Pokemon Emerald is known to have the most difficult Pokedex to complete in the history of the Pokemon franchise... but how hard is it actually? I challenged myself to complete it as fast as possible, all while doing a 'Living Dex', where I need to have a complete catalogue of every individual Pokemon - and this is how it went. This video took a lot of time and effort to put together, so I'd really appreciate it if you shared this with a friend. If you have any suggestions for the next video, leave it in the comments below! Have a great day :)
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0:00 - Intro
0:53 - Day 1
5:58 - Day 2
9:42 - Day 3
14:45 - Days 4 & 5
17:02 - Day 6
25:29 - Day 7
29:27 - Day 8
31:18 - Day 9 & 10
38:47 - Day 11 & 12
40:20 - Day 13
43:31 - The Final Days
Shoutout to John's sister supporting him destroying his save file
I feel like she just stod nexst to him doing nothing
@@darthjarjarbinks2480 I have absolutely stood there and watched as my little brother did something stupid. I knew what he was going to do. I knew it was a stupid thing to do. And I absolutely could have prevented him from doing that stupid thing. But it was REALLY funny to watch him do it 🤣
@@evman1094and on top of that it wouldn't have taught them anything. I accidentally formatted ALL MY 3DS SAVE DATA cuz I thought I was in the right options for the SD card. Years of game time wasted, but rest assured I'm not formatting anything ever again.
@@evman1094 who u
@@x_Arone_xshut up weird guy
There was something incredibly foreboding about seeing that he had finished the story of the game six minutes in
Reminds me of a werster speedrun where the first split was "beat the game"
3:58 "Why would you ever want a Horsea?" 27:18 "Kingdra is probably my second favorite Pokémon ever" bruh
fr 😂
stay humble 😎
He'd rather have his own
It's possible to hate a previous form of a favorite Pokemon lol.
@@Zac_Frost Right, but he said who would ever want one. And the simple answer to that is someone who wants to evolve it to become a Kingdra.
For the record I did this over like 2 years, idk how you managed over 2 weeks. Great stuff!
Hey Jrose didn’t expect to see you here!
How fast can you beat the Emerald PokéDex with only a JRose?
Jrose you are genuinely a legend, your videos really helped me through some tough times man. Thank you so much ❤
What @@lukaskarlgerhardsaid
I would have been surprised if you DIDN'T comment @Jrose11
That Shiny Horsea holding Dragon Scale was absolutely mental. You should've gone and bought some Powerball lottery tickets after that.
The best instance of streamer luck.
My equivalent of that achievement was probably getting a 5% encounter rate Chansey as my first encounter on one route in Platinum and it holding a Lucky Egg.
@@wikiuser92 Not anywhere near as rare as a shiny I'm pretty sure..let alone a shiny holding an item. Haven't done the calcs but I'm pretty sure lol
@@testerwulf3357 I know. I just said it was my closest equivalent to what happened here, and still pretty lucky. Something similar happened to me later when I ran into a Metagross as my first rustling grass encounter at the Giant Chasm once (5% chance), caught it in a Quick Ball (Metagross has the lowest possible catch rate, so it's a big deal), and it was holding a Metal Coat (again a 5% chance).
@@wikiuser92 Mine is catching a adamant nature cubone holding a thick club with good ivs (i assume) I also got a shiny diglett(of all the possible pokemon...why diglett should be my first?) And quickly able to find a feebas with modest nature That is all i have
i'm consistently SO glad that big youtubers like you talk about how much of a money and time sink pokemon can be. this is absurd, oh my god.
It's ridiculous. I loved gen 1 and it seemed somewhat manageable. I figured the later games would make things easier because the trading and having pokemon locked to certain games was so obviously obnoxious, but no it seems to be worse.
Or... Just use any one of the 200billion dex enhancement hacks.
@@ronnieketchum1241 at that point just cheat them all in
@@yunglink992 I mean if you aren't doing this for content as a streamer, you'd have to be absolutely crazy to waste your time on this if you could also just get all the pokemon easier in the newer games or just cheat them in without wasting your time and money
It would never happen, but it would be nice if nintendo could make some new physical console type device for a resonable price and have it just have slots for all their old consoles and make it a physical pokemon bank allowing old gens to easily transfer to new again
It only cost 150+ hours, $1450, and Interviewer Gabby's will to live.
