Pokemon Gold and Silver 3DS Virtual Console: Back to the Future 2(000)!

[Theorymon]

OUT NOW!
​

It's time to get your Pokenostalgia on, because it's time to travel back with Celebi to the year 2000 (or 1999 for Japan, and 2001 for poor Europe)!

Very soon, these two fine games will be on Virtual Console, so you can play them on your 3DS! There's a lot of great reasons this is gonna be the best way to play these two classics, lets explore that!

New Features

-The big one: NO MORE BATTERY SAVE WORRIES! Most copies of Gold and Silver can't save anymore because the time stuff wore down the save batteries fast. Not a problem on the 3DS!

-Just like Red, Blue, and Yellow, these games will be compatible with Poketransporter, so you can get your Pokemon with Curse onto Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun, and Ultra Moon! However, note that Poketransporter won't be compatible with Pokemon Gold and Silver until sometime this Winter, so you'll have to take a rain check on that Curse Mega Scizor!

-No more link cables, use the wireless play so now the only thing stopping you from stalling your foe to death is running out of power on your 3DS!

-Wireless stuff works with the time capsule too. Yes, you can make sure that Porygon you got with 8F gets Curse instead of wasting your life at the game corner! You can also use this as a way to transfer Kanto GS mons to Gen 7 earlier, but note that you won't be able to give them moves like Curse. This will come in handy if you need the elemental punch TMs however.

Bonus goodies for getting the game

Unlike RBY, you'll get some bonus stuff if you get the game before certain dates! Note that you can get the Celebi and themes NOW if you preload the game!

-If you get the game before September 21st, 2018, you'll get a Celebi code for Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun, or Ultra Moon! It comes at level 30 so maybe you can smash through USUM with it... just note that you won't be getting Celebi in GS without glitches!

-The other bonus goodies is a code for a free 3DS theme if you get it before January 15th in North America, January 31st in Europe, and September 21st, 2018 in Japan. Here are the nice looking themes!

-If you live in Europe or Japan, you can get a nice collectors box with a download code! This isn't available in North America, because Nintendo of America clearly hates us.

Other stuff to note

-Before anyone asks: No, we have no idea what the heck is up with the lack of Pokemon Crystal. Sorry folks, no Curse ExtremeSpeed Dragonites for now!

-If you look on the Smogon dex, you might notice some funky stuff like Lovely Kiss Snorlax for gen 2. These are crazy events that were given out at the Pokemon Center (now the Nintendo World store) in New York City, and I'm 99% sure we won't be getting those again lol.

-Are you interested in blasting through the game as efficiently as possible so you can own your friends? I'd suggest you take a look at the in game tier list for Gold and Silver! http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/gsc-in-game-tier-list.3525167/

Stuff to Test

Since Pokebank will eventully be linked to these games, we got some stuff to test that could be relevant for gen 7 and beyond! RBY changed almost nothing in their game code regarding glitches and the likes, but it doesn't hurt to check for Gold and Silver too just in case!

1. Does the classic cloning glitch still work?

Ah yes, the glitch that fueled the Pokemon economy on playgrounds worldwide. Here's how to do it, we need to see if this was a gameboy hardware quirk or not! This is pretty important, not only for cloning mons, but for getting valuable TMs cloned (aka Curse and Zap Cannon for weirdos): https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Pokémon_cloning_(Generation_II)

2. Does arbitrary code execution still work on American copies, and what can we do with it?

American copies of Gold and Silver seem to have a glitch that can do similar stuff to the powerful 8F and WS M glitches of gen 1, though I got the impression that this isn't as powerful as those. Still, we should mess around with this and see if we can do neat stuff like make Pokemon shiny!

How to do it: https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Coin_Case_glitch

Glitch Ciy Labs thread on it: https://forums.glitchcity.info/index.php?topic=6716.0

3. Will Poketransporter have the same quirks as RBY transfers, aka Hidden abilities only, Nature determined by exp, etc.

Pretty self explanatory, but we won't be able to test this kind of stuff till later.

