my first semi blind playthrough of colosseum i didn't know the story or trainer battles i heard that it was a hard game and that's its the only legit way to get ho-oh in the gba games without events and i did it took me 5 days of constant playing with breaks but i got it and i can now say i did it i did also use the passive purification glitch that allowed me to actually go do other things and yeah it was a great game enjoyed it a lot despite it being frustrating at times

I've just finished my playthrough of the story and purified the last of the shadow pokemon. (Rain dance Quagsire + Thunder Misdreavus swept everything!) I'm trying to wrap my head around Mt. Battle and the most efficient way to go about doing it, as it seems to be needlessly complicated.

As far as I understand it, I need to do Mt. Battle twice? Once within the story mode to get the earth ribbon, and then once in "Battle mode" but registering & using my pokemon from the main campaign - no GBA transfer mons - in order to get Ho-oh.

Is that right? You don't get the earth ribbon for Battle mode at all?

On my way to buffing Teleport as much as possible in Colosseum since well....it doesn't do anything in vanilla! It's completely useless when you use it in battle, and it has no function whatsoever outside of battle.

That's completely unacceptable for such a masterpiece game like Pokemon Colosseum!

So here's my first attempt at trying to fix this abandoned move in the overworld. Whaddya think?👀

Is there any way to obtain a Japanese ISO of Pokémon Colosseum on the Internet? I need it to hunt for a Shiny Scizor for my Ribbon Master. Any guides or a link would be greatly appreciated!

Debating on evolving quilava to hisuian typhlosion. I started a new save file and I want to catch each johto starter in anything other than a pokeball. Who should I catch first?

I could get croconaw in a great ball bc that will match it in early game. I’m usually a pokeball only guy but I feel like that would make it more special especially when bank shuts down.

Like many of you, I’m trying to get my final shiny ribbon masters onto the Switch before Bank closes. It sucks that they’ve decided to close it but finally hunting one of my favorite evolutionary lines because of it.

So scrambling before bank closes I always wanted to get the Ho-Oh from this game and move it up. This is my first play through.

I played through the story until the start of Realgam Tower without much strategy. But I know from here it is a pretty big difficulty spike. So, I just went back and went through the colosseums in Phenac, Pyrite, and the Under to get all their TMs. I also did Mtn. Battle up to level 70.

Below is the team I have settled on. They are all level 50 now. I noticed I have mostly Special moves and not too much Physical.

For Ampharos I think I should forget Thunderbolt and teach it one of four moves: Brick Break, Hyper Beam, Iron Tail, or Protect. But I might use Brick Break on Medicham to replace Calm Mind.

Also once I have enough coupons I'll give Ampharos scope lens (more crits), but also considering focus band (prevents fainting), kings rock (may cause flinch), or quick claw (may atk first).

For Espeon, I thinking light screen would be better than doubling up with Psychic and Psybeam.

AMPHROS (mild, Def- / Sp. Atk+)

• Thunder
• Thunder wave
• Thunderbolt
• Light Screen - halves sp. Atk
  • (nothing right now)

MEDICHAM (Hardy, * / *)

• Hi Jump Kick
• Detect
• Confusion
• Calm Mind
  • Black Belt - boosts fighting moves

QUAGSIRE (Relaxed, Def+ / Speed-)

• Blizzard
• Surf
• Earthquake
• Amnesia
  • Soft Sand - boosts ground moves

TYPLOSION (Bashful, * / *)

• Fire Blast
• Dig
• Flame Wheel
• Sunny Day
  • Charcoal - boosts fire moves

ESPEON (gentle, Def- / Sp. Def+)

• Psychic 
• Protect
• Psybeam
• Reflect - halves physical atks
  • Twisted spoon - boosts psychic moves

UMBREON (modest, Atk- / Sp. Atk+)

• Bite - flinch
• Confuse Ray
• Toxic
• Faint Attack - doesn’t miss
  • Black glasses - boosts dark moves

i used my action replay (Max, codejunkies one) to give myself 9,999,999,999 money and pokecoupons to make getting everything i need for the eventual transfer of my pokemon easier (buying a lot of scents for easily purifying pokemon), and for some reason, it caused one of my pokemon to gain 14 billion exp after i purified them

i have no idea how that happened and i made sure that no extra codes were on, so im wondering if the built in codes included extra edits. Does anyone else have experience with this who could tell me what happened?

Hello! I have the hack that allows me to do the e-reader battles on an english rom. I'm trying to shiny hunt scyther, and I was wondering if the process is the same as the normal shiny hunt, where the odds for the shiny are rolled in the first battle, but it's shiny locked until the second battle?

