Gen 1 Compatibility with Sun and Moon?

[Stormelli]

According to the Pokemon Bank website and the announcement trailer for the re-release of the original RBY games, Pokemon can be transferred from RBY to Sun and Moon.

I'm surprised that no one's talked about this, but how will the compatibility work? Generation 1 and 2 were both blocked from RSE because the format for Pokemon was changed so dramatically, and it appears as though the format hasn't changed at all in the re-releases.

One possibility is that the Pokemon in RBY are already formatted for Sun and Moon, but we just don't get to see that because it's behind the scenes, so to speak. That way, once we transfer to Sun and Moon, the Pokemon have always had natures, IVs instead of DVs, possibly even shininess, etc.

The other possibility that I can think of is the Pokemon are formatted in Sun and Moon, so all that stuff is randomly generated upon transfer.

But there's also two big problems with both methods: stat experience and the special stat. In RBY, stat experience is like EVs, but you can distribute 252 of them between each stat. Also, how would stat experience work with the special stat split of Gen 4?

Any thoughts? Or maybe it's something that we'd just have to wait and see?

 

[mew_nani]

When Pokemon were transferred to G/S/C from R/B/Y, they were updated to be compatible with the new mechanics introduced there like having additional types, the special split, genders, shiny-ness, and held items. The real actual reason Pokemon couldn't be transferred from Gen I/II to Gen III is because they couldn't create a compatible link cable for it; the Game Boy link cable couldn't transfer two Pokemon at once while the Game Boy Advance cable could. In theory you could actually transfer a Gen I/II Pokemon to a later game easily if you can make the required updates to that Pokemon, and in this day and age it's certainly possible.

What you described with Pokemon always having those traits was actually pretty much the case with Pokemon transferred to a Gen II game; they could also be transferred back the same way and all of that stuff would just be hidden again.

Really what I'm most curious about is how glitch Pokemon and illegal movesets will be handled. It's horrifyingly easy in Gen 1 to have a perfectly normal Pokemon like say Pikachu with an impossible moveset like Fly, Surf, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt, and I don't need to mention the over 100 glitch Pokemon hidden in the game with insane movesets and base stats.

 

[Hikamaru]

Do you think there'll possibly be mechanism this generation that would detect things like illegal movesets? I'm thinking it'll probably give you an error message if you tried to transfer a glitched Pokemon of some sort. :s

That could be possible, but given the TM lineup from 1st Gen, the compatibility with Sun & Moon can allow one to transfer Pokemon with very interesting movesets. Imagine a No Guard Machamp with Fissure dominating the battles, or some other interesting movesets involving 1st Gen TMs.

 

[Stormelli]

I totally forgot about illegal movesets. I'm curious if Missingno. is blocked or if they'll let it through. And I didn't know that about the link cable. I had heard that it was the format change, but just goes to show the internet isn't always the most reliable source.

And I recently just glitched my own Mew on Yellow after having done it on Blue when the games were re-released, so now it raises the question of whether or not they're going to block Mew?

The more I think about it, the more it seems likely they'd block it, otherwise Mew just wouldn't be special anymore and Game Freak has been known to like to keep things exclusive (looking at you, Japanese Pokecenter events).

Who knows? Maybe they won't even block Pokemon at all and we'll have a bunch of weird glitchy Pokemon all over the place.

 

[TheKojo]

Converting the files isn't hard. Just copy any relevant data from the gen 1 .pkm files, make a newer structured .pkm file with it and just randomize anything that didn't exist in gen 1. I think the compatibility cut between gen 2 and 3 might have been more of a hardware issue than a software one.