Soapbox: Catching Legendary Pokémon The Old-Fashioned Way Was So Much Better

I experienced the gen 3 Toys R Us Mew distribution. It went very similay to the gen 1 event described above.
It made the monsters feel more valuable somehow.

I remember doing something similar when I was a kid when they distributed Arceus at Toys R Us for Pokemon Platinum. Not only was it an amazing experience on its own, but I was blown away when I learned a couple years later that, if I traded him to my copy of SoulSilver, I could trigger an event to get a low level version of one of the creation trio members! I sometimes miss those days.

From my personal experience with monster taming games, I thought catching the Legendaries from first Nexomon game was easier than Pokemon games.
And you can get multiple of Legendaries on different areas in Nexomon game.
No event tied Pokemon like Mew or Arceus, so every creatures in Nexomon are catchable with two Nexotrap models.

I got Mew at Blue Water in Kent.

Not trying to be that guy… but isn’t Mew technically a MYTHICAL Pokémon?

Also, this story is wonderful. Thank you for sharing!

Honestly, whilst this sounds like a fantastic adventure as a kid, I am glad you got to have such a great time and memory. But this really sucked for all of us who could not get to such a place because there was nowhere nearby doing this.

It felt really exclusionary, which is the entire opposite of what the game is meant to be about. I couldn’t get a Mew, there was literally no way for me to get one and truly complete my ‘dex and that sucked. It sucked more than anything in my life had up until that point. My new favourite thing ever, my new obsession… just left me out?

Eventually a friend managed to get a GameShark for their birthday in what felt like the longest wait for a birthday ever! He got a Mew and it was immediately traded back and forth for Pokédex completion. It was exciting to finally have one but slightly tainted by the notion of this Mew not being a truly legitimate one.

So… yeah this was cool. Making this the event is was, was cool. But also, it was awful and it sucked and I hated it.

I hope they will put Gen 1 on NSO for a new generation of gamers to experience the magic of Red, Blue and Yellow.

@Ogbert Agree completely. That's why the DS games were revolutionary for me. I could FINALLY trade Pokémon online in-game and try to get all the Pokedex (or most of it).

That said, it's about time they make complete self-contained games. Trading gets more and mote boring every iteration.

I will never forget my Victini that I went to Gamestation to get with my friend at the time. I never use legendaries, but I did then, he was just so good! That type matchup, the cuteness, mwah!

Catching legendaries/obtaining mythicals is such a chore these days, all the magic has been lost. I miss these times, the part about where you got some trading cards and ate out just sounds like a perfect day, even now!

That kind of day you’re describing, those friends you had and the excitement you experienced—that’s true love right there. I hope you still have some contact with those friends.

‘I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve... Jesus, does anyone?’

Better? Or simply nostalgic? Because the fact that in the earliest days you actually had to send your game away to get the legendary does not sound like any kind of improvement over the modern way. And then having to travel to the likes of a GameStop was a pretty lame barrier to it all as well, especially when many of the players of these games were children who couldn't simply drive to GameStop on a whim, and many likely struggled to convince their parents why they had to go stop at a GameStop just to get a free piece of digital data.

Like hey, I get if you have fond memories of this stuff. But to proclaim these outdated ways were 'better' feels awfully ignorant and flat-out wrong to me.

@nukatha I got Mew in FireRed that way, too. I practically begged my mother to drive me to Toys "R" Us for this event; she wasn't very happy about it, if I remember correctly.

But back in 2016, I very stupidly overwrote my save file for that game, because I had Suicune down to a sliver of its health and it was poisoned. I totally forgot that I had Mew on my old save file. All those hours, gone. I still kick myself to this day that I did such a thing.

The only way I'll be able to get Mew back is with a cheating device, such as GameShark, Game Genie, or Action Replay. Or if someone who has a copy of a Gen III game and has Mew is willing to trade.

Legendaries nowadays are too common and too easy to catch, but the problem with "the old days" is that said events weren't as common in many places in the world. They simply weren't accesible enough for most people.

