What is Pokémon Home and the Death of the Golden Pokédex Era
One of the staples of Pokémon has been the ability to trade with friends (or with yourself if you have 2 consoles) so that you could catch ‘em all. Even the earliest Pokémon main series games, Red and Green had the ability to trade using a physical cable between two consoles. This allowed you to exchange one Pokémon for another or battle Pokémon.
The years went by and the Gameboy Advanced came and with it came a dongle (a small piece of electronics equipment) that attached to the top of the console, allowing you to finally trade Pokémon wirelessly. Some people still used the cable because they already had one and the wireless device would cost them extra money.
A few more years passed and we reached the time when we no longer called the handheld line of Nintendo consoles as Gameboys, but simply, Nintendo. With the Nintendo DS, you could still do some cable trading, but the wireless trading was built into the console itself. A new feature came to the Nintendo DS, which was Global Link Trading. As the name suggests, you were now able to trade with someone else on the complete opposite side of the world from you. You were no longer restricted to someone in just your local area.
Now that we were free to trade with anyone, completing the Pokédex, which is the official encyclopedia of all Pokémon, became easier than ever. This presented a new issue: space. In order to complete the Pokédex, one must catch every single Pokémon available (until later generations on the Switch, but more on that later), which meant trading Pokémon from older games up to the newer games, filling up your in-game Pokémon PC storage. At first, this felt like barely an issue, but as the Pokémon generation of kids started getting older, people started realizing that you can just steal someone’s Pokémon by stealing their game or just not trading back a Pokémon someone lent to them. The Nintendo DS did allow you to trade up from some Gameboy games without a friend’s help, but you still needed a second DS or a friend to trade between DS games.
Some people kept their Pokémon spread across multiple games, or kept back ups just in case, but most just lived with this possibility. This eventually did change with the arrival of the Nintendo 3DS and the new system called Pokémon Bank. Like the name suggests, it is an online vault hosted by Nintendo and Pokémon to keep your Pokémon safe outside of your save files. It also allowed you to more easily trade with just yourself between generations of games, no longer requiring you to have a friend or a second console to trade up to the newest games. This application also kept an internal Pokédex of every form of Pokémon you put into it. There were rewards for sending Pokémon into the Bank called Miles that you could use to get items inside of your 3DS games. You could also finally trade up from 3DS versions of the original Gameboy games (Red, Blue, Yellow) and Gameboy Color games (Crystal, Silver, Gold) into your Bank, which was previously impossible as there was no way to trade between the Gameboy Color games and the Gameboy Advance games.
This meant that one was able to self-trade from any main series Pokémon game from Gameboy Advance through Nintendo DS through a single Nintendo DS, and the Gameboy/Gameboy Color 3DSware and the 3DS through a single 3DS. With two consoles, you could complete the entire Pokédex by yourself with absolutely no outside help (with some notable exceptions of mythical Pokemon that required special items from events if you didn’t already have them). This opened up the Golden Pokédex era, not to mention that up until now, one was able to catch almost every Pokémon ever made inside of one generation for the most part (legendaries and mythicals often excluded).
Today we have the Nintendo Switch, allowing Pokémon games to reach even greater heights in the 3D realms, but Pokémon threw its fans a curveball. You could no longer catch every single Pokémon in every game and not only that, but the Pokédex itself would no longer contain every Pokémon ever created either. More than that, the game would not even allow some Pokémon to even come into the game. Fans called this Dexit, which is a reference to Brexit, which was a name used for the political phenomenon of the United Kingdom officially leaving the European Union. Dexit is a shortened and combined form of Pokédex Exit.
This leads us to Pokémon Home, which is the modern version of Pokémon Bank that was made specifically for the Nintendo Switch. Like Pokémon Bank, Pokémon Home stores an absolutely massive 6000 Pokémon with a premium account, which is almost 6 times more than the current number of Pokémon existing as of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. The Golden age of Pokédex completion is still here because you can catch the missing Pokémon from all of the older games to Bank and then transfer them into Home.
So why does the title say ‘the Death of the Golden Pokédex Era’? That’s because as of October 6, 2023, Pokémon and Nintendo have made an important announcement. Some time in 2024, all 3DS networking services will be going offline. That means no more online playing options. No more playing with your friends on the other side of the world. You can still download and redownload software that you have purchased in the eshop, but all other things will be turned off permanently. Nintendo’s support website notes that Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter will still be usable for now, but that all Pokémon players should be ready for even these apps to shutdown too eventually.
That begs the question then, what Pokémon are currently truly unavailable on the Switch and are there other ways for me to be able to get said Pokémon, even if Pokémon Bank goes down once and for all.
Pokémon Currently Unavailable on the Switch:
Deoxys
Snivy
Servine
Serperior
Tepig
Pignite
Emboar
Patrat
Watchog
Pansage
Simisage
Pansear
Simisear
Panpour
Simipour
Blitzle
Zebstrika
Meloetta
Pokéball Vivillon
Furfrou
Diancie
Hoopa
Pikipek
Trumbeak
Toucannon
Minior
Magearna
Pokémon Catchable Through Pokémon Go and a Premium Home Account:
Deoxys (Time Limited Raid Battles)
Snivy
Servine
Serperior
Tepig
Pignite
Emboar
Patrat
Watchog
Pansage
Simisage
Pansear
Simisear
Panpour
Simipour
Blitzle
Zebstrika
Meloetta (Pokémon Go Fest 2021 event)
Vivillon (Most forms except Pokéball)
Furfrou (Most forms, one form was Valentines event exclusive, many forms require visiting other parts of the world)
Diancie (Pokémon Go Fest 2023 event)
Hoopa (Special Research: Misunderstood Mischief December 2021 event)
Pikipek
Trumbeak
Toucannon
Minior
Pokémon Not Available Through Pokémon Go:
Magearna
What Pokémon Should I Focus on Getting Before the Shutdown?
Magearna through code scanning on Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon (QR Code at the bottom, you are welcome)
Minior (to collect all of the different colors, including shiny)
Any of the listed mythicals if you happen to have them or the items to get them
Any Vivillon patterns you may still have stashed throughout your games
Pikachu with a hat through code scanning on Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon if you don’t have it already (also at the bottom)
