Are your Square Shinies as rare as you thought they were? Well, the jury’s still out on that one.
Shiny Pokémon have been a part of the franchise since Gen II. Pokémon Gold and Silver quickly established exactly what this mechanic involved: a simple palette-swapped version of a critter, which has a very low chance to spawn and is otherwise no different at all to a regular creature of its species. In these titles, the player was guaranteed to encounter at least one Shiny: the infamous Red Gyarados at the Lake of Rage, which is encountered during the course of the story.
Every Pokémon fan has a different attitude towards Shinies. Some will commit hours on end to ‘Shiny hunt’ as many as they can, others will pick and choose to try and find a Shiny of their favorite Pokémon (or their favorite-looking Shiny version of one). Some don’t value them at all. It’s all about personal preference.
As the franchise has developed, new ways of obtaining Shiny Pokémon have emerged. Pokémon GO’s Community Days and the like have made Shinies a little more accessible, less of a pain to hunt down, and so much more appealing. Pokémon Sword and Shield, meanwhile, have mixed things up in a different way.
In the new Switch titles (in case you missed the memo), there are two different ‘versions’ of Shiny Pokémon. The only thing that sets them apart is the little effect that accompanies them when they appear on the battlefield: standard Shiny Pokémon have a sparkling effect with stars, while so-called Square Shinies have squares instead.
As Forbes reports, it’s believed that Square Shinies are even rarer (sixteen times less common than standard Shinies, making the base odds of finding a Square Shiny around 1 in 65,536 wild Pokémon), but it turns out that even dataminers don’t know absolutely everything. According to more recent reports, Square Shinies might not be the prize we thought they were. Twitter’s SciresM, a researcher at ProjectPokemon.org, suggests that Square Shinies may be the more common of the two:
The investigation continues, as it’s something that even those who have immersed themselves in the game’s code haven’t reached any decisive conclusions on. In the meantime, though, rest assured that Shiny Pokémon will always have a certain mythos and allure attached to them (legit ones, anyway), whichever little animation they come with.
