psyduck, is typically only obtainable when the water-type duck Pok\u00e9mon reaches level 33, but there have been several points in the games at which you can sometimes find wild, underleveled versions of an evolved Pok\u00e9mon at a level lower than they typically evolve. Golduck can be found at level 25 in the Safari Zone, and finding it at that level has, according to Rex\u2019s research, a one-percent chance of spawning to begin with, and a one-in-16 chance that it will show up at level 25. Under the best possible circumstances, Rex estimates that a pink-billed, level 25 Golduck has a one-in-nine-million chance of showing up. So if he\u2019s going to cover any ground, playing the game across 58 simultaneous instances of Ruby and Sapphire is one of the only ways he\u2019ll make a dent in his hunt.<\/p>\n

How is he able to play 58 systems at once? GameCube faithful will remember the Wavebird Controller, an early wireless controller that Nintendo put out in 2002 for the GameCube. It\u2019s outdated tech by modern standards, but was nonetheless helpful for the shiny hunt.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike modern wireless controllers, the Wavebird communicates with radio waves \u2013 so if all of the receivers are set to the same radio channel \u2013 they can all send inputs to whatever system they are plugged into,\u201d he says. \u201cThat allows for pretty-well unlimited scaling of how many systems we can control at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite all his preparation and attempts, Professor Rex says that he hasn\u2019t actually made any progress in the hunt.<\/p>\n

\u201cBetween Safari Week 2025 (eight Shiny Psyducks Seen), and 2026 so far (six Shiny Psyducks seen), I\u2019ve already encountered 14 shiny Psyducks that aren\u2019t Golducks. And the worst part is \u2013 none of those \u2018phases\u2019 have brought me any close to my target. Shiny hunting isn\u2019t cumulative. I\u2019m actually exactly as close to the shiny as when I started.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no shiny Golduck in sight just yet, but Professor Rex says that it\u2019s more about the chase at this stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I\u2019m not sure I ever expect to get it,\u201d Rex says. \u201cIt was more chosen as the craziest target I could come up with. A shiny hunt that I could work on forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the golden goose of a level 25 Golduck is an ideal, Rex says that if he never sees that specific level, even one Shiny underleveled Golduck would suffice.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this press is making me think I might need to try to at least see one \u2013 but if I am being honest, I think any of the level 25-29 Golducks would be enough for me \u2013 though even they are still one in 1.8 million encounters,\u201d he says. \u201cOnly time will tell if I\u2019ll ever finish the hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes a Pok\u00e9mon fan goes to the ends of the earth to catch their favorite \u2018mon. Usually it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[5260,74],"class_list":["post-788150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-pokemon","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}