Welcome back to Save State, where old cartridges still have a few secrets left to find.
In recent weeks, I got the urge to play Pokemon Platinum again, but I decided that this time I was going to do it with a twist. You see, the ability Cute Charm is glitched in all of the Generation IV Pokemon titles so that, with a tiny bit of RNG manipulation, you can have a wildly high shiny spawn rate for Pokemon of the opposite gender. So, this week, I’ll do a quick introduction on how to do the Cute Charm glitch (though I’m sure there are far more effective guides out there for those interested).
It is also a good time to revisit older Pokemon titles and think about transferring beloved Pokemon forward when possible. Pokemon Bank remains the bridge between many older titles and Pokemon HOME, and while the service is still available, long-running legacy services do not last forever. That makes this a nice excuse to dust off those DS and 3DS cartridges, revisit some old favorites, and maybe send a few treasured Pokemon forward while the path still exists.
To explain how the Cute Charm glitch works, it effectively forces the personality ID of the Pokemon you’re battling to one of 25 specific values, and PID was what determined if a Pokemon could be shiny. Effectively, this dramatically increases your odds of finding these rare, differently colored Pokemon from 1 in 8,192 (or 0.012%) to around 21.34%, a difference that is absolutely massive. While I used this glitch in Pokemon Platinum, it actually works in all of the Generation IV titles and can make it possible to do something like a Shinylocke.
There are a couple of computer applications that are needed in order to successfully perform the Cute Charm glitch in Generation IV: Eon Timer and PokeFinder. You’ll also need to delete your existing save file on your preferred copy of DS Pokemon. It’s important to know what gender ratios and natures are, so I’ll explain those quickly too. Gender ratios are the likelihood that a Pokemon will be male or female, so Wurmple you see in the wild have a 50% chance to be either gender.
Meanwhile, Eevee has an 87.5% chance to show up male, making females of that species rarer. Lastly, natures increase one statistic of your Pokemon by 10% while reducing another by 10%, like Timid increasing Speed but lowering Attack.
This glitch has some variations that are important to note. If you use a male Pokemon with Cute Charm, it works on any gender ratio that can be male and female. Meanwhile, if you want to use a female Pokemon with the Cute Charm ability, the glitch will only work on specific gender ratio pools. So, if you manipulate RNG to get the 75% male target pool, then this will work on Abra and Growlithe in that save file but not Pikachu and Dratini. For this reason, I find it easiest to use a male Cute Charmer because it simply works with the largest number of Pokemon out there.
The first step to setting up your copy of Pokemon to use this glitch is to use PokeFinder to set your Trainer Shiny Value, or TSV. Your TSV determines what natures you will encounter on your shiny Pokemon, and I entered 1 simply because that has natures I often use for competitive Pokemon battling. To get to this in PokeFinder, click the tab labeled Gen 4, click IDs, click the radial button for TSV, enter 1, and then hit the search button. The application will show a bunch of seeds. Right click your favorite one and choose Generate Times for Seed.
Set your DS to one of the times listed in PokeFinder. So, if the time listed is 14:00:42 on 8/2/26, set your DS system time to 2 p.m. on that date because what you’re trying to do is start a new file on the exact second PokeFinder listed. That is where Eon Timer comes in. Make sure the target delay and seconds in Eon Timer match what PokeFinder provided, and all you need to do is press A on your DS to confirm the time at the same time as hitting start on Eon Timer, which will cause it to count down twice.
The first countdown wants you to press A to start the title, and the second countdown, for Platinum specifically, is when you’re meant to hit A on the TV screen of the intro.
If you did those steps properly, congrats. Your trainer ID should match what PokeFinder said, and not only were you frame perfect, but now whenever you have a male Pokemon with Cute Charm as the leader in your party, you should encounter substantially higher rates of shiny female Pokemon throughout the adventure. In my case, I had to try it three times, adjusting the delay and using PokeFinder to determine how many frames I was off before succeeding.
I was actually impressed by how easy this was to set up, taking maybe 30 minutes total, including trading myself a male Clefairy after putting my starter Pokemon into a box.
Because Pokemon Bank remains such an important bridge for older Pokemon, there are specific things players may want to bring forward sooner rather than later. If you have any Pokemon with “The Living Legend” ribbon from HeartGold or SoulSilver, Spinda, or other unusual legacy Pokemon, you may want to consider transferring them to Pokemon HOME while you still have the chance. I started playing a Nuzlocke where only shiny Pokemon could be used in Platinum on a whim, but it’s now also a good time to whip out my copy of HeartGold to finish working on my old Ribbon Master Scizor again. Pokeball Pattern Vivillon and special Pokemon like the Pikachus with various hats are also worth thinking about if you have them sitting in older software.
It is also worth noting that if Pokemon Bank ever goes away, it would effectively create a wall where players can no longer transfer from Generations III through V into Generations VI and VII through the standard path. That would be a major preservation problem for the Pokemon series, especially for players who have spent years carrying partners, ribbons, and rare event Pokemon across generations.
While the number of Pokemon Bank users has probably dwindled over the last few years since the 3DS eShop ended service, there is still something special about being able to move old partners forward. Nintendo has shown that some older digital services can remain accessible in limited ways, such as redownloading previously purchased WiiWare and Virtual Console titles on Wii systems. Hopefully, Pokemon Bank will remain available for as long as possible, or The Pokemon Company will eventually introduce some newer way to transfer Pokemon from older cartridges. There’s nothing on the horizon to indicate anything like that right now, but a boy can dream.
So, hopefully this encouraged those who still have DS or 3DS systems to try out the fourth-generation Pokemon titles again. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find something shiny you’d love to see rendered in 3D on your Switch. That being said, I think it’s safe to ctrl+W this entry of Save State. Remember kids, the only difference between just messing around and real science is writing it down. See you in a couple weeks!
