Transferring my 20+ Years Worth of Pokemon to the Modern Age — The Prologue
Have you ever invested hundreds of hours into a game series and thought, “Dang, I’d hate to lose all that effort due the inevitable march of time.” If you ever had that thought or are me, then you’re probably dreading the closure of the Pokemon Bank
Nintendo recently announced that they will be ending online services for Pokemon Bank in April of 2024. Meaning you can kiss all the cool pokemon you’ve collected since Pokemon Ruby good bye. And when I say you, I mean me. I’m so boned.
Hope isn’t all lost. If I start transferring all my pokemon from my old games now, I should be able to maintain my pokemon collection. To help me with this huge moving task, I’ve decided to break down all the steps I need to take in this article and a couple of future articles.
Sit back and watch me lose my freaking mind.
Transferring Methods
Pokemon Bank
For the uninitiated, Pokemon Bank is a piece of 3DS software that people can use to store Pokemon from the mainline 3DS Pokemon games on an online server. People can then transfer pokemon in Pokemon Bank to the Switch pokemon storage service, Pokemon Home. Pokemon Bank is the only way to transfer pokemon you caught in the gameboy, gameboy advance, gamecube, DS, and 3DS pokemon games to the games on the switch.
The transfer process from Pokemon Bank to Home is pretty simple. I just select what boxes in Bank I want to transfer to Home and then I enter a transfer code. Once the transfer is complete, I can choose how I want the pokemon to be deposited in Home as well.
The transfer process from the 3DS pokemon games to Bank is almost the same as transferring pokemon from Bank to Home. The only difference is that you don’t have to enter a code to move pokemon from the games to Bank. It’s all so nice and streamlined that it won’t take me long to make these transfers. Unfortunately, this is the last nice and easy thing about this moving process.
Poke Transporter
If I want to transfer pokemon I caught in most of the DS line of games, I’ll need to use the 3DS software, Pokemon Transporter. I hate this piece of software so much. It’s much more cumbersome than Pokemon Bank because you can only transfer 1 box of pokemon from your DS games to Pokemon Bank at a time. This means I have to:
- Boot up the DS game I want to transfer pokemon from
- Move pokemon to box 1 in game
- Switch to Pokemon Transporter
- Transfer pokemon to Pokemon Bank via Transporter
- Switch to one of my 3DS pokemon games and boot up Pokemon Bank
- Move transferred pokemon from the transfer box to free up space for the next transfer
- Repeat
It’s going to take a lot of time to get everything transferred from my DS games because I have a ton of boxes of pokemon. I wish this was the worst part of the move project, but it gets so so soooo much worse.
Poke Transfer
Transferring pokemon from Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, or SoulSilver to Black, Black 2, White, or White 2 has to be the most inane process I’ve experienced. You have to have at least 2 DSes or 3DSes or a combo of the two to actually do the transfer. Once I have my DSes set up I have to:
- Enter the pokemon transfer facility on route 15 in B, B2, W, or W2 and initiate the poke transfer mini game
- Initiate download play on my other DS with D, P, Plat, or SS inserted into the system to start the poke transfer mini game
- Choose 6 pokemon I want to transfer to gen 5
- Note: I’ll also have to make note of which pokemon know an HM in D, P, Plat, or SS. I can’t transfer these pokemon until I delete the HM from their moveset.
- Play a short touch screen mini game to re-catch the selected pokemon
- Confirm that I want to transfer the caught pokemon to the gen 5 game
- Repeat steps 1–5 until I have all the pokemon I want from the gen 4 games
- Start the Poke Transporter process
Pal Park
If I want to go even further back, I could transfer pokemon from my Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald (Gen 3) games to my D, P, Plat, or SS (Gen 4) games. However, that process is almost as bad as Poke Transfer. At least I only need 1 classic DS to do this transfer. Any who, I’d have to do the following to do this transfer:
- Make sure a Gen 3 game and a Gen 4 game are inserted into my DS at the same time
- Go to the Pal Park in route 221 (D, P, or Plat) or Fushia City (SS)
- Choose 6 pokemon to migrate from gen 3 to gen 4
- Note: I’ll also have to make note of which pokemon know an HM in Gen 3. I can’t transfer these pokemon until I delete the HM from their moveset.
- Run around the Pal Park and re-catch the migrated pokemon
- Repeat steps 1–4 until all pokemon from the Gen 3 game are transferred over
- Start the Poke Transfer minigame process
I can already tell this project is going to take me a good while to complete. The bottle necks between each gen is going to be frustrating to deal with given how many games I’m working with. But hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day and I still have a good number of months to get everything transferred.
Here’s a handy little chart that details the different transferring pathways I’ll have to take during this project. It was made by the reddit user, u/streamfire.
To Do List for Games
Gameboy Advance Games
Pokemon Emerald/Ruby
I’m debating if I should even go back this far to maintain my pokemon collection.
Years back I took the time to abuse the duplication glitch in Emerald to get an absurd amount of legendary and mythical pokemon.I’m pretty sure I already transferred all my pokemon from Emerald while using the glitch. So, I’m not too worried about getting my pokemon out of Emerald. If my memory is correct, then I shouldn’t have much to do here even if there’s still pokemon locked in my boxes.
My main worry is that the internal battery for the game is dead. Then I won’t be able to even check if I have pokemon in the game.
Nintendo DS
Pokemon Pearl
Man, I don’t remember why I put so many hours into this game. Maybe I was so enthralled by the thought of catching Palkia that I got immersed in the world of Sinnoh quickly. Though, I might have been bad at the game and took my time to brute force my way through all the game. It also might have been that I loved the legendary and mythical pokemon of this gen that I just kept coming back whenever a special event was going on in the game.