Tbf, back in the day, the games were only $40-60 a piece. But the Jirachi bonus disc and the celebi bonus were really hard to get. 😓
Wow the game cost $1450 now days?
the biggest challenge is this is getting all of these LEGALLY
"My boyfriend is this Mightyena." Good Job John.
Knotty Boy
Note ✍🏻to ✍🏻self: ✍🏻Never ✍🏻do ✍🏻a ✍🏻living ✍🏻Dex ✍🏻in ✍🏻any ✍🏻game ✍🏻ever ✍🏻 ESPECIALLY✍🏻 GEN ✍🏻3 ✍🏻
Me who's done a Shiny Living Dex in SV: 👀
National living dex* regional living Dex isn't too hard and is actually pretty fun
Not so hard nowadays, just finding the box space is the hard part.
Especially not in Home, trying to get all Gen specific badges.
I can only agree. Did it in Shield, it broke me when the 2nd DLC came out (I ran out of space)
The absolute state of retro gaming
This is a super big accomplishment, doing a Gen 3 full living dex without any glitches (besides having to ACE inject the event items as that's unavoidable now) like Emerald's Battle Tower dupe for infinite master balls / rare candies or Colo's infinite ball trick is quite a task! It was nice getting to catch quite a lot of this live while out with sickness, congrats on getting the video out!
IS THAT SHAYY UNDERTALE
How is it a huge accomplishment? Kids everywhere used to do this...
@@thehighlightsreel953The nat dex was not like that, there were several mons that were almost impossible or take way too long without every single game from gen 3
i am still yet to complete a single pokédex and this guy is lapping me like ten times over
If you need help getting exclusives or something lmk I'm always down to help!
I didn’t have one done either until Violet. You can do it!
Might I suggest bdsp or let's go. Both have very simple and easy to complete dexes
X/Y and ORAS is the cheapest and it allows you to complete a living dex up to Gen 6. just missing the mythicals.
I just recently finished my SwSh dex in about 7ish days! If you need some exclusives in there, I’d be up to help if you need!
The fact you didn’t use the infinite master ball glitch for late game colosseum is crazy, I’m so sorry for your loss
When I was a kid I didn't know about that glitch and I beat the whole game the legit way. The final part of the game is such bullshit. That glitch needs to be exploited.
@@abigailofdarkness the moment I read about it I just went “Ok yeah literally just why wouldn’t you do it” especially cause it’s not limited to master balls so you can use the early ultra ball for easy catches and you can spam X-Items to sweep with Pokémon that have surf. It’s literally the one thing that makes end game Colo bearable
So that's the thing where you throw the masterball, but then you swap a thing, eh idk look it up but it works
@@conza1989 You throw the ball with your first Pokémon, then on your second one you swap the item slot with the master ball with another item. The game will register you using the masterball but because it’s technically not the item you used it doesn’t use up the masterball.
I’ve completed the National Dex for every generation 4-8, but I’m NEVER completing a Gen 3 National Dex or my bank account will never recover 😂
I actually have that English event Mew they gave out on September 30, 2006. It took a ton of begging to convince my parents to drive me down, since the Toys R Us was on the other side of town, but I got to battle other kids and pick some cool merch they were giving out too. As a result I've got all 151 on my Leaf Green. I am *SO GLAD* I never bothered with a national dex. Dear god. I had most of the stuff you needed, but damn. Little tidbit, I remember I traded a Trapinch to the event staff for the Mew. I wass like, "I'm okay with giving this one away, it sucks!" And the guy who was working it was like, "You should try training one!" And that was how I was introduced to the greatness that is Flygon. Good video, dude,
This was SO much fun to watch live, and the video turned out so great!!!!! This is my favorite generation of Pokemon, and it's absolutely insane to see where the prices have gone on it all!! You did such a good job walking through everything. Absolutely honored to have my Emerald VIP card featured at 21:14 Thankfully, the Master Ball in the JP Colo bonus disc does *not* lock the master ball behind story completion/purification, so it's actually extremely useful for people shiny hunting stuff like Shadow Entei since you can use it that early in the story! I had NO IDEA about the 255 times oversight with Gabby & Ty - that is SO cool and something I gotta work towards on my games!!
