I don’t really remember exactly when or how Ralts became my favorite Pokémon. Up until I was around 12 or so, the crown belonged to a myriad of creatures ranging from Manaphy to Infernape—two completely opposite sides of the cute/cool spectrum. I never really claimed I had a definitive favorite, that is, until I randomly decided that this evolutionary line of psychics was actually the coolest thing ever.
Maybe it’s because it’s adorable, or that I’ve always thought psychic abilities are the coolest superpower, or that it’s based on the concept of empathy, or that it vaguely resembles me, pale skin, bowl cut and all. For one reason or another, it ingrained itself into my identity enough for me to adopt it as part of my internet alias, and I still think it’s one of the most inherently interesting creatures the franchise has ever produced. Speaking as someone who’s struggled immensely with anxiety for as long as my conscious memory extends into the past, a Pokémon that embodies the kind of timid, sensitive child that I once easily made an impact on me when I discovered that its whole being is based on feeling. I hated feeling as a kid! Everything that wasn’t happiness could become overbearingly intense in a mere instant if my anxious brain interpreted an action or scenario as an existential threat… somehow. Now that I’m a lot older, it seems silly thinking about how intensely you feel things when you’re a kid. You’re a lot smaller, the world’s a lot bigger, and not everything makes sense to your mind. Ralts kinda reminds me of the shy, 5-year-old introvert who really liked reading and cried a lot. Sometimes, I wish I could let him know things feel a lot less intense now.
BUT! Oddly deep emotional analyses aside, as soon as I figured out shiny Pokémon were feasibly obtainable outside Action Replay escapades, I always wanted my favorites in their rare forms. Ralts was no different, but I didn’t just want any ‘ol shiny… I wanted a male. Gallade is my favorite final-stage evo by far, with its cool arm blades and design that generally looks like something out of Mega Man. If I could hunt for a male Ralts and succeed? It would be an absolute dream come true. And so it began.
My first successful hunt started—and ended—during the spring of 2016. I hunted in Alpha Sapphire using the coin-under-the-3DS-circle-pad trick in the Battle Resort and hatching a bazillion Ditto-bred Ralts eggs. Now, the Masuda method can take forever to bear fruit, but unlike 23-year-old me, 14-year-old me had seemingly unlimited free time, so I was able to grind through literal thousands of egg-hatching cutscenes without worrying about any adult responsibilities. It took ages. I distinctly remember sitting in my half-broken desk chair and listening to the Transistor OST while I waited for each egg to hatch, bored out of my mind and nervously gazing to and from my 3DS’ screen in anticipation of the moment a Ralts finally shone blue. One day, over three thousand eggs in, I decided to take a video of one of the eggs hatching and send it to my friends as a documentation of my increasingly (and to them, hilariously) futile efforts, when:
The scream I let out made my parents think I got shot. I couldn’t believe it! AND I’d caught it on video! But to my partial dismay, it was a girl. I could evolve her into a badass shiny Gardevoir, but not an even more badass Gallade. I flip-flopped between joy and dejection. Did I really have to do all of that over again? Was it worth doing that all over again? If my memory serves me right, it took me around a week straight of hatching to finally get a shiny… Did I have it in me to push forward?
Yes, unfortunately. I did. Two more hunts and several hundred eggs later… I GOT TWO MORE GIRLS.
You’d think after spending a week doing some of the most mind-numbingly tedious button-mashing ever that I’d be 100% ecstatic that I found three shiny Ralts. The odds are almost never in your favor when you want them to be, so I really shouldn’t have complained. But to be honest, it kinda bummed me out, and by kinda I mean a lot-a. I didn’t try hunting again for most of the year, save for a brief period where I tried finding an effective Masuda method spot in Pokémon Moon to no avail. Three shiny Ralts, all females. My luck had been simultaneously amazing and horrible, the week-long tedium having sucked the joy out of the process and whittled down my minute attention span.
Fast-forward to mid-2020, half a year after Pokémon Sword and Shield had come out. I’d already beaten my copy of Shield and was (unfortunately) disappointed with it enough to the point where I didn’t really want to play the game any further, but I’d dropped $60 on it, so I needed to find out how to get my money’s worth. An awful, tantalizing idea slithered its way into my head: What if I moseyed my way down to Route 5 and started hatching Ralts eggs from the daycare? I could feel it in my core; this was gonna be it. This would be the hunt where I’d finally find one! I popped in my earbuds, put my Weezer playlist on shuffle, and started biking around in circles.
