Day 4 – Return to Jubilife City & Welcome to the internet (or not)

This is a part of series about my current/recent playthrough of Pokémon Pearl. While some Fan terminology and some more advanced techniques will be mentioned, this post or a previous post will provide a summary of said topic.

Day 4

I head out, and find that the North exit of Oreburgh City is a dead end, due to the path needs a bike to travel. So I head back in in to Oreburgh.

As I quickly patch up my team, I notice that the basement of the Pokémon Centre is now open. The Attendant tells me that the Online service is now ready and that All Pokémon centres basement will now be able to access the Online Services.

I soon realise that the only way forward out of the Oreburgh City was the West exit. The same way I came in. On the way out Barry bumps in to me and tells me that the only way out was via the west entrance. He runs off after threatening to fine me again..

So back in to Jubilife City, I noticed that the GTS building is now open. They will now will let you trade with anyone in the world.

I head back out and find some disturbance towards the north exit of Jubilife City..

Mike’s Thoughts

That’s a short Day for the story, and I was really padding as well. But really, now that I unlock the “ability” to use the online services. I really need to cover this topic, and this was going to be the best time as any to cover it.

In 2021, I can’t access any online service inside Pokémon Pearl. This is down to the fact that the Services was withdrawn on 20th May 2014. I had mentioned this during my NEW 3DS Review.

Pokémon Home Mobile’s GTS Menu.

Additionally, Pokémon Pearl used a outdated Wifi security protocol WEP, and had no support for the Modern standards. While the 2DS has supports a more modern Wifi standards, the way the old Wifi component that Pokémon Pearl used was not part of the DS system but part of the DS card software. This made it impossible for later DSi and 3DS/2DS consoles to use their own connection methods, but be forced to use the old method that the Pokémon Pearl came with. 2010/2011’s Pokémon Black/White was the first DS Pokémon game to use the newer standards.

For the remainder of this article, the term DS will represent all DS compatible systems, which include the DS lite, DSi models, and the entire 3DS and 2DS family, unless stated.

Due to how the DS and Cart where used, the DS and the card where a set, and required you to use the same DS system when ever you wanted to go online with a certain cart. This was somewhat normal for all Wifi enabled DS games.

The GTS was different back in the day, compared to the currently active versions in the 3DS and Switch/Mobile games. The First Big difference was the lack of search options. This often resulted in lots of results of people looking for rare or in many cases impossible to get Pokémon, and no way to filter these out.

A questionable trade in Pokémon Soul Silver, which used the Same GTS system as Pokémon Pearl. (December 2010)

Unlike the 3DS and Mobile version of the GTS, you had to have seen the said Pokémon to even ask for them. During most of the game you’ll be able to seen almost every Sinnoh Dex Pokémon by the time that you’re fighting the champion. This worked for the most part, but it does come with the downside in that you often as you’ll be wanting Pokémon you’ve not seen.

Another thing that was present in the day was the 12 digit Friend code system. Unlike the later 3DS and Switch (which is tied to the system or user account), each Friend Code was to a certain game and DS system pair. Both Players must give their own Friend Code, to each other. You would often see a line in the signature in a forum something like this:

“HG FC – 1234 – 5678 – 9012”

HG is a common abbreviation for HeartGold, and FC was for friend code.

So using the same DS, you could have as many Friend codes as DS games you had. However, most players used one or two games of the samegeneration of games to arrange trades with. (It didn’t help that getting a second DS was quite easy to get, and offered the benefit to trade with themselves locally.) This Friend code was one reason very few people swap DSes with their games on a regular basis. Additional features within Pokémon discourage swapping the DSes as well, but that will be brought up again multiple time in the future.

A similar Friend Code system was in place for most online games on the Wii, and was also withdrawn on the 20th May 2014.

For Switch Remakes, almost none of the above content will need to apply as the Switch online system works differently to the DSes. The GTS part of Pokémon Home, and can even be used in free version.

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