4th Gen The Dongle Method

Remember how the Nintendo DS had a slot for the DS games, and a slot for GBA games to communicate with eachother? In dual slot mode you could migrate Pokemon from your Gen 3 games over to Gen 4, provided you had a gba cartridge and ds one inserted in your console at the same time, and had received the National Dex. After this you could reunite with your Pokemon from rse and frlg using the Pal Park feature in a catching show.

Another useful thing about dual slot mode was the dongle method. This was a feature of Diamond, Pearl and Platinum specifically I think. Once you had the National Dex if you played in dual slot mode it would allow you to have wild encounters with Pokemon at certain locations that would not normally be on the route. Typically they were past generation Pokemon not in the sinnoh dex, version exclusives and other rare Pokemon.

Something else that I thought was cool about the dongle method is that the Pokemon that could spawn varied depending on which gba game was inserted. A Fire Red cartridge had some different Pokemon than Leaf Green, and vice versa. Some Pokemon though were accessible no matter which game you had.

Did you ever try the dongle method, and find anything interesting?

I did this. I liked the idea of it a lot, just wish that there were more Pokemon that could be unlocked in number, but there were definitely some worthwhile encounters. My favorite was Gengar. You could get him at Old Chateau. I remember farming them in the room next to the one with the ghost girl. I know a lot of players were upset by Mindy's Haunter holding an everstone, but trading wasn't the only way of getting this Pokemon in DPPt...there was this way too.

Wow, I completely forgot about this until you pointed it out! Been forever. I remember being really fascinated by this as a kid and feeling like I was encountering some super rare and awesome stuff because of the GBA games in my GBA slot. It was a fun lot fun. The part about being limited in how many Pokémon you can bring over daily was annoying though, why limit us to 6*a day and then make us play an annoying minigame to catch them...? They're my own Pokémon and these restrictions should not have been necessary. :x

I used to encounter wild Solrocks when I had Ruby in my DS, though I didn't actually know until a while later that the Dongle Method was the reason for it. Never needed to catch a Gengar though since I could trade a Haunter between two of my Gen 4 games to get one.

I've also migrated quite a lot of Pokémon over to Gen 4 from Emerald and Leaf Green in the past. Thankfully there's a glitch that lets you migrate as many Pokémon as you want in one day, though you would need more than one Gen 3 game to do it.

I loved the dongle method - it wasn't too expansive, but it was nice to be able to make use of my GBA collection as I played the DS games. My favourite Pokémon to catch via this method was Gengar in the old Chateau. For my entire childhood, I never had a consistent friend IRL who also played Pokémon, so Pokémon like Gengar/Alakazam/Machamp/Golem/Kingdra/Scizor/etc, were always out of reach for me. Even once Gen 4 landed, I didn't have reliable internet access until a few years after that (countryside living! </3). So it was nice to finally be able to use a Gengar, especially after Mindy in Snowpoint teased us like that.

That Gengar was a great surprise! I would be on the Mindy hate reddit if I had an account on that site, as I had nobody to trade with so was heartbroken by that Everstone. So when I was playing through again and encountered a wild Gengar, I couldn't believe it!

I initially thought it was a glitch as in a mood my brother had ejected my cartridge whilst I was playing a day or two earlier. Luckily it later turned out that the only adverse side effect is that it crashes so much in the snow it takes about 4 times as long to reach Snowpoint City as it does in my fully-functioning copy of Platinum.

I know about this feature, but sadly couldn't ever use it, since I never owned DS. I think it's cool idea, but I don't like that you can get few Pokémon only this way. Kinda feels like a unnecessary paywall.

I had no idea it has a name. Sounds silly. I like it.

I can honestly say I didn't even know this was a thing. Not sure how it escaped my knowledge, maybe I was asleep when it was announced XD

Now I'm gonna have to dust off my Nintendo DS and my GBA games and try it