Pokemon Fan Uses 58 Consoles to Hunt One of the Rarest Shinies Ever

A Pokemon fan is hunting down one of the rarest shinies in existence by searching across 58 copies of a game running on Wii and GameCube consoles. The effort is remarkable, though it remains to be seen if it pays off for the Pokemon fan.

While there are gamers out there who don’t really care if they ever come across a shiny Pokemon, there are others who are utterly devoted to hunting them. Finding shiny Pokemon, especially in the older games, is typically a matter of chance, so if players are dedicated to finding just one particular Pokemon, the process can take anywhere from mere hours to years. Some gamers find ways to improve the odds, like in this case, albeit with some fairly extreme methods.

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Gamer Hunts One of the Rarest Shinies with 58 Game Consoles

Now, a gamer called Professor Rex has put together a hunt for an incredibly rare Shiny Golduck by using 58 Nintendo consoles. The hunt is being performed in Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire in the Safari Zone, with the rarity of the Pokemon being due to a combination of factors. Finding any Golduck at all in the Safari Zone in Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire is already a bit tough, as there’s only a 5% chance of coming across one. However, Professor Rex is specifically hunting a level 25 Shiny Golduck, which is the lowest level one can appear at in the area. Professor Rex has estimated that there’s only a 1/16 chance of finding a Golduck at level 25 at all, and a mere one in nine million shot at finding a Shiny Level 25 Golduck.

To help improve the odds somewhat, Professor Rex has gathered 25 Wiis and 33 GameCubes. The hunt is going on with a single Wavebird controller, which is able to control all 58 consoles at once, and each game is displayed side-by-side on a single screen. Having that many consoles to begin with would be extremely uncommon for most gamers, but thankfully, the hunt doesn’t require 58 copies of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. The hunt instead uses utility expansion pack Pokemon Box: Ruby and Sapphire, which lets users play the games on a GameCube, and once the game has loaded, the disc can be removed and moved to another console.

Even with the combined efforts of 58 different systems playing the same game, though, Professor Rex admits he doesn’t have much faith that he’ll actually find his incredibly rare Pokemon. In a conversation with Kotaku, he said that he wanted a target he could hunt “forever.” He noted he’d be satisfied if he found a shiny Golduck at any level in the Safari Zone, but even then, he estimates that the odds of doing so would still be 1 in 1.8 million. With odds like those, he could very well hunt for years with no success.

While this is a particularly unique case, there are still plenty of gamers out there who are extremely dedicated to hunting shinies – albeit typically with just one game system. One fan put themselves through 207 resets in order to catch a shiny Rayquaza in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is easier to find shinies in, with a base chance of 1 in 4,096 encounters being shiny. However, a shiny can still readily slip away, like in one case where a Pokemon trainer moved in to capture a shiny Flamigo, only for an in-game call from Arven to interrupt them, allowing the bird to despawn. With any luck, if Professor Rex finds his coveted shiny Golduck, he’s actually able to capture it.