This Pokemon has billions of variations which are breaking new games

Welcome to Exp. Involved, KotakuWeekly Pokemon The column we dive into to explore iconic personalities, urban legends, communities, and just plain weird quirks from around the corner Pokemon franchise. This week, we’re looking at how the Spinda, a humble third-generation creature, went from a novelty to an obvious irritant for the Pokémon Company to work with due to its many forms.

27 years later Pokemon Red And green, Alternative shapes and designs in Pokemon It became a mainstay in the series. from shiny pokemon To a “mons like th” event Ear spikyMost Pokémon can look slightly different from their original versions. However, there is one Pokemon that has more forms than everyone else in the series, and that is Spinda. Because of how its design is determined, it could have somewhere around four billion different shapes.

Spinda is a regular Pokemon introduced in Ruby And sapphire for Game Boy Advance. While the little teddy bear with swirling eyes looks mostly unremarkable on the surface, he has a resourcefulness to his appearance that has resulted in a cult of his own within Pokemon Community. The character has a spot pattern on its cover, which, similar to the shiny odds, is determined entirely by background mathematics that can give it up to four billion possible variations. They are a mainstay of Pokédex entries across the games, with many saying that no two Spindas have the same spatial patterns.

How does Spinda have so many shapes?

Spinda’s appearance is determined by its single character value, or cryptographic constant in recent entries, which is a 32-bit integer ranging from zero to 4,294,967,295. This number is set the first time you meet a Pokémon in a save file, and where they land determines where they are located, as well as other things like gender and nature. Moreover, each of these variations can be shiny, multiplying their variations. This is a great idea that helped Spinda stand out among the third generation of its contemporaries and make it a hub in its own right Pokemon Community.

Since the possible forms of Spinda are so wide, communities such as subreddit Spenda Cafe Dedicated to documenting every form of their topical style. There is even an in-browser app called Spinda painter It allows you to test different personal values ​​and spark possibilities to see the resulting focus patterns. While it’s entirely a cosmetic change, it’s the closest Pokemon I’ve ever had to repeat how different animal fur patterns can look in the real world from one another.

How has this affected Spinda in recent games?

But that difference is why Spinda has been such a problem for Game Freak and The Pokémon Company in terms of porting the character and all of its forms into future games. Pokemon Homewhich app players use to transfer and store Pokémon between games, they cannot transfer Spinda to and from pokemon go or Brilliant diamond And shining pearl It is remastered because it is inconsistent with how other games define a character’s positional style. pokemon go It only has nine preset modes instead of the several billion found in most games, and Diamond And Pearl The remake has a glitch related to how it reads the numbers that define Spinda’s shapes. This means that the value these games assign to Spinda may result in a completely different Positional Pattern being assigned to the same Pokémon. As a result, Spinda is the only Pokémon that can be obtained in Brilliant diamond And shining pearl that cannot be transferred to and from these games.

While it’s unclear if these billions of potential builds are responsible, Spinda hasn’t been particularly acquired in a new game since Game Freak retired the National Dex that allows players to transfer any and all old Pokemon into new games. Spinda was conspicuously absent from sword And shield And carmine And Violet. Given that The Pokémon Company has compatibility issues with Spinda on several fronts, it will be interesting to see if Spinda appears in a mainline. Pokemon game again. But even if the dizzy bear does not appear in a new place Pokemon The game anytime soon, at least there are corners Pokemon Fans who take steps to ensure we don’t forget what makes him special.