New level 100 gauntlet idea?
@@f0rm0r The Uber Gauntlet: Complete a Living Dex of a certain game, but you *must* grind all of the mons to level 100.
6:13 The way I see it, Kyogre is the one who's surrounded. What's under the ocean? That's right! More land.
Plus we know land isn’t there normally, which means Groudon literally raised that plot of land on its own and could probably do plenty more
Idk..one of them extremely weak to the other one and it's not Kyogre! Just saying. Groudon got such a bad typing for the dynamic they tried to set up..there is no believable way Groudon could do anything to Kyogre before getting immediately KOed by a single droplet of water..especially in primal form where it's even MORE weak to water! For a duo that's supposedly fighting all the time and equals the typings do NOT reflect this
@@testerwulf3357 Drought/Desolate Land + Solar Beam.
@@PlayrR3D156 People debating this in 2024 makes me happy
yes but how will this affect the meta
That shiny horsea with the dragon scale was insane. And that bit at the end. "Go home." I think I died laughing 🤣
4:30 Just like how Greek tragedies are forgotten about in modern times, it seems that the tragedy of Jerma's debt has also been lost to the sands of time.
50:28 he beated us 300 times, we hoped he went away but then he immediately just to come back after five seconds, our pokemon watched us in tears saying we can't do it boss, and the only thing he said is: go home, taunting us but we can't
New creepypasta just dropped
With Baabu and Boingo Jumpluff stock has risen over the last few years
This easily became my favorite of Johnstone's videos. There are some parts in the video that are genuinely hysterical; John's luck is actually crazy sometimes!
You're such a good storyteller.. I'm literally zoned in every video. One of one man, i love your stuff!
The three legendary beasts being captured by the villains is mirrored in Pokémon Ranger, and that game was even more insane. Your run as a Ranger ended if your styler broke (or just set you back to the last save if you're WEAK), and the beasts LOOOOVE to attack your styler on sight. Manipulating them to attack and trying to do loops before they start sprinting again is a necessity. Not only that, but there's THREE FIGHTS IN A ROW. you basically need to grind Poké Assist gauge until your Plusle/Minun can paralyse them, and hope you can complete 20+ loops to catch ONE OF THEM. It is the single hardest battle of attrition in the game, yet somehow feels balanced(?) anyway. Shadows of Almia would actually redo the capture system, replacing X number of loops with a dedicated friendship gauge that filled up per loop, and progress decayed instead of wiping out entirely when you stopped. The difference in quality of life is night and day, and nothing will compare to OG Ranger Charizard or the beast trio. All this to say, legendary beasts captured by evil team, something about nickels, weird happening something.
You just awoke traumatic memories of child me, oh my god. I beat Charizard in OG ranger by waiting on the attack where he puts down a bunch of little fires, but walks slowly around them. Rather than carefully move my line between them, I just quickly tapped all the fires around The Zard to remove them, clearing the area to quickly loop around him. Prior to discovering this strategy, I actually got stuck on him, resigning myself to never beating the game. Charizard is a monstrous fight, and Entei gave me very similar trouble afterward. Though I did beat it, the challenge was indeed brutal. Part of me kinda finds Almia a bit too easy in comparison, but it's definitely a better experience overall.
I remember absolutely destroying my screen with my stylus while playing Pokémon ranger.
Oh my god do i remember the rage that rayquaza caused me lol, and yeah charizard was a pain.
As someone who also did this myself, I can say that Colosseum and XD cut out an ENORMOUS time in this. And it's really simple to run these games on a Wii, if you don't care about playing on 100% retail copies. Then the main hassle is just needing LeafGreen for Slowpoke, deciding if you're gonna use glitches or not for Deoxys, and getting Celebi, which needs the japanese games.
I am attempting this challenge on this channel, and I learned some new things about how to make this process easier. Thank you Johnstone for paving the way for others to try this ridiculous quest! 😊
I remember attempting to do this back around 2018. Bought all I needed too but never had the time/drive to commit to it. Thank you for completing this. I’ve always wanted to see it.
Emerald is my favorite main series game - but I've only ever played it casually, so I had no idea how DEEP everything went into this. Thank you for doing this so we don't have to!
