Xelloss Posted 1 hour ago Posted 1 hour ago With Pokémon Bank eventually going away, I'm planning a fairly obsessive preservation project and I'm wondering if anyone else is already doing something similar. The goal would be to build a curated collection of roughly 3,000–4,000 pre-Switch Pokémon, transfer them through Bank into Pokémon HOME while that official bridge still exists, and preserve as many meaningful Gen 1–7 origins, forms, special encounters, gifts, events and spin-off Pokémon as reasonably possible. Before explaining the details, I want to clarify something important: I'm not trying to fake a collection I didn't earn The purpose of this project is not to generate Pokémon now and later pretend that those exact Pokémon were legitimately caught by me. The problem I'm trying to solve is different. Suppose Bank shuts down, and five years from now I play Pokémon Emerald from beginning to end and legitimately catch a Rayquaza. That Rayquaza will be completely legitimate — but there may no longer be any official way to transfer it from GBA → DS → 3DS → Bank → HOME. So my idea is to preserve a proxy/replacement Pokémon in HOME now, while the transfer infrastructure still exists. Later, when I legitimately obtain that Rayquaza in Emerald, I can consider the already-preserved HOME Rayquaza to represent the one I actually caught. They are obviously not literally the same individual Pokémon. It's basically: “I legitimately completed this objective in the original game, and this Pokémon already sitting in HOME represents that achievement because the official bridge no longer exists.” I'm not interested in using these Pokémon to deceive people about provenance, sell them, trade them as self-obtained events, or claim that generated Pokémon were genuine historical distributions. This is essentially a personal preservation/checklist system for future playthroughs. And because Bank is a one-way historical bottleneck, I'd rather prepare the preservation layer now than discover in the future that I forgot something that can never again enter HOME. I'm not looking for a normal Living Dex The concept is closer to a: Origin Dex + Form Dex + Special Acquisition Dex + In-Game Event Dex + External Event Dex + Spin-off Transfer Dex but curated so it doesn't become millions of combinations. I'm estimating somewhere around 3,000–4,000 Pokémon, possibly somewhat more depending on the final event criteria. Origin groups I want representation of the meaningful pre-Switch origin groups, including: Gen 1 Virtual Console / Game Boy origin mark Gen 2 Virtual Console / Game Boy origin mark Gen 3–5 legacy Pokémon without a modern origin mark Gen 6 blue pentagon Gen 7 Alola clover I do not want to make an entire Living Dex separately for Red, Blue, Yellow, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, LeafGreen, etc. For example, for Gen 1 VC I would make one complete Gen 1 collection and intelligently distribute its members between Red / Blue / Yellow. The exact game of origin can influence which representative I choose, but it doesn't automatically justify duplicating the whole Pokédex. Special Pokémon should take priority over generic catches This is one of the central rules of the project. Whenever possible: special/unique acquisition > generic wild catch For example: starters Yellow gift Bulbasaur / Charmander / Squirtle fossils Game Corner Pokémon NPC trades gift Pokémon static encounters one-time encounters special Eevee choices N's Pokémon Totem gifts where transferable Dream Radar Pokémon Dream World Pokémon Pokéwalker Pokémon special Bank distributions demo distributions etc. If I need one Pokémon of a species for a particular origin, I'd rather use an interesting one than a random Route 2 catch. A special Pokémon can simply fill the normal species slot. Duplicates are allowed when they actually mean something This is not strictly one Pokémon per species. If two copies represent genuinely different acquisitions, keeping both can make sense. For example: a Charizard evolved from Yellow's gift Charmander a Charizard evolved from the starter chosen in Red could both be worth preserving. Likewise, I might keep both Gen 1 Snorlax encounters because they are two distinct, iconic static encounters. On the other hand, I would not keep 20 random wild Snorlax just because their stats or natures differ. The basic philosophy is: Every extra slot should have a reason to exist. Forms and variants I want meaningful transferable/stored forms, including things such as: Unown forms Vivillon patterns regional forms Minior colors Oricorio forms Lycanroc forms Rotom forms Pumpkaboo / Gourgeist sizes other persistent forms meaningful visual sex differences where appropriate But again, I don't necessarily want every form multiplied by every generation unless that specific origin/form combination is meaningful. I'm trying to maximize historical variety per HOME slot, not build a Cartesian product. Spin-offs and external games are a major part of this I want to preserve transferable Pokémon associated with things like: Pokémon Colosseum Pokémon XD purified Shadow Pokémon Pokémon Box Ruby & Sapphire Pokémon Channel GameCube Bonus Discs Pokémon Ranger Shadows of Almia Guardian Signs Pokémon Battle