It took 17 years to see this event in Pokémon Crystal!

Delve into the remarkable 17-year journey to unlock one of Pokémon's most elusive secrets—the Celebi encounter! We unveil the legendary GS Ball event, the exclusive key to encountering Celebi.

#pokemon #nintendo #pokemoncrystal #celebi

[Darksyne]

Imagine being one of the few people in Japan to pull this off only for your game battery to die years down the road 💀

[Dylan-ufuf]

and once again, it's unobtainable after they shut down the store yipeee!! Great job once again Nintendo.

[mcalann]

I got lucky and met a kid at my local trading card shop who gifted me Celebi back when I was a kid. I remember him telling me he attended a Nintendo Pokémon event and got it there. I really don’t remember if it was on Pokémon gold or Crystal but we used a gameboy link cable. And back then we could duplicate our Pokémon/items and gift them to friends. His exact words were “And that’s a gift from me to you” as I received my celebi. Good times

[AlexDuWaldt]

The aesthetics of G/S/C were so magical as a child.

[devontesavage]

I remember being a dumb 7 year old kid wandering around ilex forest for hours trying to find celebi. This was a long time coming lol

[Lamarionga]

Grame Freak : gotta catch em all


Also Game Freak: F**k dem kids!

[Dborn]

Gen 2 games were so cool. Traveling to kanto and defeating the gym leaders and getting gen 1 Pokémon. The nostalgia 🥲

[GamingintheAM]

Even in the original Game Boy Color release, the quest was actually fully translated into English and could be triggered by just using a GameShark to place the GS Ball into your inventory. The game only checks for whether you HAVE the ball, not how you got it.

[abrahamz]

I remember reading the little pamphlet that came with this game when it first came out saying you could encounter Celebi in the forest. Can’t tell you how much time I wasted running around trying to find it or some secret path. They just translated the text and didn’t verify that western players could actually do it.

[benjaminberkey]

I just used a gameshark to obtain celebi back in 2000 when gold and silver were released lol.

[FuranGameplays]

Celebi was a reward for attending to certain Nintendo events in Europe back in 2000-2001

[edman]

I don’t know why Game Freak hated western kids so much.

[SanBoriqua]

Never caught Mew.
Never caught Celebi.
Never caught Manaphy.
Never caught Jirachi.
Never caught Deoxys.
Never played Gen 4.
Never played Gen 5.
Never played Gen 6.
Never played Gen 7.
(Parent was too broke to pay for new gens after Gen 3 and thought Pokemon was a waste of time)
(Got a job and started paying for the new games myself at Gen 8 and other remakes of older gens for the switch)
Never caught Zarude because I missed the events due to having a job. (Gotta pay bills. Aka being an adult)
Not even gonna even mention the mythical Pokemon from Gen 9 because they’re practically given to you at this point. “New update everyone! Here a mythical Pokémon you don’t have to search for or do extremely difficult events”example mew and celebi events. There was no kid in 1996-2002 that had a damn cellphone to do this event unless you were high middle class or rich. Plus almost every parent was telling their kids in that time period “you don’t need a cellphone. You’re in elementary school.”
That’s the main reason it took 17 years to find a celebi. At that time the 4th Pokemon movie was released and I honestly thought that celebi was a Pokémon made just for the movie.

[TiaguinhuxD]

My dad casually triggered this event when I was young and it is one of my most memorable pokemon childhood memorie ever ❤

[RobotnikPlays]

90s kid here. We all knew the shrine was for Celebi.

We (my friends and I) figured that wed have to attend a Nintendo event to unlock the shrine as the mobile phone thing was JP exclusive. But the event never happened, at least in my area 😕

[spdutahraptor]

Back in the day, the rumor was that in order to get celebi, you needed to talk to every single NPC across both Jotho and ONLY THEN you would be able to call him
That was one of the most infamous, yet movilizing rumors in history right next to the SS Anne's Mew truck


Simpler times

[tylerriggs]

Nintendo really been locking Pokémon behind paywalls since Gen 1

[wolfrig]

Im not sure how he did it, but we had a childhood friend who could turn your game off and on again over and over and eventually he could trigger the Celebii encounter at the shrine.

[Normal_user_coniven]

Actually, there was a rumour that this shrine had Celebii before Crystal was even released when Celebi was still until development (Celebi was only in the base game data back then). So, Gamefreak listened to rumours and made Celebii appearing there in that shrine as the rumours wanted it to be.

[JoblessMusic]

Please give credit to the arranger of this theme in the background