And then…
No…
It couldn’t be…!
How.
I know I hadn’t even meant to drift slightly into the grass! My mind might’ve been wandering places in that moment; my senior year of high school was in its last semester; the threat of COVID loomed in the distance as talks of infections began seeping into conversations and pop-up articles; I was 18, wholly uncertain of how the future was going to look and unprepared to tackle it… But the Spritzee was shiny, not the Ralts. That’s all that mattered to me in that moment, and oh boy was I wound up in a mix of joy, amusement, and dejection.
After God knows how long, the hunt wound down and I drifted off toward other things. I tend to not do well with tedium that doesn’t guarantee results, so this was expected. I gave it a much better go around than before; another few thousand eggs hatched, but with nothing to show for it. Maybe I’d try again when the next game came out, whenever that was.
For the next few years—throughout college and all the other trials and tribulations thrown my way—I toyed with the idea of starting again, but I could never make myself. My heart just wasn’t in it as much as when I was 14. I barely even felt I had the time to get invested in a video game, resigning myself to occasional Counter-Strike sessions and music as my primary “time-wasters”. I started doing a lot more writing, working much harder, dealing with physical ailments, and growing older… There was a point where I didn’t feel like I could indulge in those childlike interests that’d given me such wondrous feelings over the years. To be honest, I succumbed to that feeling of oppression. It just felt wrong to touch anything that wasn’t a desk or gaze upon a screen not filled with busywork. Maybe I just didn’t like Pokémon as much anymore. Maybe the first thing I ever fell in love with just didn’t hold the meaning it once had. Could I be okay with that?
Of course you can.
You’re an adult, not a kid.
There’s more important things to worry about.
It’s 2025. The cold winds of fall have swept away the leaves and wrestled away the sun’s warmth. I’m cooped up in my room, exhausted from work, playing a little game called Pokémon Legends: ZA. It’s fun—real fun, and I’m starting to lose track of the hours in a way I haven’t since I was a teen. In the middle of dashing, exploring, and battling to my heart’s content, I discover something I hadn’t longed for in years.
A shiny! And it came completely out of the blue! As if these sparkly genetic mutations could multiply, one became two, then three, then four… I was finding a random shiny seemingly everywhere I went! Sweet! After finding ten during the main story, I decided I was having so much fun that I’d go right ahead and grind all one thousand battles needed to complete the game’s final research quest and obtain the Shiny Charm.
Why not try again?
I combed the internet for a spot—the place where I’d have the absolute best shot. Between Magenta Sectors 7 and 8: A small L-shaped courtyard has two Ralts spawns. There’s a bench on the roof where you can cycle between day and night; each cycle refreshes the spawn. This was the method. With how randomly, impossibly good my odds had been without the added bonus of boosted odds, this had to work.
It’s more fun than you realized.
Tens of resets, then hundreds. The keyring held my left stick down while mashing A became child’s play. I can’t explain why I didn’t feel burnt out. Each day after work, I’d come home and start playing, continuing the same ol’ grind I had back when I was of a less burdened mind. There was this feeling in my gut—it’s gonna happen. I don’t know why, but I just know it’s gonna.
God… dammit.
But… I didn’t feel dejected. I didn’t wallow in the hypothetical that wasn’t. A 50/50 chance wasn’t impossible to hit. I had to press onward!
Several days passed with no results. I didn’t have the time, nor energy, to keep up my five hour per day playing streak for the next however many weeks, so my playtime slowly dwindled further, and further, until it was nearly nothing again, just like it was doomed to be—
My scream was one of childlike delirium. It just… happened. The itty-bitty goal in the back of my mind for nearly ten years had finally been achieved in an instant. I couldn’t believe it. I actually did it. The battle was over, and I’d won.
It really does feel good, doesn’t it?
I still don’t play games every day like I used to. Heck, I barely even finish the ones I do start. But at the very least, when I’m sitting in bed at night with nothing to do but stare out the window, I remind myself that it’s not a waste of time to be a kid again for a few hours. Now that I finally feel like I’ve gotten everything off my chest, I think I’ll pick up my Switch, boot up my game, and fall right back in.
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