Personally, I just want obtaining my Legendaries to feel like a journey to meet them and have a chance to get them that is different in every game. Scarlet & Violet did a good job in that aspect as they were present your whole journey and important to the story and, after all your work, you were rewarded with using them in battle.

How did that rumor about finding Mew under a truck get started? I had forgotten all about it until reading this! I learned about Pokémon when a friend brought his yellow Game Boy Pocket to school. My brain almost exploded by the sheer awesomeness of being able to catch, trade, and battle critters. It's precisely that blend of in-game stuff with real-world stuff that made Pokémon so compelling in my youth.

There's just something about having a Mythical Pokémon like Mew or Celebi that would make one feel so special...

As someone who grew up in rural Arkansas, less than a thousand people in my town when I was a kid, I absolutely hated stuff like this.

I was also an avid board game, MTG, and warhammer fan but my friends and I missed out on all kinds of promotional events like this because the closest store that participated was 4 hours away.

It would be cool if you lived where you could participate in that kind of stuff I suppose, but I say good riddance.

While it's definitely a good thing that you don't have to go to actual real places to get mythical Pokemon any more (Pokemon Go fills that void now for people who like the real-world adventure aspect), the Mystery Gift thing is so boring. I feel absolutely no connection to the likes of Hoopa and Zeraora because all you do to get them is connect to the internet and they pop up in your box (and if you miss the availability window, tough). Why can't there be little sidequests to catch these Pokemon?

Catching a legendary with a master ball and then on the same day finding another legendary, throw 50 ultra balls at it and still not get it. Repeat tomorrow etc and still probably not get it.

And then as time went on, glitches were discovered to force encounters with Mew in Red and Blue. The first time I did the Mew glitch, I was simply astounded. After all these years, a Mew trick was actually real!

Indeed. Thus why Arceus isn't a Pokémon game (wow hiding in bushes spamming balls to instacatch, how fun! Not).

No clue why Nintendough can't stick with what works but has to push it's IPs into bland ugly worlds (hi BoTW) just so they blend in with every other game.

As in having to be at the right place at the right time, or else not being able to catch them at all? (Unless you GameShark or glitch)
Nah, I’m good with moving on from that.

Thanks for sharing some of your childhood experiences with us. It was an enjoyable read.

I wouldn't call it better though, with the way things are now, you'll never hafta worry about losing your game to mail thieves and porch pirates.

I disliked the hassle to having to visit a store for these distributions. Plus, not everyone lived near a location that was running these events.

However, I preferred how legendaries were caught in-game in older games. In the earlier games, legendaries were rare and mysterious creatures. Usually they'd be at the end of a big dungeon, or have some other challenge for capturing them. But in recent games, legendaries are much more common, and are often obtained as part of the main story.

I really enjoyed reading this. I can definitely agree with you about the battle back then to get these rare things. I still remember when Pokémon came out and when I slapped that red cart into my GBC and my life has never been the same since.
Those two colors side-by-side: red (from the Pokémon red cart) and purple (from the purple GBC) are sooo nostalgic to me, even that takes me back to feeling like the 90’s.

@crimsontadpoles
scarlet and violet actually did a great job with this. The legendaries in that game were well hidden

@Dogorilla Because that would require effort on gamefreak's part

I don’t think making legends unobtainable unless you can get to a store during a specific time frame was a good way to do it. The mystery gift system makes it way more accessible for players without easy access to the distribution events.

@Ayuawake That's interesting to hear. I'm only familiar with the rideable box cover legendaries in Scarlet and Violet, so I had assumed all legendaries would be easy to find in those games.

A big pokemon fan who grow up in a town so small getting a walmart in the late 90s was a big deal. Knowing these events were a thing I could never partake in sucked. Even seeing the first pokemon movie was a ordeal that I almost missed out on. I don't really miss these aspects of gaming in the 90s at all.

The last Pokemon games lose all the old charm, I can't get into pokemon games anymore.

