3rd Gen Altering Cave

Altering Cave was a location in Hoenn and Kanto that only has Zubat in it. However, it was supposed to be used to be an event location that added Pokemon to it through Mystery Gift. This never happened, however, and the location remained unused and mostly empty.

What did you think of Altering Cave? I honestly don't understand its inclusion if it ended up being an abandoned event location.
 
I never really understood this place as a kid, I heard that it was supposed to change Pokemon but at the time I didn't know that the event was never included, so kept going back thinking things would change! That was a long time ago though, and also wonder why it was included in the final cut of the game, I guess they fully intended to distribute an event but never did? I really wonder how much it would have been used, and what Pokemon were included!
 
I do wish they did more with it rather than leaving it empty like they did. It was a great opportunity to make some use out of it. They were probably just too lazy to remove it. Could have easily thrown new encounters for post-game into it.
 
Altering Cave was nothing special, though I loved it's sinister background music, which I later learned during my SoulSilver adventure that it was a track from good ol' Kanto, as it is the theme of both Mt. Moon and Rock Tunnel.

Looking back on it, I do wish it was a Cerulean Cave sort of post-game dungeon that linked up with that underground passage from Fallarbor Town, with a good chunk of some Kanto and Johto Pokémon not in Hoenn, or that Safari Zone extension for the latter, considering those rematches you'd occasionally have with the Gym Leaders.

It would even help give players a wider variety of strong Pokémon for the Battle Frontier.
 
omg i was so mystified by altering cave as a kid. i think leaving it empty and having me wonder what it was for was honestly more interesting to me than it being a cerulean cave type thing
 
It was a severely missed opportunity. They should've added at least something in it to make it worth my time exploring. Just filling it with Zubats ain't exactly gonna make people care (not even me bcs I already would've caught a Zubat at that point lol).
 
This brings me back to the good ol' days of Gen 3-4, when I had no friends who also played Pokémon (and didn't even have reliable internet to research these things).

Any event-reliant mechanic in the older games was a bit of a disappointment to me; my country (Ireland) didn't start hosting Pokémon events until Gen 6. As a result of this, there are still aspects of the Gen 3-4 games for me to discover now and again, which is kinda cool.

Altering Cave itself is a bit of a disappointment overall, though; a shame they'd go to such lengths just to include some relatively ordinary Pokémon.
 
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