Just because I can:
​

For those of you who are having problems with finding Pineco and Heracross, use this nice app I found on NeoGAF

http://37.97.147.73/Headbutt Grid.htm

(Wish I remembered the name of the user who made it, I'll edit that in if I find it or someone reminds me!)

And with that, let's talk about Gold and Silver! It can be almost anything that suits your fancy, whether it be some nostalgic memories, your plans for a new run, crazy glitches you want to do, your evil plans for stalling out your friends on 3DS battles, or how much you hate the roaming beasts. Just have fun!​

 

[Lightning Energy]

Pokemon distribution in this game bothers me to hell and back. A lot of this is copy/pasted from something I wrote last June, but the topic as a whole still bugs me.

The Team Rocket Admins use Dark-types like Murkrow and Houndour, and you get all excited to try out these new Pokemon and try to figure out where to find them… and they’re not available until you reach Kanto in the aftergame (because apparently despite adding Steel and Dark to counter Psychic-types, Game Freak thought they should've been rare to counter their "coolness").

Which is seriously pretty stupid because imagine how good Houndour would be if you got it on Route 34? Sure, it’d probably lose to Whitney a bunch due to being weak to Rollout and having low Defense, but it evolves at level 24 and could steamroll Morty, Jasmine, and Pryce (not so much the latter since he has Seel and Dewgong, but the point still stands).

The only Steel-types you can get without trading are Magneton and Forretress, which don’t learn any Steel-type moves (though they’re still amazing defensively). Steelix and Scizor require trading with an item you can’t get until the aftergame* (seeing a theme here?), which is even worse because you can get an Onix before the first Gym and Scyther by the time you get to Goldenrod.

There are other good Gen II Pokemon you can get during the story, but they tend to be stupid-rare or come too late:

• Heracross comes from headbutting trees (which you can do after Badge #2), but it has like a 5% chance of appearing only on certain trees that aren’t discernible from any other headbuttable tree.
• Skarmory is south of Blackthorn City, where you get the last Johto Badge.
• Larvitar, which evolves into one of the best Pokemon ever, is on Mt. Silver, the VERY LAST AREA OF THE GAME.

Kingdra and Porygon2 have to be obtained via trade evolutions with specific items:

• The Dragon Scale for Kingdra is hidden in Mt. Mortar (good luck getting through that without a map and half your party knowing HMs).
• Porygon2 is another aftergame-only mon, since you’ll have to have won a Porygon from the Celadon Game Corner (which requires an obscene amount of coins) and get the Up-Grade from Silph Co.

Not to mention half of the Gym Leaders (Falkner, Bugsy, Morty, and Chuck) don’t even use Gen II Pokemon in their teams at all! Seriously, Game Freak, you could’ve given them Hoothoot/Ariados/Misdreavus/Hitmontop or something, I mean really.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Gen II and am excited for their VC release, but imagine how much better the games would be if you could actually see and use more of the new Pokemon? I've been trying to figure out what team to use over the past week and it's just agony because some of the Gen II Pokemon I'd like to use are either hard to get or don't get good STAB moves (lookin' at you, Crobat and Gligar).

*I've been informed that you can get Metal Coats from wild Magnemites so it's not as bad, but how many of us were/would've been aware of that during our first time playing without a guide?

 

[Nelson Tangela]

Pokemon distribution in this game bothers me to hell and back. A lot of this is copy/pasted from something I wrote last June, but the topic as a whole still bugs me.

The Team Rocket Admins use Dark-types like Murkrow and Houndour, and you get all excited to try out these new Pokemon and try to figure out where to find them… and they’re not available until you reach Kanto in the aftergame (because apparently despite adding Steel and Dark to counter Psychic-types, Game Freak thought they should've been rare to counter their "coolness").

