Manually switching PC boxes in gens 1-2

In gens 1 and 2, PC boxes had to be switched manually after filling up. So if you found a Pokémon you wanted to catch, you were blocked from doing so until you left and went back to the Pokémon Center to switch your PC box to an emptier one on your own.

Obviously we're all extremely happy this is no longer a thing. Did you ever have any particularly bad inconveniences with this system in the old games? Such as having to flee from a legendary, missing a shiny, etc?

I missed out on Suicune in my recent crystal playthrough because my box was full and I hadn't saved in a while.

This also caused me to miss Ho-Oh because Suicune is a requirement.

I usually switch the boxes around often whenever I'm playing a Gen 2 game to avoid potentially missing out on a Pokémon because of this. I remember missing out on a few Pokémon before in Gen 1 because of this, although thankfully those encounters were nothing special.

Imagine if this was a thing in Legends Arceus?

It's so funny what was standard back in the day. Like, we complain about single-use TMs in BDSP, but imagine if FRLG or HGSS reverted to the box system used in the originals! Yikes.

I don't think I ever had an issue with it back in the day. Thankfully GSC "improved" on this feature by giving you Bill's phone number, and he'd call you if the box was full; but in my original days of playing Yellow and Gold, I didn't catch all that many Pokémon, and would blast my way through the game with a select few. When I replayed them on the 3DS, I must've run into the issue a bit more often, because I was more active about catching lots of Pokémon.

I don't think I ever had a problem with it. I barely caught more than 10 Pokémon anyway, so I maybe encountered.

I'm glad we have current boxes that can be opened anywhere.

I only ever remember one time back in the day in Pokemon Blue when I was already in the postgame dungeon. I wanted to catch something but it wouldn't let me because the box was full.

I never really caught Pokemon in masses back then. So, the issue rarely ever cropped up for me.

Oh the old way of switching boxes was a NIGHTMARE.
VERY grateful that boxes these days switch automatically.
And that you aren't forced to save whenever you manually move a pokemon or change a box. That just made it take LONGER.

Fun fact: This was done for a reason. Because the box data as well as the SRAM banks used for it are protected by global checksums, and these checksums are updated when the SAVE feature is used, turning off the power without saving would fail to updated the checksums and cause your save to be falsely flagged as corrupted. The alternative is to update every game checksum every time something changes in the box data, but that would mean constantly putting up with lag while working within a box. Taking out the checksums was never an option either because that would cause the game to fail Nintendo's QA requirements.

I honestly found this annoying and glad this change was removed in future Pokemon games after gen i and ii. It's so inconvenient to have to save between boxes to change them, and having to change boxes when one fills up. But, I suppose I'm just spoiled by the modern Pokemon games.