I'm sure that this has been made before but I wanted to share a simple checklist I made.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GS0UVl7ukRQYhpaESJbLoiwfnZPxCEls9USY-KyA4cs/edit?usp=drivesdk

I know this is a stretch, but I would love to try my luck at getting a shiny Jirachi! I’m new to shiny hunting, and with Pokemon Bank shutting down in 2027, I’m frantically searching for any way I can (legitimately) get my hands on shiny legendaries and mythicals. I thought I should ask just in case! ⭐️

I was curious as generally I enjoy playing through Colosseum a lot and I use a lot of pokemon I generally wouldn't. Such as Furret, Mantine, Magcargo, etc...

And I was wondering how much would it change a general Colosseum playthrough if all of the cut shadow pokemon were brought back into the game?

Said cut Shadow Pokemon are,

Spoink, Psyduck, Baltoy, Mightyena, Castform, Porygon 2, Breloom, Solarock, Lunatone, Rosselia, Chimecho, Minun, Electrode, Snorunt, Teddiursa, Corphish, Spheal, Sandslash, Magcargo, 6 more Aipom's, Magikarp, Kecleon, Whishcash, Xatu, Wobbuffett, and Wailmer.

I think that if you placed the cut pokemon that we know the exact encounter location of, back in, like how Spoink and Psyduck were planned to be caught before Miror B in the Pyrite Town Hideout, while Baltoy would've been catchable in the Pyrite Town Cave. Or for Mightyena Skrub now has 2 Shadow Pokemon, to make his boss fight harder. And stuff like that.

Obviously not all of the cut Shadow Pokemon are known where we would've caught them, along with there being an entire 5 floor dungeon cut from the game which could've housed some of the Shadow Pokemon. But still I wonder how much Colosseum playthroughs would change from influx of new Pokemon being available.

Remembered having them at my parents house but forgot where they were stored. Finally found them and excited to try shiny hunting and sending them up before Pokémon Bank shuts down. Any tips?

List is for a normal run with no self-imposed restrictions. Mons aren't ordered within tiers because I didn't want to think that hard (they're sorted by availability). Feel free to comment any questions but preferably read the post first.

Glitches: There are two main beneficial glitches for the player, the ball dupe and X Item glitches. Since they're very minor and don't change much (mainly decreasing the value of moves like Hypnosis and Sing) both are allowed for the list (heavy X Item reliance is a huge drawback in its own right).

RNG Manipulation: Manips aren't really worth doing in a regular run (Umbreon & Espeon a possible exception), and they wouldn't change too too much anyway. The main use would be manipping a good Hidden Power on an otherwise F-tier mon, and since I don't want to think too much about that I made the list manipless.

Availability: The best ability. Showing up at the end and sweeping the final boss (a la SWSH Eternatus) is nice but a mon that's solid throughout the game will be ranked higher. Postgame is a thing (hence why Metagross/Tyranitar aren't F) but not a huge consideration. Availability also includes how good/bad the mon's Shadow phase is, as Shadow Rush attackers can be really good for earlygame.

Performance against major battles is more important than performance against random trainers, and major battles usually have some form of smart AI. Smart AI in this game goes for the target that takes the most damage from its moves (with exceptions for stuff like Earthquake), so the practical result of putting a defensive mon on the team is that its partner will just get double targeted all the time. Defensive mons are already less efficient for playthroughs than offensive mons in general, but this is why you won't see any of them above D.

Redirection: Redirection is really strong in Doubles formats in large part because it lets you set up with the partner. There's two forms of redirection in Colosseum, the traditional Follow Me (aka why Furret is above D) and the smart AI redirection. By sending out a weak low-level mon, the AI will see hundreds of damage against it and target it (despite it not being important at all). This mostly applies to Plusle, but some of the weaker Shadows can do it too.

Spread moves: Gen 3's spread moves work a little differently. Moves like Rock Slide and Surf (doesn't hit allies in this gen) are half power instead of 3/4 like in later generations, so they don't actually do more damage than a single-target move of the same power. Unless the spread move is killing something, a single-target move is better because focusing the damage on one mon (to kill it) reduces the enemy's damage more than 2HKOing both with a spread move. Moves like Earthquake and Explosion that hit your ally too, on the other hand, are full power instead of 3/4, so they're even more useful than normal (assuming the ally synergizes with it). Having spread moves isn't a bad thing, but having only spread moves can be a big weakness (see Suicune).

Held items: Some mons are nice to catch for just their held items. I won't be ranking just for that though (not to mention a lot of these items are on already good mons like starters/Meditite).

About 3 years ago, I made a post on this subreddit about my unusual copy of Colosseum that has never once in all my years of owning it let me trade to the GBA games. You can see and read about that post here to get the context: https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonColosseum/comments/17f7jf4/odd_issue_with_pokemon_colosseum_not_tradingsave/

I also made a similar post on r/Gamecube here to see if anyone there could help me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamecube/comments/1khll2j/my_pokemon_colosseum_disc_has_had_a_strange_issue/

There were 2 theories as to what the issue was: my disc was scratched and needed to be resurfaced/replaced, or my memory card was the problem. I had no idea which it could be at the time.

