Pokémon Gamers Horrified to Learn How to Transfer Your 'Mon From Gen 1 to Gen 9

Transferring Pokémon between games is a bit of a time honoured tradition at this point, with many of the games allowing you to bus in types of 'mon that should never have been there in the first place.

Swapping Pokémon with friends in the playground to get hold of that shiny you've been chasing for months has always been a big part of the games since their earliest days, but its also possible to swap between whole generations if you have the right equipment.

The main problem that occurs is that Generation 3 was a bit of a reset for the series and developer Game Freak didn't make it particularly easy to transfer your favourite Pokémon from the first two generations upwards.

As pointed out over on Reddit, you need to two GameBoy Colors, a flash cartridge called an Everdrive and a software called Poké Transporter. To get the same Pokémon from Generation 3 to 4 you then need a DS with a GBA slot, as well as a save file with the Elite Four defeated. This unlocks Palpark which then allows you to transfer the Pokémon in.

It's a similar system on the Generation 5 games, needing completion before you are able to use Download Play to get the transfer done.

It then gets even more complicated, as Gen 6 asks us to use the Poké Transporter and Pokémon Bank to get the job done, which isn't possible since the 3DS closed (without a modded console).

Lastly, you can get your chosen Pokémon from Pokémon Bank to Pokémon Home (which costs money), then they can be sent all the way up to Generation 9.

That immensely complicated system did a lot to frighten off potential players, with one simply saying, "Yeah I'll just stick to emulators and PKHex."

Fair enough, if you ask us.