Pokémon fan and YouTuber Hylianstagram has demonstrated how he was able to obtain an especially rare Shiny Jirachi after two months of playing Pokémon Channel.
Getting a Shiny Jirachi isn’t easy. To date, Jirachi has only ever been available in the mainline Pokémon games via time-limited events or as a save data bonus. Dedicated Shiny hunters have developed methods for acquiring a Shiny Jirachi, but Hylianstagram opted to try a full odds hunt to see how long it’d take to obtain one from the 2003 GameCube game Pokémon Channel.
For context, European and Australian copies of Pokémon Channel would reward you with a Jirachi for completing the game, which you could transfer to your copy of Pokémon Ruby or Pokémon Sapphire for the GBA. It’s possible to manipulate Pokémon Channel‘s RNG to ensure the Jirachi you receive is Shiny, but a full odds Shiny hunt requires no manipulation whatsoever, meaning Hylianstagram would have to reset the game whenever the Jirachi turned out not to be Shiny.
While this challenge certainly took plenty of time and patience, Hylianstagram pulled it off in just two months and 2,280 resets, which is incredible considering the odds of any Pokémon being Shiny is 1/8192. In both a Reddit post and a YouTube video showing off this achievement, Hylianstagram calls this “way more rewarding” than if he used the RNG manipulation method. If you have the patience, it’s entirely possible you can acquire a Shiny Jirachi this way too, though I’d wager getting all the necessary equipment would be the hardest part.
At the time of writing, the easiest ways to get a Jirachi for yourself are by completing Pokémon Go‘s A Thousand-Year Slumber research tasks or by having Pokémon Sword or Shield save data when you start up Pokémon Brilliant Diamond or Shining Pearl. But both methods will never net you a Shiny Jirachi. There was a special event in Pokémon Go that would reward you with a guaranteed Shiny Jirachi, but that was in 2023. Here’s hoping developer Niantic brings that event back someday.
