How to fix a legit Pokémon

[Tsuroerusu]

I recently was given a shiny Charizard from a friend of mine. No matter who gives me a Pokemon, before I use it, I check it to see whether it is hacked or not, just so that I know myself, as the person giving it to me might not be aware of any potential problems, ie. the following situation.

The battle video test failed here, so I scratched my head over it and went to investigate further. The problem turned out to be that my friend had bred this shiny Charizard on a French version of Emerald, and then had migrated it to an American version of Pearl I believe.

Here is what legal.exe says about it:

I looked around for some information, and what generally seems to be the case is if the country originated is invalid, then it is a hacked Pokemon, how I also read the following:

Country Originated:

- This is the country/language that the pokemon originated from.

- For pal parked pokemon, it may be different then the Pal Parked Country.

Pal Parked Country:

- This is the country of the diamond/pearl game that pal parked the pokemon.

- This is determined by trash bytes. If trash bytes are invalid, this does not apply (since the pokemon is hacked anyways).

- If the pal park country says "Indeterminate", this is because there are no trash bytes to check.

- If a pokemon evolved, the trash bytes may say "Japan" or "Invalid" instead of the proper country. This is normal.

- A pokemon that was pal parked by a different country than the country of origin or the korean game must be nicknamed.

In this scenario, the trash bytes will be invalid if the pokemon does not have the IsNicknamed flag.

Source:http://projectpokemon.org/editing/legalitychecker.php

(Emphasis is mine)

The Charizard, having a valid checksum, is not nicknamed, of course being and evolved Pokémon and is definitely migrated from a generation 3 game definitely seems to fit the three criteria above.

Is there a way to fix this without the use of Pokesav, which I myself do not have access to, so that this data error causing this, according to my friend (Whom I have no reason to believe would lie to me) legit Pokémon to appear as if it's hacked, is fully like any other migrated Pokémon? Would it it be possible to use a HEX editor to change this? If yes, how do I do it?

[Gowon]

You could trying putting the file into TrashBytes.exe.

[Tsuroerusu]

You could trying putting the file into TrashBytes.exe.

I'm pretty sure I already tried that, but nothing happened.

[Gowon]

Could you post the file? I'd like to see.

[Tsuroerusu]

Could you post the file? I'd like to see.

For personal reasons I am a little hesitant to actually post the file, but I just tried running the file through TrashBytes.exe to make sure, and it does not change anything, it still looks like the screenshot in my post above.

[Aarux]

Did the Charizard evolve after migration or was it migrated as a Charizard? The evolving-to-invalid thing only applies to evolving after migration... if it came as a Charizard, then—

From what I understand, anything that's migrated that's not Japanese or English has invalid trash bytes on the Legality Checker. French and all those other languages never had their bytes put into the program, I can't recall why... not enough samples to look at, I guess. So that Charizard is probably completely fine.

Sorry if this has nothing to do with what you're needing, just thought I'd point that out.

[Tsuroerusu]

Did the Charizard evolve after migration or was it migrated as a Charizard? The evolving-to-invalid thing only applies to evolving after migration... if it came as a Charizard, then—

From what I understand, anything that's migrated that's not Japanese or English has invalid trash bytes on the Legality Checker. French and all those other languages never had their bytes put into the program, I can't recall why... not enough samples to look at, I guess. So that Charizard is probably completely fine.

Sorry if this has nothing to do with what you're needing, just thought I'd point that out.

Information is always a good thing, so no need to apologies!

And yeah the Charizard seems legit, the only issue is, as I said, that I can't upload any battle videos with it, thus if somebody uses that as a rough hack-check, he or she might think I was using a hacked Pokémon, which is not an impression I wanna give off. Do you know if there's like a rare case where Nintendo, for whatever reason, makes a false positive?

[Aarux]

Well, Nintendo does have some flaws with their hack-check system, no doubt about it.

An example being that a large amount of people in the recent Video Game Championships had their game marked as hacked when it shouldn't have been... the reason being that the hack-checking system didn't include the WORLD09 Weavile as legit (flagged as hacked because it had an egg move and wasn't hatched, as well as had moves it had to level up more for... stupid, right).

Are you positive that it's the Charizard's fault? It might be another Pokemon... as another user above stated, posting the file might help so that we could look at other attributes like hex, locations, etc.

[Tsuroerusu]

Well, Nintendo does have some flaws with their hack-check system, no doubt about it.

An example being that a large amount of people in the recent Video Game Championships had their game marked as hacked when it shouldn't have been... the reason being that the hack-checking system didn't include the WORLD09 Weavile as legit (flagged as hacked because it had an egg move and wasn't hatched, as well as had moves it had to level up more for... stupid, right).

Nintendo really can be a party buster at times!

Are you positive that it's the Charizard's fault? It might be another Pokemon... as another user above stated, posting the file might help so that we could look at other attributes like hex, locations, etc.

I tried uploading a video where Charizard was my only Pokemon and the other Pokemon was on my other DS, so I knew that was OK.

[Aarux]

Huh... yeah, then from the information given I can't see anything hacked about it.

Although one thing seems kind of odd to me, is that Legality is displaying the dates the egg was received and hatched. If the Pokemon was Pal Parked, then that shouldn't be there... the only reason it would be is that it's from a DS game.

[Tsuroerusu]

Huh... yeah, then from the information given I can't see anything hacked about it.

