How much can/do Pokémon games track when it comes to hacking?

Question

Hi! So I myself don’t hack, but I’m concerned about some of my Pokémon’s legitimacy/legality. I was just wondering how Pokémon hack checks work and what’s they check for. I was wondering this about official competition/tournament checkers and for the checkers in the games themselves. Thanks!

Comments

I don't know the full list but some of the more obvious ones are if the Pokemon has impossible combinations of moves and abilities or straight up has moves or abilities that it shouldn't. There is likely some internal information not available to the player that can be tracked and checked for as well.

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Actually, I’m pretty sure it only checks for flat-out impossible moves/abilities, rather than incompatible ones. I’ve seen shiny V-Create Rayquaza on the free Battle Spot, even though that event was shiny locked. Honestly, Smogon’s hack check is much superior than that of the actual games.

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I also believe Ray Rizzo got away with having a Dream Ball Aegislash(Illegal combination) in one tournament.

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KRLW890 is right. I don’t think the game actually checks the PID in some cases.

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Interestingly enough the Pokémon pokebank hack checks suck so badly that I transferred a hacked Shiny Darkrai from an event in platinum in an ultra ball and poke bank moved it into a Cherish ball (illegal ball).

Answer 1

Pokemon’s Hack checks suck. They are terrible. They don’t check poke balls, Shinyness, IVs, OT, EVs. (for illegal stuff). I was able to use a Shiny Groudon in a quick ball because it was registered as caught in old Hoenn. It’s Ivs we’re also modified.

They do check location met, level met. Legal moves.

Most importantly, the PID, so for example, if a Pokémon with a event move and 31x6 IVS and nature was hacked to have a PID that matches that of the Pokémon from that species (but had the event location met, level met, Cherish ball) it should be fine.

That’s about all.

By the way, I highly encourage you hack your competitive teams. Just use possible move sets and shinyness and poke ball and a correct PID.

Warning: Useless info
The best hack checking in Pokémon is when transferring between Black 2 or White 2 to Pokebank. But even then, if it’s mostly legal, pokebank re-assigns it a new legal PID.

The worst hack checking that I personally found was Gen 4 to 5.
Warning: Useless info ends here.

Summary: I give Pokémon tournament hack checks 4/10.

Comments

Also most people are fine with hacked pokeballs as it doesn’t have much impact on the battle (unless the other person is so concentrated on calling you a hacker they forget about the battle).