Which is seriously pretty stupid because imagine how good Houndour would be if you got it on Route 34? Sure, it’d probably lose to Whitney a bunch due to being weak to Rollout and having low Defense, but it evolves at level 24 and could steamroll Morty, Jasmine, and Pryce (not so much the latter since he has Seel and Dewgong, but the point still stands).

The only Steel-types you can get without trading are Magneton and Forretress, which don’t learn any Steel-type moves (though they’re still amazing defensively). Steelix and Scizor require trading with an item you can’t get until the aftergame (seeing a theme here?), which is even worse because you can get an Onix before the first Gym and Scyther by the time you get to Goldenrod.

There are other good Gen II Pokemon you can get during the story, but they tend to be stupid-rare or come too late:

• Heracross comes from headbutting trees (which you can do after Badge #2), but it has like a 5% chance of appearing only on certain trees that aren’t discernible from any other headbuttable tree.
• Skarmory is south of Blackthorn City, where you get the last Johto Badge.
• Larvitar, which evolves into one of the best Pokemon ever, is on Mt. Silver, the VERY LAST AREA OF THE GAME.

Kingdra and Porygon2 have to be obtained via trade evolutions with specific items:

• The Dragon Scale for Kingdra is hidden in Mt. Mortar (good luck getting through that without a maze and half your party knowing HMs).
• Porygon2 is another aftergame-only mon, since you’ll have to have won a Porygon from the Celadon Game Corner (which requires an obscene amount of coins) and get the Up-Grade from Silph Co.

Not to mention half of the Gym Leaders (Falkner, Bugsy, Morty, and Chuck) don’t even use Gen II Pokemon in their teams at all! Seriously, Game Freak, you could’ve given them Hoothoot/Ariados/Misdreavus/Hitmontop or something, I mean really.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Gen II and am excited for their VC release, but imagine how much better the games would be if you could actually see and use more of the new Pokemon? I've been trying to figure out what team to use over the past week and it's just agony because some of the Gen II Pokemon I'd like to use are either hard to get or don't get good STAB moves (lookin' at you, Crobat and Gligar).

I love GSC. My nostalgia for these games is so bad that they are literally my favourite games of the series bar none, but I have to agree with almost everything you wrote.
The availability of many Pokémon lines in GSC, especially "new" ones, is atrocious.

There is one thing you are wrong about though. Metal Coat is available before Morty by taking it from wild Magnemite.

 

[Max. Optimizer]

As far as I'm concerned, I'm primarily going to focus on soft-resetting the highly anticipated shiny Ho-Oh at the peak of the Tin Tower.
Shiny Ho-Oh has always been fascinating me ever since I laid eyes on it during the very first episode of the Pokémon Anime.

The Ho-Oh from the Virtual Console versions of Pokémon Gold and Silver is the only legal Ho-Oh that can simultaneously be shiny and have its Hidden Ability.

I would also like to welcome the opportunity to announce that, while I'm hunting this specific Pokémon for personal reasons, I'm also planning on hosting a Giveaway here on Smogon.
I'm aiming for a viable one with an Adamant nature (provided that natures are still going to be determined in relation with experience points) and I'm planning on distributing a plethora of fully redistributable copies in order to adequately celebrate the resurrection from the ashes of these cherished games with the rest of you!

Stay tuned!

 

[lio]

Totally ready to play Silver again, I just can't wait before the game is actually playable again! I'm so hyped for these, almost more than for Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon - even offered Gold as a present to my sister so that we're gonna play together like in the good ol' days.

Pokémon Silver is the first Pokémon game I've ever played, and clearly the one that made me love the series, so this will be a pleasure for me to discover this fantastic game once more.

Just a question regarding the time of the release "Noon" which country's Noon will it be ? Japan/the US/the UK ? Always good to know, so imma be able to tryhard the game at that precise moment.