John, thank you. I have been looking forward to this video for SO LONG. LOVE LOVE LOVE your content!
So glad I got to watch most of this live! It was so much fun on stream and so much fun to watch again in this video. Another certified banger from John
This was an incredible journey! Thank you for the quality content!
Emerald is my favorite pokemon game by far and I love battling the TV crew and then giving nonsense responses. Great video as always!!
Good lord. I am amazed at your dedication. Emerald was one of the first pokemon games I played through to the end and it always bothered me that the National Dex was so far out of reach. Amazing video!
Your dedication was INSANE! I could not ever hope to do this myself and it was a joy watching you complete it. Congrats!
Huge respect! I've been slowly completing the national dexes on all of my childhood copies (thankfully I had all the games and the hardware needed anyways) and Gen 3 took me almost a decade (2015-23) to fully do. I had every pokemon needed, legit acquired, by 2016 thanks to some good fortune but trading every pokemon between every game was such a discouraging process until AbsolBlogs released his box edits. So much slower than your time, but it's just been a side project while I finished Uni and started Antarctic research. About halfway through gen 4 now! Keep up the great work :)
Im trying to do that right now myself. This has always been a childhood dream of mine. Are you saying you have a legit mew and deoxys though? Short of just getting on reddit and begging anyone who has a real one to mail me a cartirdge, meet up in real life, or find one on ebay for a billion dollars, I am not sure how to go about LEGIT completing this
@@Bittls that was the aforementioned good fortune - I was going to a lot of local conventions at the time and met some folk who were willing to trade thir childhood event pokemon. It was really lucky! The chance is definitely a lot smaller these days, since I did those trades in 2015/16, but you may still have luck if you go to a Pokemon competition or the like, especially if you ask around online first. Wishing you all the best!!!!!!
Theys a reason why the Japanese version never used the catch em all tag line and why gen four would drop it completely
Great Job John! Cant believe the luck and good times during the streams. Heres to many more!
Proud of the commitment and the optimism throughout all of this! Congrats on your living Hoenn dex!!
Huge shoutout to the editing! The video is really well made and just genuinely fun to watch! I had an amazing time :)
Only 4 views in 1 minute? Man johnstone fell off…
334 in 3 min Still so less😢
1.6k in 5 minutes? :(
1.4k in 7 minutes!? What happened to him
Cuh peaked
Can't wait for people to stop spamming this tired "joke" on every damn video.
You have pain, ChaoticMeatball has pain, everyone has pain.
Which means all poketubers are French
This is next level. This video brought me so much joy! Love ur content Johnstone. Keep up the good work 🫡
Took me through my childhood multiple times throughout this, thanks for going through this for us to enjoy it I truly appreciated watching this today!
8:14 The Eon Ticket can also be shared in ORAS through the streetpass function with the PokeNav.
Not just strretpass, trading wirelessy or i with a friend who has the eon ticket will force it to duplicate
Your dedication is impressive dude!
This is a really video and I really enjoyed it. I had no idea about some of the tricks you used for some of the mons especially for the latias and camping on the bike route.
Alternative Title: Johnstone flexes how much money and free time he has
New Johnstone, YAY Crobatthew killed me
Congrats, John! I'm working on the same thing. I've spent $600 on rebuying Emerald, Colosseum, and XD and modding my GBA. This task is not for the faint of heart if you don't already have all the games.
That's dedication. I hope you succeed.
Minus the Gamecube titles, my lord am I glad to have gotten the GBA games second hand within 5 years after their release, like Black and White were the new games at the time.
Learning how to Picoboot a GameCube will save you a lot of time and money
Really enjoyed the evolution of Johnstones content recently. I like those pre recorded style of videos but he also includes enough amazing stream clips to genuinely incentivise me to watch his streams as they seem like great fun. That and the fact he is also doing INSANE challenges too
The dedication you have to the tasks you set out to do is impressive to put it lightly. Very very good video!
Finally someone else knows my suffering...This was hell to do back in the day. The fact that you can do it in less than 2 weeks with planning is crazy to me. It took me months to get everything lined up between school and homework back then.