Great story, thanks 👍 You were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and have a parent willing to help.
I remember one or two events as a kid where the stars seemed to align and it ends up being one of the best memories you ever had.

@duffmmann "But to proclaim these outdated ways were 'better' feels awfully ignorant"
You seemed to miss the point. It was better because rare pokemon were actually rare and hard to get in real life. Therefore it meant a whole lot more when you actually got one, combined with the experience of others and not just you sitting on your couch.

@crimsontadpoles there’s a set of four in particular (though, I don’t actually know whether they’re formally considered “legendaries”) that require some serious investigation to encounter. I found finding these in particular to be very refreshing compared to the massive influx of meaningless past legendaries a la SWSH DLC and USUM. It really brought me back to the likes of the legendary trio in RB or even XY which were rather easy to miss if you weren’t invested, but also not ridiculously hard to obtain if you were. A very balanced challenge IMO.

Getting a bunch of free AOL floppy disks was nice since I did not have to buy them. Just put some tape to make read-write able and I was good to go. Always grabbed a few from the displays. When they changed to CDs, I was disappointed but they became good Frisbees instead.

Crystal is still my favorite of the pokemon games because it felt like getting two games for the price of one. You’d go through Johto, do elite four and then…wait a minute…do the kanto gyms and see what to original peeps are up to. And, then elite 4 again ending the game with meeting Red and his level 70 pikachu. wish the safari zone in kanto was available as well but limitations keep that from happening. The crazy part was that pokemon stadium was able to store pokemon even after resetting you record so my friends and I had the starters along with item storage so that we could reset the save move the pokemon into the new save along with a pack of master balls due to the missing no trick LOL. Fun times

I am dying for Pokemon DLC to become more like Monster Hunter. Where you have the list of events always available to you and can download them at your leisure. I also believe that mythical pokemon should be done as story content. The fact that they intended this in past games but then sometimes would never release the item that allowed you start the short story sequence is ridiculous.

But I cannot stand the go to the store method. I grew up in the country, so no chance getting them while young. And now that I am an adult, it's an embarrassingly awkward thing to do.

I agree, and this is as someone who lived in an area who never got these events. The allure of maybe possibly someday being able to have this exclusive line of code on your save was far better than the over abundance of legendaries and mythicals you can get just by logging in now.

Echoing all the rural/country kids; events like this really accidentally penalized you for not being able to get to events/where you lived. My parents were not gonna drive me an hour each way for an event.

I feel catching should be special, but not in a way that makes it basically impossible for some users. I’ll admit that was part of the reason I fell off the pokemon bandwagon early. I exited after Gold and Silver. Didn’t come back till Diamond/Pearl but didn’t actually enjoy the grind until X/Y. Love the switch entries.

I enjoy the series much more now even if I don’t know the names of most of the pokemon and don’t have a team worth squat for competitive play. The modern games (I would say 3DS and up) feel like they are for everyone again. Lucky for me, TPC is into remakes so I get a second chance.

I disagree, i live in the Netherlands, where we just didn’t have those events (Or only at stores/conventions that were nowhere near my home), so up to 3DS, i simply missed out on all distributions, yay, wasn't that fun…

Only in the 3DS era did they start with distributions of those code sheets (Pre-order ORAS and get a code for Diancie, my first legit mythical), at least they did that at a toy store chain that had shops all over the country.

Don't get me wrong. TPC knew what they were doing. The toy game is instagram/flexing/keeping up with the Joneses for kids...and with somebody else's money no less. They knew enough kids would badger and beg their parents to shuttle them to any events and they likely made a lot of money on that. I'd argue they make more money now that the games are more open (and those kids are grown with disposable income) but it is what it is. That being said, all this makes me glad to be living in the internet/information age. Tech used to take so long to move forward that you could be old/dead before a significant change was made (take the automobile for instance). I was a preteen/adolecent and something as simple as pokemon trading has completely changed and I'm not even 40 yet. I don't think there have been more generations technically overlapping than now with young gen x/Millennials/gen z/whatever the gen after z is.