Regarding the cloning glitch, it should still be present -since the bugs in RBY weren't fixed either-, which means easy way to get all 3 starters. And then there's even a possibility for them to be legal in the Pokétransporter since they're technically legally obtained, unlike RBY VC Mew!

 

[Lightning Energy]

There is one thing you are wrong about though. Metal Coat is available before Morty by taking it from wild Magnemite.

Yeah, that's my mistake. Thanks for pointing it out!

On the other hand, how many people playing Gen II for the first time would be aware of that until they managed to catch/use Thief on a Magnemite that has one? And the item description doesn't even say certain Pokemon can evolve when they're trading while holding it (I can't remember if the Gentleman on the SS Aqua tells you not, I think he does).

 

[SadisticMystic]

If you want Metal Coat that early without trading, you actually have to catch the Magnemite, and you have to do so without being able to do any sort of scouting on whether a given Magnemite has the item or not--nothing learns Thief by level-up, and the only way to get the Thief TM is at the Rocket Hideout, which you can't get into until you've dispatched of the Red Gyarados, which requires using Surf...which requires beating Morty.

 

[Theorymon]

I was browsing through glitch city labs, and yep: someone made a video of using the coin case glitch to make any Pokemon in slot one shiny

Now I just need to find one for getting any Pokemon (and earlier too, I heard murrmurrs about that in their forums but the current way involves having items from Kanto sadly), I want revenge on Whitney by sweeping her with a +6 Curse Lugia >:D

 

[Nelson Tangela]

If you want Metal Coat that early without trading, you actually have to catch the Magnemite, and you have to do so without being able to do any sort of scouting on whether a given Magnemite has the item or not--nothing learns Thief by level-up, and the only way to get the Thief TM is at the Rocket Hideout, which you can't get into until you've dispatched of the Red Gyarados, which requires using Surf...which requires beating Morty.

True, but it's not like Magnemite are hard to find.
Just save before going on your hunt for a Metal Coat and reset if you waste too many Poké Balls before finding one.
An 8% chance is not that bad.


...which reminds me of the worst thing that I ever did in GSC. Getting a Lucky Egg.
Besides hunting Pokérus and soft resetting for shiny legendaries, trying to find a Lucky Egg might be the most time consuming task someone could do in GSC. Good times.

 

[Hiddenfreezer]

Ooooh man I am hype!
I can finally, FINALLY complete the whole Pokedex, get every hidden item/TM, everything :D

My inner child will be satisfied!

 

[R_N]

Pokemon distribution in this game bothers me to hell and back. A lot of this is copy/pasted from something I wrote last June, but the topic as a whole still bugs me.

The Team Rocket Admins use Dark-types like Murkrow and Houndour, and you get all excited to try out these new Pokemon and try to figure out where to find them… and they’re not available until you reach Kanto in the aftergame (because apparently despite adding Steel and Dark to counter Psychic-types, Game Freak thought they should've been rare to counter their "coolness").

Which is seriously pretty stupid because imagine how good Houndour would be if you got it on Route 34? Sure, it’d probably lose to Whitney a bunch due to being weak to Rollout and having low Defense, but it evolves at level 24 and could steamroll Morty, Jasmine, and Pryce (not so much the latter since he has Seel and Dewgong, but the point still stands).

The only Steel-types you can get without trading are Magneton and Forretress, which don’t learn any Steel-type moves (though they’re still amazing defensively). Steelix and Scizor require trading with an item you can’t get until the aftergame* (seeing a theme here?), which is even worse because you can get an Onix before the first Gym and Scyther by the time you get to Goldenrod.

There are other good Gen II Pokemon you can get during the story, but they tend to be stupid-rare or come too late:

• Heracross comes from headbutting trees (which you can do after Badge #2), but it has like a 5% chance of appearing only on certain trees that aren’t discernible from any other headbuttable tree.
• Skarmory is south of Blackthorn City, where you get the last Johto Badge.
• Larvitar, which evolves into one of the best Pokemon ever, is on Mt. Silver, the VERY LAST AREA OF THE GAME.

