Pokémon Battle Revolution is one of the more underrated games in the franchise. It takes place at a Pokémon theme park called Pokétopia. The player must make their journey through ten areas of the park and defeat not only colosseum leaders, but the Pokétopia master as well. For all Pokémon fans, we are aware of shinies and the rarity that comes with them, but in Pokémon Battle Revolution there is an even rarer shiny. No, it’s not a Pokémon, although they are available while transferring Pokémon using a copy of Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum. They are gym leader outfits!
After the first playthrough of Pokémon Battle Revolution is completed, there is post-game content where you can challenge the gyms and their leaders again in the LVL fifty All Rule Set category. Victory will allow you to claim the leader’s clothing for yourself. These outfits are still extremely obscure with no mention in the game and only seen in player’s guidebooks of PBR, during the early times of the internet, there was no mention of these outfits existing. It wasn’t until about five years ago when the outfits started appearing online. Considering that the game was released at the end of 2006, you probably have a good idea of how rare they are to encounter.
Never tell me the shiny odds!
There are six gym leaders wearing Pokémon outfits, all of them capable of being shiny. What are the odds of finding a shiny outfit? After all there are only 6 of them. How about 1/8192!? Compared to a normal shiny Pokémon nowadays, which is 1/4,096, that is more than double! Suffice to say, these outfits are no joke when it comes to their rarity. Years later, it is still extremely scarce to see them appear on the internet.
Unlike shiny Pokémon, shiny outfits have special rules that only apply for acquiring them in Pokémon Battle Revolution. For example, you can earn the non-shiny variant of these outfits normally, but if you do, you are locked out of getting the shiny variant ever on your save file! And no, selling clothes in this game is not a thing. Once you have it, you are stuck with it! That’s the big catch that comes with shiny outfit hunting, and greatly plays to why they are so rare, even almost 20 years after release. The fastest way to hunt for these outfits is to use a team that you are most comfortable with, that is if you transfer Pokémon from the DS games. Once you have your best team, clear it until you reach the gym leader to see their outfit, if it is not shiny you must restart the battle.
The gym leader that is the easiest to do is at Magma Colosseum for a shiny Groudon outfit. The reason why is that each match all your Pokémon live gives you a “rematch token”. You can earn five tokens. These tokens are used for when you get to the gym leader and give up to reroll the outfit if the shiny variant drops. The other gyms have a one-shot chance if they drop making it much harder.
Is the hunt worth it?
If you are a hardcore Pokémon fan, play all the games, complete every single Pokedex, and go for shinies I highly recommend hunting outfit shinies in Pokémon Battle Revolution. It is one of, if not, the hardest hunt in any Pokémon game – side and main games combined. I highly recommend watching AbsolBlogsPokemon’s video on his hunt for the shiny Groudon costume, it goes into insight and stories of various other players who attempted to hunt for these difficult outfits.
A personal story I have with hunting the outfits is a sad one. My first shiny outfit was Groudon but I lost my save data after it got corrupted in 2016. To this day, I do not have any of the outfits but want to recommit to the hunt someday. I used a variety of teams for each colosseum leader to have type advantages. For the Magma Colosseum, I used four Pokémon: Lapras, Dialga, Arceus, and Latias because they could defeat opposing Pokémon in one hit, making for fast runs. I strongly believe that this hunt is for the most diehard of Pokémon fans, willing to put in days, months, or maybe even years’ worth of time into getting all of these outfits, this is the ultimate shiny hunt!