@nukatha I really wanted to go to that distribution, but I couldn't cuz I'm Jewish & it was on a Saturday. Around that time, though, I caught Mewtwo in LeafGreen, & I nicknamed it, "COMPARES30," since the Mew event was gonna be on September 30th. Eventually, I went to my first in-person Pokemon distribution, which was when they gave out Manaphy at Nintendo World in New York. A little before that they were giving out Manaphy in Toy R Us, but that was also on a Saturday. I did make it to Toys R Us when they gave out Shaymin, Regigigas, Dragonite, & I think Darkrai though. (I forget whether the ALAMOS Darkrai distribution was in Toys R Us or Nintendo World.) Actually, years before all of that, I got the Pokemon Colosseum pre-order bonus disc so I could get Jirachi. I had already pre-ordered the game before I heard about it in Nintendo Power, which also said it was only for people who pre-ordered after a certain date, but we went back to EB Games & they were willing to give me a bonus disc anyways which was nice.

Mew is a Mythical Pokémon, not Legendary.

Definitely not how I obtained Mew. Instead we had Pokemon League events every Saturday morning at our local Toys R Us. I remember getting an Official League book, earning badge pins and whatnot by playing the VGC and TCG, but when the Mew distribution happened the event was different that day. No Pokemon cards were allowed during this event. It was strictly a battle competition with Red and Blue, I can't remember if Yellow was out just yet. You didn't have to win necessarily but you had to get enough points on a Mew card to redeem it. You got 10 points for every match you participated in, and another 20 points on top of if you won the match.

It was really cool to me this way. I felt like I earned that Pokemon when I got it and met some new friends along the way. I also think the first few kids to reach the point goal got a Holographic Mew promo card. I wasn't quite good enough to get that prize though. (or didn't arrive early enough, haha)

@Prizm Well if it was better in how rarely the legendary Pokemon were distributed, than the Author shouldn't be saying that 'Catching legendary Pokemon the 'old-fashioned way' was so much better.' Bad topic title if what they only meant was that the frequency in which these Pokemon were distributed was 'better'. However, actually reading the article indicates that is not the only point here at all. My critique was correct, the Author actually thought the means to obtain these legendary Pokemon back then was 'better' even though for so many reasons, it wasn't better. It was more of an 'experience' I guess in how you had to physically go somewhere or even more far back, physically send your game away, but again to claim that was 'better' is just a longing on the author's part to a feeling in their past that they can't recreate. They've let nostalgia cloud their judgement for what is actually a more streamlined experience that anyone with an internet experience can take part in, instead of having much larger physical barriers in order to obtain the latest legendary Pokemon on offer.

A point where modern Pokemon really lost me was in ORAS, where the game gives the player a Latios or Latias, as a story event, from the champion, after 5 gym badges. Five! Barely halfway through the game!

Legendaries should feel special and hard to obtain. I also didn't care for Scarlet/Violet making the box legendaries glorified bicycles who won't battle for you, but will be ridden like a horse for some reason.

I do remember feeling a bit like a dweeb walking into Toys R Us with my DS just to download Pokemon from their wifi, but it was incredibly exciting to see Regigigas appear on in my game! We never got Nintendo events or distributions in my town that were live in person events. So I think my first experience with having a Mew in Red Blue or Yellow was using the Mew glitch in the download versions. Getting it right and seeing Mew appear in my game was still exciting. But the author's account of the live event sounds like some real Pokemon magic.

Sounds like the human connection is missing. Start playing some Pokémon VGC and head to a local tournament sometime! It's loads of fun.

@FatWormBlowsASparky All squares are rectangles, not all rectangles are squares.
All Mythicals are Legendary, not all Legendaries are Mythical.

Its a wonderful story about getting a rare legendary pokemon no one knew most about. Now its easy to get even a shiny legendary pokemon through Wonder Trade, but honestly that was an amazing story about you getting a Mew.