Kingdra and Porygon2 have to be obtained via trade evolutions with specific items:

• The Dragon Scale for Kingdra is hidden in Mt. Mortar (good luck getting through that without a maze and half your party knowing HMs).
• Porygon2 is another aftergame-only mon, since you’ll have to have won a Porygon from the Celadon Game Corner (which requires an obscene amount of coins) and get the Up-Grade from Silph Co.

Not to mention half of the Gym Leaders (Falkner, Bugsy, Morty, and Chuck) don’t even use Gen II Pokemon in their teams at all! Seriously, Game Freak, you could’ve given them Hoothoot/Ariados/Misdreavus/Hitmontop or something, I mean really.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Gen II and am excited for their VC release, but imagine how much better the games would be if you could actually see and use more of the new Pokemon? I've been trying to figure out what team to use over the past week and it's just agony because some of the Gen II Pokemon I'd like to use are either hard to get or don't get good STAB moves (lookin' at you, Crobat and Gligar).

*I've been informed that you can get Metal Coats from wild Magnemites so it's not as bad, but how many of us were/would've been aware of that during our first time playing without a guide?

THis is all great but we need to talk about MY biggest pet peeve about the availability

elemental stones

I could seriously write an entire article over the nonsense that are evolution stones in this series (& I've written about it elsewhere Im sure) but i'll be blunt: GSC, with GS in particular, have the worst handling of these stones I have ever seen.
Fire stones? You get one, in the post game, from the Bill grandFather sidequest
Water stones? One, post game, bill's grandfather
Thunder stones? one, pg, bill's gramps
Leaf stones? guess
Moon Stones are also in infinite supply with 2 options: the weekly mt moon event and wild clefairy. Why yes those are BOTH post-game only

Sun Stones are in infinite supply from the bug catching contest.

Let's put aside the fact that there's only one shot on any of these things, aside from sun stones all of them force you to wait until the post game and doing a side quest that requirse a bit of a hike from once you hit kanto. I also think you can only advance it forward once a day.

Crystal """fixed""" this in the worst way possible: if you have one of 4 numbers (sun & moon stones excluded) in your pokegear you will, at completely random, get a call that they have an item for you. I don't think I ever got a call with the items, ever, any time I played there.

 

[Nelson Tangela]

Crystal """fixed""" this in the worst way possible: if you have one of 4 numbers (sun & moon stones excluded) in your pokegear you will, at completely random, get a call that they have an item for you. I don't think I ever got a call with the items, ever, any time I played there.

Get the relevant phone number.
Delete the irrelevant ones.
Go to your mom.

Change the Daylight Saving Time settings.
Receive random phone call.
Repeat until you get called and offered the stone you wanted.

Obviously only works in Crystal.

 

[atsync]

Let's put aside the fact that there's only one shot on any of these things, aside from sun stones all of them force you to wait until the post game and doing a side quest that requirse a bit of a hike from once you hit kanto.

Unless you get lucky with Mystery Gift!

But yeah they should have at least kept them in Celadon or something...

 

[Theorymon]

Unless you get lucky with Mystery Gift!

But yeah they should have at least kept them in Celadon or something...

I haven't played Silver for like 15 years, but wasn't Mystery Gift some funny stuff with IR and the Pikachu 2 thing? I remember walking with that to get Rare Candies.

Come to think of it, the 3DS has an IR receiver.... man it'd be hilarious if I dug that old Pikachu out of the grave to make it a modern rare candy slave again :P

 

[R_N]

I haven't played Silver for like 15 years, but wasn't Mystery Gift some funny stuff with IR and the Pikachu 2 thing? I remember walking with that to get Rare Candies.

