Bad news, guys.
The guys disassembling the program have verified that it's
100% impossible to soft reset for any of the Mystery Gift Pokémon (ie. you get them from the green man directly) as shinies. The games are rigged to never give out shinies from there, unless they're predetermined to be shiny, like the WCS Milotic. This means:
- The only legitimate ways to own a shiny Darkrai or Shaymin are through either the Japanese Elite Four Glitch or through Platinum, where Oak's Letter and the Member Pass are being given out over wi-fi.
- Most 4th-gen events, including Gamestp Deoxys, stuff from PBR, Festa, may not be shiny.
SRing a shiny Manaphy is possible, but is somewhat complicated. They also tried (and did so very aggressively) to prevent Manaphy from being shiny. Like the others, a shiny PV is thrown out if calculated, meaning it cannot be shiny under normal circumstances. However, if you trade it to another game, the set of PVs which yield shinies, as we know, changes, so the egg's PV might now yield a shiny. They tried to shut down this trick, as well, but they messed up. They tried to replace your shiny Manaphy with a new, non-shiny one right as it hatched, but they messed up and checked the OT of the Egg rather than the ID of the trainer who hatched it, so we can, indeed, get shiny Manaphy. Putting it all together, here's how it has to work:
- Take the Manaphy egg from the green man.
- Have a new, restartable D/P game handy.
- Trade the egg to this game. Save the game right away.
- Prehatch the egg, ensuring you don't save during the process. (Saving will waste precious steps, and you'll need all the steps you can get if you want to be able to perform lots of SRs.)
- If the Manaphy is not shiny, SR your game and trade the egg back to the first game. (IMPORTANT! Manaphy will NOT appear as shiny on the egg hatch animation. You must check its stats screen afterward.)
- Delete the savefile on your second game, begin a new adventure, and repeat the process as soon as possible.
- Warning: The use of external devices to discover the hidden ID of your new savefiles (and speed up the process, avoiding the lengthy hatching process), or to fix them to make sure the egg is a shiny will constitute cheating, and will exempt your Manaphy from qualifying as legitimate. Roll of the dice--remember that.
So now, onto my Eevee. I only caught one of them. My chain was at 11 when the shiny patch appeared. The chain broke at 22 on an ideal arrangement. I am most definitely evolving him to Espeon. I might go back for an Umbreon later.
Now then, I have two boxes of Chikoritas to ID and release. I'm sure I have a new female Incredibreeder amongst the last few. Remembering that I release all but the best few Chikos on the fly, each one corresponds to about 20 bred, so this is closer to 40 boxes worth in that regard.