Someone talked about having the same issue as I did, and what we shared was very interesting: we both attempted trades with a Mad Catz memory card: https://imgur.com/kxUHkf6

Both had the same trade error message and prevented trading. While that person's solution was to take out the memory card during a trade and plug it back in during the trade animation, I didn't wanna risk corruption to my save file or Wii. Another person gave me the the suggestion to get a Nintendo brand memory card and see if that fixes it.
I own 2 and I swear I tried it before and it never worked, but my memory is foggy regarding the truth of that. So I decided to attempt it anyway just to get some confirmation. In the event that this wouldn't work and corrupt the save data of my other games, I decided to buy a new memory card off Ebay to test this with a brand new save. Took me about 39 hours to beat the game before I could trade, but today I finally got to do it. Here's what happened:

Mystery Solved :'D

After owning this game for several years and never being able to trade, seeing this happen made me want to cry. There was never anything wrong with my disc having a scratch or a defect, and I don't have to waste money getting it resurfaced or buy a new one. This whole issue was because of my initial memory card's brand, Mad Catz.

The thing I learned today is: Pokemon Colosseum (and presumably Gale of Darkness) are incompatible with Mad Catz brand memory cards. You can have a save file, but they'll never let you trade.

Thanks to users yuuwithot and Xykame for their suggestions and help :'D

While this does make me happy beyond belief that I can enjoy Colosseum to its fullest like I do with Gale of Darkness, there is still one issue that remains: my childhood save file is stuck on that Mad Catz memory card. I can't copy or move it over to a new one since they block that function for GC pokemon games, so I'm not sure if I can still save the save file and its mons or not. I'm not a very tech savvy person in that area (modding/hacking) sadly.

At the very least I hope my post helps other people suffering from the same issue as me and informs them not to use that type of memory card for these games. Posterity and all that good stuff.

didn't want the shines to evolve.

Played through this game a few times now, and honestly, I almost never bother putting out anybody but Umbreon and Espeon unless I have to. It's just too much of a hassle constantly losing a turn cuz I have to "call" my Pokémon to get it to calm down....and then by the time I can turn them back into non-shadow mons umb and esp are so leveled up they're still the best I have to play with.

So I really want to do a Ribbon Master challange now due to the obvious Bank situation, but I want to my master to be shiny as well. I intend on hunting it the normal way, without using RNG methods. My target is Scizor, but I've found a few roadblocks while searching. It only shows up as a shadow mon in the JP version, and only through some event e-reader battles. I'm currently playing using USB Loader GX, on my Wii. Is there anyway I could get those e-reader battles without having to buy a japanese e-reader and printing the cards? Is there a code somewhere that I could use? I also wanted to confirm if there are no issues with transfering mons from this downloaded copy of the game to my legit gen 3 cartridges

Any help is appreciated, thank you!!

if i was to use pokemon from the bonus discs for the mt. battle challenge (jirachi, celebi and pikachu) would they still be able to be used for the Ho-Oh and the ribbon, or does it have to exclusively be pokemon you caught and purified in-game?

I've heard both as answers but nothing definitive, and for my big challenge i'd like to know that for sure.

Hi all, I am having trouble figuring out what is wrong with my copy of Colosseum! I’ve had it since I was a kid and the disc has little to no scratches on it and I have a save file that’s right before relgam tower! But I would like the start over and try a new file to shiny hunt on, and every time I hit new save, I go through the intro cutscene, I get to the part where to two thugs talk to you, then when I entered the outskirts stand building/has the error code “the game disc could not be read. Please read the Nintendo GameCube instruction booklet for more information”

It’s weird I can continue my normal save file and save and battle and all of that jazz I can even go to the outskirts stand there! Just whatever cutscene I assume isn’t triggering? I’m playing on my Wii as well but idk what is going on! All help is appreciated thank you all so much!

(Photo is not from me just showing the outskirt stand)

SOLVED: I took it to the game store got the disc scrubbed AND IT WORKS! Thank you all for the help I very much appreciate it! <3

Compre el juego recientemente y lo estoy jugando en la wii gracias a la retrocompatibilidad pero me vendieron el juego sin caja ni manuales. Saben donde puedo comprar alguna?

I'm trying to make a living dex where every one of my Pokémon has a Ribbon to represent all the (possible) games. Such as the Legend Ribbon in HGSS, or the champion Ribbons from every region. And with this, also the National Ribbon (all Pokémon of which I have already acquired).

However, since other mons that are not catchable in the Colosseum/XD games also need a Ribbon, the only other one would be the Earth Ribbon.

I am wondering 2 things before I head on this journey:

1 - Can I transfer all 386 Pokémon from gen 3 to Colosseum or XD Gale of Darkness?

2 - Trading is extremely slow - is there software (these are emulated saves) that perhaps allow me to trade way quicker? PKHex doesn't execute this well, as you essentially copy and have to manually "set" & "delete" and stuff, so that's a pain too.

Thank you!!