Come to think of it, the 3DS has an IR receiver.... man it'd be hilarious if I dug that old Pikachu out of the grave to make it a modern rare candy slave again :P

Mystery Gift was the IR thing, yes. It was kind of a pain to use (since it needed 2 games, the ir port, getting the things to register each other and also only once a day per player) which made using it for evolution items...difficult. Also the stones are the second rarest items along side a large pool because of course it was https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Mystery_Gift#Generation_II

 

[Millky95]

I always got a lot of Mystery Gift stuff from Pokemon Stadium 2. Think I got stones, can't quite remember though. I think the stones being rare was to encourage Mystery Gift-ing.

Anyway, I loved my Pokemon Silver. First game I beat the E4 then holy shit Kanto as well! Always got stuck looking for the Magnet Part though. First lvl100 as well. Was such a great time

 

[Worldie]

It is true that there were a lot of design flaws in GS, pokemon distribution, evolutions, items, movesets, and all things.

But please remind that GSC are a nearly 20 year old game, and GameFreaks was not yet as experienced as they are now with design concepts, plus people still were not expecting the stupidly high success that Pokemon games would have had after that.
In fact, if you read the interviews, the designers were even scared that Sapphire/Ruby would have been a huge flop as everyone expected the Pokemon Hype to die out after GSC.

I think we can safely assume that Nintendo and GF have learned from (most) of their huge issues in previous generations, expecially several of the ones

 

[Kanon90]

Pokemon Silver still is to date my favorite pokemon game. I am way hyped for this even more so than the upcoming Ultra games, joining too Max.Optimizer on the quest of obtaining the shiny HA Lugia. It will be awesome :)

 

[Rapti]

I hate this games

Yes I'm still actually getting one for Celebi

 

[R_N]

It is true that there were a lot of design flaws in GS, pokemon distribution, evolutions, items, movesets, and all things.

But please remind that GSC are a nearly 20 year old game, and GameFreaks was not yet as experienced as they are now with design concepts, plus people still were not expecting the stupidly high success that Pokemon games would have had after that.
In fact, if you read the interviews, the designers were even scared that Sapphire/Ruby would have been a huge flop as everyone expected the Pokemon Hype to die out after GSC.

I think we can safely assume that Nintendo and GF have learned from (most) of their huge issues in previous generations, expecially several of the ones

These type of design missteps would be more forgivable in a timeline where these were not the second set of games released. It's like gallant & goofus over here. Like gen 1 was a total mess, but it's more forgivable because it was a miracle it came out at all and were the first set.

It's especially striking considering all the other improvements they made. It's graphically nicer across the board, great use of color pallets, move pools are still bad but they're better (honestly they wouldn't improve for real until platinum), several new mechanics to enhance battling (held items, new typings, breeding) and in general a more tightly coded game. Not a game held together by ductape and prayer.
Doubly so when gen 1 already showed they could design a level curve and pokemon distribution.

 

[Codraroll]

I think we can safely assume that Nintendo and GF have learned from (most) of their huge issues in previous generations, expecially several of the ones

Considering that Sun and Moon brought back many of those issues after several successive games of having fixed them (a decent postgame grinding location, for instance, had existed since FRLG, but was inexplicably missing from SM), I'm not really sure how much they've learned, and how much they've just tweaked and accidentally got right without quite understanding why. For instance, I refuse to believe a competent game designer would willingly disregard that they had stuffed the encounter tables throughout the entire game with early-game Pokémon players would be sure to get tired of by the time they're halfway around the first island.

But yeah, Gold and Silver still feel very much like they were made in a trial and error phase. They had some idea of what they wanted to create, but did not quite deliver on all of it. Many (I daresay crucial) Pokémon were really tedious to obtain, the level curve is a complete mess (RBY's fifth Gym Leader had Pokémon at higher levels than GSC's eighth), some Pokémon types completely lacked moves (and it's beyond me how Bug is one of them, considering all the Bug-types there are in the game), and to be blunt, far too many of the newly introduced Pokémon were plain bad in-game. They were fun to pick up to check out the first time you saw them, but you soon learned how inferior most of them were compared to the available Gen I Pokémon.

