I'm sure there are plenty of us here who have gone through the trauma of lost Pokémon, whether it be from an internal battery dying on their childhood Gen1/2 teams, stolen cartridges, or sibling sabotage. TL:DR at the end.
Recently, the YouTube algorithm had decided I wanted to see videos about Pokémon, SmithPlays, Pikaspey, SmallAnt, PointCrow, and after some trepidation/paranoia about downloading roms, I decided to dust off the 3DS and my unfinished copy of Pokémon White from 14 years prior. Little did I realize that I was about to go through a Memento-esque series of breadcrumbs that would lead to a lost-Pokémon-trauma that I had completely forgotten about.
After determining that my White save had been in the middle of EV training some Pokémon for the E4/Battle Subway, I decided to delve right back into the process of producing strong Pokémon with egg moves. I think the notion of having a Ferroseed with both stealth rock and leech seed prompted me to check on my DS and the copy of Diamond I had purchased from my friend's collection. After searching fruitlessly for the charging cable for the DS, I ordered one on Amazon.
A few days later, the charging cable arrived, and after a brief look at the game state of my friend's old Diamond, I remembered you could bring Gen 3 Pokémon forward through Pal Park, and loaded up my old copy of Soul Silver. I found my old Nuzlocke, with an over-leveled Graveler who had one-shot Whitney's Miltank, and not much done afterwards. Along with my unfinished White, this was more evidence of me having abruptly stopped playing Pokémon for some reason. I didn't think much of it, and booted up my Ruby and Sapphire, ready to take a trip through memory lane.
I quickly found that my Hall of Famers, along with some other interesting or rare catches, were all missing. This was the first generation of Pokémon I really connected with, the vibrant colors and fidelity of the GBA, the inclusion of running shoes and other QOL improvements, coupled with the fact that my father bought these games for me after the finalization of my parents' messy divorce. These were the first Pokémon games I had bothered to nickname all my Pokémon, and they were gone. Over the course of the next week, I would piece together why this trauma didn't feel all too unfamiliar.
I realized I had experienced all these emotions 14 years ago, in the same order, and this trauma is what caused me to abandon Pokémon games for so long. What should have been an awesome intersection of finally having enough compatible games and systems, along with the assumption I would transfer my favorite Pokémon forward and have two fresh Gen 3 games to Nuzlocke, I instead experienced the Pokémon equivalent of someone else blowing out my birthday candles. The games I was excited to restart and Nuzlocke would instead need to be kept as-is, an obituary of sorts.
Around 3 years prior I had leant my friend my games so that he would have enough copies to transfer his Pokémon out of his own games. The possibilities are he got greedy and stole my Pokémon, or his extremely unstable half-brother or one of their friends had sabotaged the games thinking they were his. These are both plausible explanations, and my mentioning of this is not to weigh the likelihood of either of them, but to offer you some context as to what I should expect to find in the save data of these games.
My decision to keep these saves intact seems to have been the correct move, as the research I've done prior to posting this would have me believe that the knowledge and technology for transferring Pokémon and digging through save data has gotten to the point where some form of recovery might be possible. Feels almost like a real life version of carrying around a Pokémon Fossil eh?
What we know about the saves:
Both games were saved in front of the PC in Lilycove, an indication that HM moves needed to be deleted. It is unclear whether or not these were released into the wild, traded to another Gen 3 game, or transferred forward into DPPt/HGSS.
My research brought me to the discovery that RSE has a backup save feature, but only accessible by looking through the save data or somehow corrupting the most current save.
Before I buy a device for transferring the saves to my computer, I'd like to know what the possibilities of the backup save containing my lost Pokémon are. I imagine I would need knowledge of how transferring/trading/releasing affects the save data. Are the games saved multiple times during the process to erase any chance of duplication... etc...?
If all is lost, it seems I can still "Frankenstein" the Hall of Famers back to life by recreating functionally identical Pokémon from the information stored in the Hall of Fame, even though this is less appealing to me than getting back the exact Pokémon from my childhood, I'll probably still do it.
Should I be able to find these Pokémon or recreate them... what should I be aware of when transferring them forward?
Do I need to replace the Ruby or Sapphire batteries before doing any of this?
If you read through all this, thank you for your patience. Hope it wasn't too much of a bore.
TL:DR - My favorite Gen 3 Pokémon were traded/transferred/released by someone who didn't have permission to do this, and I want to know the likelihood of these Pokémon being recovered from the save data/backup save data, and what obstacles I should expect in attempting to do this/trying to transfer them forward if successful.
If this is in the wrong forum I apologize, and would appreciate any mods to move it to the appropriate one.
