For
years, the shiny Gyarados in Johto's Lake of Rage, and later in Unova other guaranteed shinies, were the only shiny Pokemon I'd ever seen in any of the games! For those who might not know, shiny Pokemon are rare, alternately-colored versions of Pokemon. For each specific species of 'Mon, there's one normal color scheme and one shiny one. While there are certain ways to seek out shinies and increase your chances of finding one, the base odds were 1 in 8192 from the second generation (where shinies were introduced) all the way through the fifth. Then in Gen Six, these odds were changed to 1 in 4096. That's considerably more likely, but still a rare thing!
However, the increase in likelihood was enough for my luck to change! Going around the Kalos region after having completed the main story, I ran into a shiny Abra. I was excited because, hey, my first random shiny encounter! But I was also... not so excited, for two reasons.
See, here's a not-shiny Abra on the left, and a shiny one on the right:
...They don't look all that different, huh? Yeah. For me, as for many, it's way more exciting for a shiny to look very different from the normal version of the Pokemon's colors... After all, that's the
only difference. Shiny Pokemon aren't any stronger, they don't learn special moves, nothing like that. They just look neat!
But hey! A shiny's a shiny, and this was my first time encountering one at random! I wasn't about to pass that up, I had to catch it! Which leads to the second reason I was less than thrilled: Abra is rather infamously a pain to catch, as it will use the move Teleport to end the battle and escape on its first turn, without fail. There are ways to get around this if you're prepared, to be fair! But I wasn't!
Luckily, in turn-based Pokemon, you can use an item before your opponent makes their first move. So I threw a Pokeball, hoped for the best... And caught the shiny Abra! It turned a disappointing first shiny less disappointing, having caught it in a precarious situation. I don't have it anymore, though... While my second mon-guaranteed shiny, from that same save file of Pokemon X, is still in my Pokemon Home account, I believe I traded Abra for another shiny on a gaming forum. I can't remember which Pokemon the other shiny was, though.
I do kind of wish I still had it, but ultimately, my favorite part of that shiny is the story of finding and catching it. And ever since then, I've found wild shinies in many playthroughs, and done plenty of intentional shiny hunts to try and get specific Pokemon shiny! So that Abra did open the door to more!
...Though, Kalos might have a bit of a mischievous streak for me, when it comes to shiny Pokemon. In the second game to take place there, Legends: Z-A, I saw and failed to catch a shiny Pidgey, my first time failing a shiny! XD
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