In hindsight, GSC were enjoyable games, with some good highlights (For instance, I think Goldenrod City immersed me more than any other Pokémon city until Lumiose), but it also had its flaws I find really hard to overlook these days.

 

[Kanon90]

Considering that Sun and Moon brought back many of those issues after several successive games of having fixed them (a decent postgame grinding location, for instance, had existed since FRLG, but was inexplicably missing from SM), I'm not really sure how much they've learned, and how much they've just tweaked and accidentally got right without quite understanding why. For instance, I refuse to believe a competent game designer would willingly disregard that they had stuffed the encounter tables throughout the entire game with early-game Pokémon players would be sure to get tired of by the time they're halfway around the first island.

But yeah, Gold and Silver still feel very much like they were made in a trial and error phase. They had some idea of what they wanted to create, but did not quite deliver on all of it. Many (I daresay crucial) Pokémon were really tedious to obtain, the level curve is a complete mess (RBY's fifth Gym Leader had Pokémon at higher levels than GSC's eighth), some Pokémon types completely lacked moves (and it's beyond me how Bug is one of them, considering all the Bug-types there are in the game), and to be blunt, far too many of the newly introduced Pokémon were plain bad in-game. They were fun to pick up to check out the first time you saw them, but you soon learned how inferior most of them were compared to the available Gen I Pokémon.

In hindsight, GSC were enjoyable games, with some good highlights (For instance, I think Goldenrod City immersed me more than any other Pokémon city until Lumiose), but it also had its flaws I find really hard to overlook these days.

While I agree that quite a few of the generation 2 pokes were indeed bad in-game on the other side design-wise a lot of them one-upped those of gen 1(some are way overrated but it's a matter of taste ultimately). One example is Kingdra which I think it really showcased the vision and evolution of that generation to that of the previous ones. The design of that poke had everything going on for it ranging from majestic to straight up badass. Another one would be the Tyranitar line. I do really love Dragonite with all its 'goofy yet super strong dragon' but Tyranitar had the perfect mix for a pseudo-legendary.
Overall I too think that G/S had their share of flaws but over the course of years after childhood I got back time to time to these games and still found them very enjoyable. Its sense of adventure it still is almost second to none major factor being the themes/soundtrack too.
Also I do agree with Goldenrod/Lumiose assessment. Goldenrod was great but Lumiose was awesome. Have restarted pokemon Y uncountable times just to re-discover Lumiose city again and again :)

 

[DragonWhale]

Here's a neat shiny breeding guide I found online about Gold/Silver

Due to shininess being dependent on the Pokemon's DVs, there's a 1/64 chance of a Pokemon being shiny if one parent is shiny! Therefore, you can breed a bunch of shiny Pokemon from the Red Gyarados event, a guaranteed shiny encounter! This guide shows how to reach each egg group from the Gyarados.

Few things to note:
- Pokemon in the Mineral, Amorphous, and Human-like egg groups have no Pokemon with two egg groups in generation 2, so it's impossible to chain breed shininess onto them.

- Mineral: Geodude, Onix, Sudowoodo
- Amorphous: Gastly, Grimer, Koffing, Wobbuffet, Misdreavus, Slugma
- Human-like: Abra, Machop, Drowzee, Tyrogue, Mr. Mime, Smoochum, Elekid, Magby​

- Due to generation 2 breeding mechanics, two shiny parents will not lay an egg because Pokemon will not breed if the defense and special DVs are identical (probably to prevent incest lol). Make sure only one parent is shiny.
- Pokemon with a 7:1 male:female gender ratio cannot have a Pokemon that's both female and shiny. This is because gender is dependent on attack DVs, and you cannot have a shiny with an attack DV of 0 or 1.

Here's the rundown to reach each egg group. Enjoy!