Although one thing seems kind of odd to me, is that Legality is displaying the dates the egg was received and hatched. If the Pokemon was Pal Parked, then that shouldn't be there... the only reason it would be is that it's from a DS game.

Hmmm yeah that does seem a bit odd, not really sure what to think about it, as I said, my friend who gave me this Charizard has sworn to the end of the world that she bred it herself, and again I can't imagine her having a reason to lie to me.

[Aarux]

Yeah, I'm thinking that has something to do with it...

If you're not willing to present the file, could you maybe tell what its summary page says? With the nature and stuff? That may help some with this date thing.

EDIT: All right, I'm finished looking at the file. Just like I thought... the date was a result of the problem.

It's hacked. Pal Parked Pokemon should have "(Pal Park)" in "Met in", and arriving at Lv. 0 is a no-no. Egg hatched should be blank...

The Trash Bytes look wrong, too.

Looks like your friend pulled a bad one on you, eh?

Edited June 27, 2010 by Aarux
Check and mate! lol

[Tsuroerusu]

EDIT: All right, I'm finished looking at the file.

First of all, thanks for taking the time to look into this for me, I appreciate it.

Just like I thought... the date was a result of the problem.

It's hacked. Pal Parked Pokemon should have "(Pal Park)" in "Met in", and arriving at Lv. 0 is a no-no. Egg hatched should be blank...

The Trash Bytes look wrong, too.

Looks like your friend pulled a bad one on you, eh?

I really don't know what to think, this is a close friend of mine, and I just cannot imagine that this person would lie to me, or try to trick me in a malicious way. My friend told me that this Charizard was cloned several times over, and traded around between several games, maybe the data got corrupted then or something. After all, all the cloning tricks are glitches, maybe the game just happened to do something strange in this case.

Anyway, again, thanks for taking the time to look at it.

[Aarux]

No problem.

Cloned through the GTS or Emerald Battle Tower, I'm guessing?

I've honestly never heard of a Pokemon getting corrupted by trading/cloning, or even just randomly getting corrupted for that matter. Unless they used an AR... or hacked it?

Now that I actually look at it, it's missing a country, too... does your friend know how to RNG? Otherwise, seeing as the IVs are so high, that makes it seem even more unbelievable.

Edited July 2, 2010 by Aarux
added cloning spot

[Tsuroerusu]

Cloned through the GTS or Emerald Battle Tower, I'm guessing?

The Emerald Battle Tower.

I've honestly never heard of a Pokemon getting corrupted by trading/cloning, or even just randomly getting corrupted for that matter. Unless they used an AR... or hacked it?

Yeah, neither have I, but being a computer guy in other areas as well, when you have enough cases, eventually something random can happen because the circumstances are just right. It's just a possibility I am leaving as an option for explaining some of this.

Now that I actually look at it, it's missing a country, too... does your friend know how to RNG? Otherwise, seeing as the IVs are so high, that makes it seem even more unbelievable.

My friend does not know how to do RNG abuse. Trust me, if it was anybody else I would have assumed that this was hacked a long time ago, but I just cannot believe that this person, of all people, would lie to me.

[Aarux]

Yeah, neither have I, but being a computer guy in other areas as well, when you have enough cases, eventually something random can happen because the circumstances are just right. It's just a possibility I am leaving as an option for explaining some of this.

I would think that if something did happen from the glitches and stuff, the Pokemon would've been deleted... I've had that happen, but not through cloning.

Actually, now that I think about it... if the cloning method glitched up, the Charizard might look odd on Emerald, yes, but once it's Pal Parked, there really shouldn't have been any visible flaws. It would just say Hoenn, Arrived at yada yada.

Just another fishy bit to add to the evidence, I guess.

My friend does not know how to do RNG abuse. Trust me, if it was anybody else I would have assumed that this was hacked a long time ago, but I just cannot believe that this person, of all people, would lie to me.

It seems like you're pretty bent on the trust issue. Coming from a neutral person, I'd say they're not telling the truth about how they got it... just taking it from the facts given, really. This wouldn't be the first time someone gained someone's trust and tossed it aside in history, ya know~

That's up to you whether you think they messed with you or not, but either way that Zard's status is hacked, haha... badly at that. I'd release it. This is all I can really say for now.

[Tsuroerusu]

This wouldn't be the first time someone gained someone's trust and tossed it aside in history, ya know~

That's true, although this "inconsistency" if you will, is not near the point where I would say "OK, this person, despite how close, is not being honest".

That's up to you whether you think they messed with you or not, but either way that Zard's status is hacked, haha... badly at that. I'd release it. This is all I can really say for now.

Well, I agree that the data is certainly corrupted, and would by any tournament judge be declared as a hack. The thing is, the data is not necessarily representative of a person's integrity. I differentiate between the integrity of the data and the integrity of the person. For example, say person X receives a hacked Pokemon in a trade from person Y, but person Y does not tell person X that it is hacked (A fraud case essentially, with person X being the victim of the fraud). Person X then trades or gives the Pokemon to person Z, as far as person X knows, this Pokemon is legit, and thus tells person Z that it is fully legit etc. In this scenario, person X is not trying to lie or deceive person Z, and is being honest and telling the truth as far as they are aware. Looking from an objective standpoint, person X is, without being aware of it (And thus not responsible or accountable for it) conveying the lie of person Y to person Z.

As I said I really don't know what to think of this, I guess I'll let it go with the wind.

Anyway, once again, thanks for your time in helping me check the Charizard's data, peace man!