One thing Johnstone didn't talk about is if you want to transfer these Pokemon up to Pokemon Home you will have to spend another 8 or so hours just to transfer them up because of the Gen 3 to 4 limitation and the stupid hoops you have to go through. I just did it myself just for the Gen 3 mons and it took more than a whole day of just transferring up after I caught them all. No generation is more time consuming than Gen 3 by a long shot.
The fact that you need to play colosseum for this challenge makes it infinitely better. I not only love gen 3 hoenn games but pokemon colosseum was the first pokemon game i ever olayed and has remained my favorite ever since.
One of my favorite Johnstone videos to date 😂 so many great bits and accidental triumphs
"Go Home" is so unnecessarily Savage and I love it!!
Now get all stars for your card😂
Can't wait to see more videos! Love your content!!! I think I die of happiness every time you put on the fishing gear for fishing time, doesn't stop being funny
Congrats! Watching this live was so fun. Stoked for the Battle Frontier next!
And people thought Dexit in Sword and Shield was bad
Different, this gen had all the code, shit and piss (Sword and Shield ) did not.
“This is played on original hardware.” “I’m playing this on an Analog Pocket.”
I mean it's essentially a perfect hardware emulator so it's close enough to original hardware
correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he say "actual hardware", not "original hardware"?
Bro wouldnt comment such maidenless nonsense if he would have hit at least once
you can play original cartridages on analog pocket
I cannot fathom the dedication that 10yo me had to achieve the same result (i did use gameshark for the event pokemon - or rather, farmed legendaries to trade with friends that had the gameshark, so I feel no shame). I should still have that save somewhere. This video made me appreciate my childhood in a weird way. Thank you for spending the (ridiculous amount of) time to make this video ❤
Farming legendaries to trade instead of cheating yourself? Damn, you were commited
Also, did you have to play all the games he did? I'm playing emerald on a emulator and have no desire to go out of the mainline games
@@youtub-fj8mu well, everything was on official hardware, no emulators involved. I did not own a gamecube nor any colosseum game and I believe they were used here mostly to speed up the process, but some game lending and trading with friends that had it was necessary - that's how I got my Ho-oh. So many shinies were exchanged, including a horsea! Tbh I don't remember too well after 20y but I remember making a point of having a legit no exploit living dex.
Super impressed with your video! This is the first video I've watched from your channel and I will be a forever subscriber! Keep up the GREAT work and much love from Oregon!
The problem with the nat dex in gen 3 wasn't the incompatibility with gen 1 and 2, it was just god-awful obnoxious game design.
Having done this myself, I *hate* Colosseum with every fiber of my being. Really glad I could use an emulator and avoid Nintendo's scummy monetization practices during Gen 3.
not just gen 3, its now a modern staple of the series
I’m so glad I grew up playing Pokémon and had most of this stuff as it came out. I had a living den in sapphire before doing it was really a thing, excluding some in-person mythicals. But I learned about Pokémon box and got,it for my birthday! Love the grind, what a nostalgia bomb for me 😊
Another outstanding video! I've been thinking about doing a living des in emerald for quite some time, also recently getting all the gab & gamecube games in Japan but man what a tedious process! Congrats on that accomplishment
The "Go Home" bit had me dying
Congrats on completing your Emerald Pokédex!!! I SALUTE YOU!!!! I'm working on this too! Oh, wait... I'M DOING THIS 10 FREAKIN TIMES!!!!! I'M TRYING TO COMPLETE MY POKéDEX FOR RUBY, SAPPHIRE, EMERALD, FIRERED, AND LEAFGREEN TWICE!!!! YES, I'M PLAYING TWO INSTANCES OF THE GBA POKéMON GAMES AND TRYING TO COMPLETE MY POKéDEX FOR ALL OF THEM!!!! Pokémon is a full time job! Hey wait! What the heck am I doing playing Wario Land 3 Master Quest!? I gotta get back to Emerald and get the last 13 Pokémon in the Hoenn Pokédex so I can get my Johto Starter! AND THEY'RE ALL EVOLUTIONS!!!! Edit: I DID IT!!! Twice! That makes 6 out of 10 regional Pokédexes complete! I chose Cyndaquil and Totodile for my Emerald starters, since I already had Chikorita! I also finished my 2 FireRed and LeafGreen Kanto Pokédexes a while back! Now... RUBY AND SAPPHIRE x2 remain! I'm playing these for RetroAchievements so there is some emulation involved! But I also bought 5 GBA SPs, 5 Wireless Adaptors, and 5 EZ-Flash Omegas to do 5 player Wireless Adaptor stuff! Yep, I spent QUITE a bit of money JUST to play 5 player games of Berry Crush, Pokémon Jump, AND Dodrio Berry Picking! Am I insane? Well, let's put it this way... decent Wireless Adaptor emulation development is slower than a mound of molasses, so I just figured that I should just get the physical hardware since I'm not waiting till 2025 for a CHANCE of 5 player Wireless Adaptor emulation being implemented into mGBA!!!!