• Gyarados (Dragon, Water 2) Tip: Catching a male one in Lake of Rage let's you go straight to breeding Ekans
  • Ekans (Field)
    • Farfetch'd (Flying)
    • Mareep (Monster)
    • Psyduck (Water 1)
      • Corsola (Water 3)
    • Snubbul (Fairy)
      • Hoppip (Grass)
        • Paras (Bug)

EDIT: One CRUCIAL information I forgot: The hatched Pokemon will inherit DVs from the opposite gender parent. They will 100% take the defense, and 50% take the special DV, both of which has to be 10 for shininess. For simplicity's sake I will refer to these two DVs being 10 as "Shiny Genes" from now on. Reminder that in order to pass down shininess you only need to have the shiny genes. You don't necessarily have to have shininess.

This means you will first hatch a female with shiny genes (as the father will have the shiny genes while chaining). You then need to take the female with the shiny genes and breed with a male of the same species (but the male cannot have shiny genes, remember, because otherwise incest clause will kick in. Make sure to breed with a completely different pokemon of the same species) to generate a male with shiny genes. The male can then be used to chain to the next egg group to repeat the process. This, however, has a few stipulations:

- Pokemon with a 7:1 male:female ratio can have a female with shiny genes but cannot be shiny. There's a 50% chance that an offspring with the opposite gender to the parent with shiny genes carries shiny genes. You just need to check to see if your special DV is 10 or 2. If it's 10, then it has the shiny genes.
- One-per-game Pokemon (like eevee): You will need to get two female ones of them (with a ditto or something). One is to breed with the male shiny from a different species while chaining and produce a female with shiny genes. The other is to breed with a completely different pokemon so that you can breed with the female with shiny genes without triggering incest clause, to produce the male with shiny genes.

Of course, you can glitch in a Shiny Ditto and just use that. DVs are always inherited from Ditto, and you can also get the three other egg groups that cannot be chained onto. Another method if you have two consoles is to trade Gyarados to RBY, encounter Ditto and make it transform to Gyarados, and catch the Ditto that has the shiny DVs.

 

[Rapti]

Well if the Time Machine still works you could just:

• Catch the shiny Gyarados
• Transfer it to RBY
• Get a Ditto to transform into that Gyarados
• Catch that Ditto
• Transfer that Ditto back to GS

and ta-da! got yourself a shiny Ditto

 

[Theorymon]

So since I haven't found a way to use ACE early to get stupid stuff like Lugia early in the game, I decided my runthrough is going to have a different gimmick than the usual "lol I'm gonna break the hell out of this game" stuff I go for.

Instead, my gimmick is that all Pokemon I use must either be able to potentially viably use Curse in gen 7, or lol Zap Cannon.

The idea is that using a team of Pokemon that I may actually use competitively in some of gamefreak's gimmick tournaments down the road may be a fun challenge!

Funny twist to this though: One of the big Pokemon besides Ho-Oh (I got silver so I gotta wait till Kanto) that gets Curse is Scizor (for its Mega because of Light Metal). Now, not only do I have to breed Baton Pass into it, forcing me to use freaking Ledayba till it reaches level 29, but there's also the fact that Scizor has a hilariously garbage movepool in gen 2 rofl. Like, it's strongest STAB is Steel Wing... Oh and before anyone thinks it, I'm probably just gonna trade over a Scyther from Red because like hell if I'm going to deal with the bug catching contest!

Oh yeah word of advice to yall who plan on eventully importing your mons for competitive purposes: There is ONLY one Curse TM and one Zap Cannon TM. There are a lot of different ways to clone TMs thankfully, but make sure you do that before using them! The punches can be bought in Goldenrod thankfully, which will save BP if Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon have the usual move tutors!

Oh one more thing: Does anyone have a list of exclusive egg moves and TMs for Pokemon in GS besides the usual Curse and Zap Cannon stuff? I ask because I heard there's some strange quirks such as Nidoking learning the elemental punches in this game, and I'm very liable to miss stuff in the bigger lists out there lol.