I found a "dark" shiny Pokémon? [closed]

Question

Okay, so I was playing Pokémon Emerald when I was younger, and I happened to catch a very strange Zubat in one of the caves.
At first I thought it was shiny, but it was way darker than it's shiny sprite, almost black.
Furthermore, in addition to the sparkles that you see when you send out a shiny Pokémon, this one also had hearts coming out of it's Pokéball.
I've searched the internet for this, but I couldn't find anyone else who has encountered such a shiny.

It was not a rom nor a hack, just a regular Pokémon Emerald cartridge.
Does anybody know what kind of Pokémon this was?

Comments

dude that's so cool! Have you tried transferring it?

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Post video proof? This is very odd

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I believe the Nest Ball has hearts when you send Pokemon in them out in Emerald.

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Did you buy the cartridge used?

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Try getting a picture of it

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Yea you're gonna need a pic of it for anyone to tell you anything more about it.

Answer 1

Maybe, this is VERY VERY odd to me, because I just caught a Zubat too (regular one, and a girl at lvl 7) in my Emerald and it looks fine. Did you catch it with a Nest Ball? Maybe that's why it has hearts (or some kind of 'attract' thing). If not, then I have no possible answer.

Way darker than its normal sprite? That maybe be just a 'dark Pokemon', but dark Pokemon usually don't appear in-game, only in Pokemon XD I think. It's not a shiny, because shiny Zubat is green. Maybe it's a bug in the cartridge or something, because that doesn't occur with a normal cartridge.

That's all I can help with

Source: My Pokemon Emerald.

Comments

why is this getting so many downvotes?

Answer 2

Hey, I know what you mean! When I was a kid I caught a "shiny" Zubat in the Altering Cave on Route 103 after beating the Elite 4. Only thing is... it was brown! I've seen a couple other posts about this so now I feel like I'm not crazy but it seems Zubat is the only Pokémon this happened with. Everyone always comments the same thing "it was probably green, you're just remembering it wrong" but I've seen multiple people asking about their "Brown Zubat" and I had one as well. Wonder if Game Freak knows more about this.

Comments

I'm pretty sure the older gen Pokemon games have been datamined thoroughly enough that if something like this could happen in normal gameplay, it would be readily available information. Either something was wrong with your game such that only the color of the shiny Zubat was altered, you're remembering it wrong, or you saw it wrong. My guess is that you saw it wrong and the color of the screen was a bit inaccurate, based on this reddit thread.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ShinyPokemon/comments/ols18c/3_shiny_zubat_but_its_brown_any_ideas/

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Hellfire Taco I've seen that picture but it didn't look like that. It was a light brown colour which is why I named it "Harry" like hairy cause it looked like it had fur. I even showed it to my younger brother and a couple of friends when I was a kid and they agreed it was brown. The colours weren't off on any other Pokémon. I was wondering if it had to do with the code from Altering Cave as it's something that changes after you beat the Elite 4 and I encountered the brown Zubat there. I saw a different message board where a person said they had a light brown Zubat as well buy I couldn't create a profile and ask them where they caught it, but I was wondering if maybe theirs was from the Altering Cave as well.

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Again, if this was something that could ACTUALLY happen, it would be documented with evidence to back it up. Shiny Pokemon are different sprites within the game's code, and all of the sprites have been extracted, so people would know if this could happen. The only other forum post I found referring to a shiny Zubat as brown is this one, and the poster pretty quickly realizes he just saw it wrong. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/471243-pokemon-ruby-version/43315434
I will actually eat a shoe if someone can find real evidence of this.

EDIT:
I searched a little more thoroughly and all of the references to any brown Zubat come from forums or comments claiming they caught one in the Gen 2 or 3 games. I feel like this goes to show that it has nothing to do with Altering Cave, first of all, and further backs up my belief that it was just seen as brown due to Gameboy screens. The only one that was backlit was the GBA SP, and even some of those still had front lights, if my memory is correct, which aren't really the best. I'm POSITIVE that this is just because the screen lighting or lack of saturation of the Gameboy era screens.