- player name: Culex
- 301:45 hours played
- 456 pokemon in dex
- about 16 boxes of pokemon (6 x 6, 36 per box)
- 10 eggs to hatch
- Transfer to Pokemon Bank via Pokemon Transporter
Pokemon Diamond
This is my sister’s game. Looks like she already completed the main story. Thank god. Might as well transfer everything over at this point.
- About 2 boxes worth of pokemon
- Hasn’t caught the following legendary pokemon: Cresselia, Regigigas and Giratina
- 2 eggs to hatch
- has about 60hrs on the save file
Pokemon Platinum
I’m surprised I have less hours in platinum than pearl. I know platinum had a lot more content than pearl, but I think a good chunk of that was the battle frontier… Man, I sucked at competitive pokemon battles back then. Despite this, I still spent a huge amount of time on a game that had a few differences from Pokemon Pearl.
- player name: Omega
- 125:14 hours played
- 383 pokemon in dex
- About 13 boxes of pokemon to move
- Move pokemon to Pokemon Bank
Pokemon Black
This is also one of my sister’s games.
Should I even complete this game to get the legendary pokemon from it? Probably, because I read that a lot of pokemon from the Unova region aren’t obtainable in the Switch pokemon games. Though, I did find information that only a few Unovan pokemon can’t be transferred to Switch pokemon games at the moment… Any who, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get another Reshiram.
- 12:27 hours played
- 45 pokemon in dex
- About 1 box of pokemon to move
Pokemon Black 2
I visited some of my local retro gaming shops and they let me know that this game was worth about $100. I’m simply baffled at how expensive these classic pokemon games are. It’s insane.
Anyways, I’ll be transferring all my gen 4 pokemon through this game.
- player name: Kraken
- 97:52 hours played
- 502 pokemon in dex
- About 13 boxes of pokemon to transfer
- Move pokemon to Pokemon Bank
Pokemon Soul Silver
I’m nervous about transferring pokemon from this game. It’s just so big and has so many pokemon in it. I fear I might miss transferring a unique pokemon from this game to the Switch games. I’ll have to do a bit more research to prevent this.
I’m also surprised at how many legendary pokemon I haven’t caught in this game yet. I guess I got lazy, haha.
- player name: “Thatsmapizza”
- 100:23 hours played
- 206 pokemon in dex
- About 13 boxes of pokemon to transfer
- Move pokemon to Pokemon Bank
- 5 eggs to hatch
- Catch remaining legendary pokemon: Articuno, Moltress, Rayquaza, Latios, and Latias
- Double check if there are any pokemon can only be caught in this game
Pokemon White
Not much to say about this game beside the fact that it had great music and characters. N is best boi.
- Player name: Pizza
- 113:42 hours played
- 463 pokemon in dex
- About 9 boxes of pokemon to transfer
- Move pokemon to Pokemon Bank
Nintendo 3DS
Pokemon X
What a blast from the past. I finally decided to reuse my player name I used when I played Monster Hunter Tri. I’m surprised I didn’t use it again earlier.
Thanks to one of my good friends, this is the pokemon game I started to get into competitive pokemon. I spent so much time breeding for perfect IVs and working to get good EVs as well. It was so fun, yet it really burnt me out on pokemon as a series. I just got tired of the battle mechanics since they haven’t changed much throughout the years.
I will say that I really loved the mega evolution gimmick that was introduced in this game. Kinda a shame the pokemon series abandoned this mechanic after this generation of games.
- Player name: Semath
- 511:41 hours played
- 559 pokemon in dex
- About 17 box of pokemon to transfer
- Hatch 4 eggs
- Move pokemon to Pokemon Bank
Pokemon Alpha Sapphire
This is the least amount of time I’ve ever put in a mainline pokemon game. I was super burnt out of pokemon at this point. Replaying through Hoenn made the burn out much worse since most of the new stuff in the game was post game. Though, all the new stuff in this remake was awesome.
- Player name: Fasade
- 41:41 hours played
- 338 pokemon in dex
- About 12 boxes of pokemon to transfer
- Catch remaining legendary pokemon: Lugia and Heatran
Pokemon Ultra Sun
I never actually played a pokemon game set in Alola. I tried playing pokemon moon on release, but I realized that I wasn’t having fun with the game and returned it the next day.
I’m aiming to make sure there’s no holes in my pokemon collection by playing through all of Pokemon Ultra Sun before Pokemon Bank shuts down.
- I need to start playing this game
- Catch all legendary pokemon
- Collect all Alohlian pokemon forms
- Check pokemon exclusive to Pokemon Ultra Sun
- Transfer pokemon to Pokemon Bank
Outro
Looking over stats for this project is daunting, but with some time and patience, I should be able to get everything transferred over. I’m not looking forward to dealing with the various bottle necks created by the different transfer processes.
I intend to update this project once a week on Friday, but that might change depending on how busy I am. Also, updates for this project won’t be as beefy as this article because I’ll be writing about what I did for the project and updating my To Do List.
I hope you enjoyed this article and I hope to see you next time.
References
- Game Photos. Thatsmapizza. I took these myself 😀
- Pal Park Photo. Bulbapedia. https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pal_Park
- Pokemon Bank Header. Pokemon.com. https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/pokemon-bank-services-will-be-available-at-no-cost-to-players
- Pokemon Bank Photo. Bulbapedia. https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Bank
- Poke Transfer Photo. Bulbapedia. https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9_Transfer
- Poke Transporter Photo. Bulbapedia. https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9_Transporter
- Transfer pathway infographic. u/streamfire. https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/11ew6bu/friends_were_confused_about_transferring_pokemons/