Great video. That Horsea was lit 🔥 I loved the Colosseum part too
playing through saphire rn with my childhood game on my game boy advance. Lots of nostalgia, but sad i cannot get all the pokemon you did! happy to run into this video
The TRAINER replied, "GO HOME."
The Pokémon company is greedy. Tell us something that we didn't already know lol.
Love your content, your insane for doing all of these!
I would love better balls to play with John, please explain how to obtain them
We're just gonna glaze over this one John? 12:29
oop first comment 🔥
I always get so hyped when a new Johnstone video drops
Incredible video, congrats on getting this done!!!
im happy now but once this video is over im back to being depressed
Let's GOOO JOHN!!
Another amazing video, john! Keep it up!
Always look forward to your postings ever since i watched your lets go shiny dex hunt
It’s been decades since the last vid lol😂
Emerald being $180 makes me hate Nintendo so much you have no idea. My favorite Pokemon game
At least your generations remakes were remade as Emerald! *cries in Brilliant Diamond*
@GenusMusic Soul Silver and Heart Gold were masterpieces. Alpha and Omega were pretty good too. We need better remakes of the rest yes
@devinloew7681 yeah I think ASOR (especially after X and Y) were a much needed breath of fresh air that gave me a bit of hope for the future for Pokémon! Then there was the Alolan generation afterwards
Nintendo isn’t the reason emerald is $180. Even if they ported it to switch it would still be an expensive game (if you’re buying authentic english) due to the market being absolutely absurd
You can find loose cartridges of the game easy for like $5-$10 in Garage sales I got one last summer with a gba sp for like $10
Bro this is madness. Good job!
Its cool that you've finished them. Thanks for making my childhood dream come true 🎉
I’m a newer sub to the twitch channel, and this is the first video I’m watching on the tube. This is a really good video. I’m sorry it took me so long to watch any videos. Support this man!
Another great video Johnstone! As always giving me inspiration for future challenges, after catching every Pokemon from their original region in a Poke Ball with my OT and moving to HOME I wanted another Catch Em All style challenge, I'd love to have every Pokemon available from every generation or something like that in HOME but since Bank is closing and there isn't enough space to do that in HOME anyway something like what you have completed here might be my next best option, keeping all the Pokemon on their original games and such. Would love to see you do this again for more games!
I've just stumbled across your channel and I do love Pokemon but have never completed a full dex or a story for most of the games. I'm considering doing so because this looks fun lol. While I don't have $1500, I do have a sibling who has a few games. Excited to complete a dex! New sub! Time to watch your other stuff!
This living dex is a no go for me after learning that you had to go through all this. I enjoyed this hour long video very much and I appreciate your content a lot.
Lets Put the Pokemon Part aside. This video is extremly well made and narated. I was able to follow really well despite not beeing into pokemon that much. It was a really fun watch.
Being there for the Horsea was huge!!! Congratulations!!! That challenge defines had maximum effort.
The sister just replying "that was a bad hack" took me out lmao idk why I found that part so funny.
Whew, glad I never seriously tried to complete a Pokedex as a kid! This is absolutely insane :o
Well done, Johnstone. I’m happy I started picking up all the games and bonus disks years ago when they were cheaper. One day I’ll do this same run
These games are WILD for sure! HAHAHA!! Congratulations on getting the whole dex! And man, what a journey.
I love getting living dexs or attempting to finish a living dex in every pokemon game I've played, this was an amazing watch.
I love looking at it in my pc
Herculean effort there, young Johnston. Very congratulations.
Glad to see John back