Four Island

I recently spent some time coming up with and then executing an overly convoluted plan for catching Raikou in Pokémon FireRed. It was a lot of fun, and I wanted to see what I could come up with next. However, I've already caught all three of the legendary birds, and to catch Entei and Suicune I can use the same method I used to catch Raikou. So what's left? Only the "final boss" (so to say) of the Kanto based games: Mewtwo.

A challenge it is! Mewtwo is one of the hardest Pokémon to catch in FireRed (depending on how you feel about the roaming legendaries), and since I don't want to use my Master Ball, I tried to figure out what I could do to make the encounter easier. To formalize things a bit, I came up with some rules reminiscent of what I did last time:

1. Don't use a Master Ball. No exceptions!
2. Avoid trading with a Hoenn game; that is, if possible, only use Pokémon and items obtainable in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen. This rule is breakable on the condition that there doesn't end up being a satisfying solution that doesn't require a Hoenn game. However, in the event that I had to break this rule, I also came up with another cute little twist to make the challenge more interesting, which I'll talk about at another time.
3. Avoid using a Smeargle (which is only obtainable in Pokémon Emerald anyway). The reason for this is that it's often not difficult to configure a Smeargle to have whatever moveset you want, and that can make the challenge less fun. It's not a hard and fast rule, but if there's a way I can get a Pokémon other than Smeargle to know the moves I need, I'd rather do that.

I ended up coming up with 4 different strategies, of which there were two standouts. Unfortunately, all of these strategies involved trading with a Hoenn game, and one of the standouts even involved a Smeargle. I was almost resigned to breaking the Hoenn rule, but I'm happy I didn't give up, because I eventually figured out a way to modify the Smeargle method such that it no longer required Smeargle or even Hoenn! This plan is possibly (probably) even more complicated than the method I used to catch Raikou, and I had a lot of fun with it. I present to you: The Imprison Method.

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I'm currently working on completing my generation III Pokédex, which is fun but also rather challenging. One of the reasons for this is the existence of roaming legendaries. The game I'm currently playing is FireRed, and my starter Pokémon was Squirtle, so the roaming legendary I'm dealing with is Raikou, but the strategy I'll be describing works no differently in LeafGreen, and should work well catching Entei as well. Suicune, for reasons detailed later, is actually a lot easier to catch, and doesn't require such a convoluted plan. Well, nothing requires a convoluted plan like this, but it's a lot more fun this way.

I maintain that the only Pokémon I could justify using a Master Ball on would be Arceus, and since the Azure Flute was never distributed and it's impossible to legitimately access the Hall of Origin, it seems like there's going to be a lot of unused Master Balls lying around in my bags. No matter, though, because not using a Master Ball means I can come up with a more interesting strategy for catching the hard-to-catch Pokémon. Another limitation that I imposed on myself here was that I decided only to use Pokémon catchable (or obtainable through trading with an NPC) in FireRed (although all the Pokémon I use are also obtainable in LeafGreen). If you allow yourself to use Pokémon from Emerald or Colosseum/XD, you may be able to come up with a different strategy, but I chose not to, and not just because I do not currently have any of those games in my possession.

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