Revolution My Pokémon Ranch Pokéwalker Pokémon Dream Radar Pokémon Dream World / Entree Forest Pokémon Bank distributions transferable demos other game-based distributions If a Pokémon could legitimately enter the main-series transfer chain and ultimately reach Bank/HOME, I want to consider it. If something is permanently trapped in an old game and could never legally reach Bank, then it doesn't belong in this particular project. Events are included too I also want official event Pokémon. Both: in-game events enabled by an event item and external distributions Examples: Faraway Island Mew Birth Island Deoxys Navel Rock encounters WISHMKR Jirachi CHANNEL Jirachi Ageto Celebi Ranger Manaphy Mystery Gift distributions local/offline events Wi-Fi events serial-code events etc. However, I don't want five copies of essentially the same event solely because it was distributed in five languages. My tentative rule is: genuinely different event → preserve it same distribution localized for different regions/languages → usually one representative If two events involving the same species are historically meaningfully different — different event concept, special move, ribbon, Poké Ball, OT, method of acquisition, etc. — then both can deserve a slot. No full Shiny Living Dex layer At least for now, I am not planning: Normal + Shiny × every species × every form × every origin. That would make the project unmanageable very quickly. If an important official event happens to be shiny, that's fine. It would be included because of that event. I'm just not doubling the entire preservation collection with shinies. I'd also like the collection to resemble plausible playthroughs Where practical, I'm trying to work with the idea of roughly: one save file per game/version and use mutually exclusive choices intelligently. For example: Red chooses one fossil Blue chooses the other different versions choose different gifts different Eevee evolutions can be spread between games version-specific rewards can complement each other Additional saves are fine when genuinely necessary, but I don't want to artificially pretend every possible choice came from 30 playthroughs of the same cartridge. This is a soft rule rather than an absolute limitation. Why I'm asking instead of simply building it I'm perfectly willing to build and curate this myself. I'm not asking because I can't be bothered to do the work. The real concern is completeness. There are decades of obscure Pokémon distributions, NPC trades, one-off encounters, accessories, spin-offs, demos, regional events and unusual transfer mechanics. This feels like exactly the kind of project where I could spend months building it, transfer everything into HOME, and then someone tells me: “You forgot this obscure Pokémon distributed through this game in 2008.” And after Bank is gone, that omission could be permanent. So before reinventing the wheel, I'd like to know whether somebody else: already built this is currently building it maintains a checklist has a downloadable archive wants to collaborate or knows of categories I'm overlooking Ideally, I'm looking for something downloadable A ready-made collection is useful because it could also serve as the common starting dataset for this preservation project. Formats such as: PKSM .bnk .pk3–.pk7 collections large .pk7 archives PKHeX databases pcdata.bin prepared Gen 7 saves GitHub repositories archived event collections organized ZIPs spreadsheets paired with Pokémon files would all be useful. The ideal result would be something that can be bulk-imported into PKSM/PKHeX, verified/curated, placed into Gen 7, transferred into Bank in batches, and finally moved into HOME. The long-term idea Imagine I eventually play through: Red Crystal Emerald FireRed Colosseum XD Platinum HeartGold Black Black 2 X Omega Ruby Ultra Sun and all the relevant side games. Whenever I legitimately obtain one of the Pokémon represented in this archive, I can mark that HOME representative as “earned” in my personal collection. So eventually the preservation collection becomes a record of things I've actually completed in the original games. The only difference is that the physical Pokémon in HOME had to cross the Bank bridge before I completed some of those playthroughs, because that bridge may no longer exist later. So: is anyone already doing this? I'm particularly interested in projects combining things like: **Origin Living Dex Form Dex NPC Trade/Gift Dex Static/In-Game Event Dex Event Dex Colosseum/XD Ranger Ranch Pokémon Box Battle Revolution Pokéwalker Dream World Dream Radar other transferable oddities** into one curated pre-Bank archive. If somebody already has a collection like this — even privately — I'd love to compare criteria. If there's an active project, I'd rather contribute to it and help make it more complete than independently create another version. And if nothing comprehensive exists, maybe this could become a community project: a curated, documented, downloadable Pre-Bank Preservation Dex that people can use before the Bank bridge eventually disappears. Most importantly: What categories am I forgetting? That's probably the feedback I'm most interested in.
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