The Urban Legend of Deoxys and the Mossdeep City Rocket from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire came true in the 3DS Remakes

As you may know by now, the Pokémon franchise is full of all kinds of rumors that Game Freak has recursively adapted into video games, such as the urban legend of Celebi from Gold and Silver that was fulfilled in Crystal. This time, we’ll tell you about the case of Deoxys and the Mossdeep City Rocket in Pokémon Ruby, Pokémon Sapphire and Pokémon Emerald, which was later fulfilled in the Nintendo 3DS remakes of Pokémon Alpha Sapphire and Pokémon Omega Ruby.

What was the urban legend of Deoxys and the Mossdeep City Rocket in Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald?

Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire were two Game Boy Advance games released in Japan in 2002 and all other territories in 2003 that had a troubled development. They were the biggest hit for Nintendo’s handheld, becoming the best-selling GBA game with just over 16 million units sold. Pokémon Emerald was a third version of these video games, released in Japan in late 2004 and the rest of the world in mid-2005. It was also a sales success, becoming the third best-selling GBA game with around 7 million units sold.

In these three video games, there was a rumor that had to do with the mechanics of time passing in the game thanks to the internal battery of the cartridges. In Mossdeep City, one of the game’s locations, there is a space launch center: the Mossdeep Space Center. Inside, a man tells us how many rockets have been launched; this should only tell us approximately how much time has passed since we started the game, as a rocket is launched every week and the counter reflects that.

Many players took this curious information as a hint that something would happen once a certain number of rocket launches were reached. Depending on who was telling the story, “round” numbers like 50 or 99 would trigger an event allowing us to capture Deoxys or Jirachi, the two third-generation Mythical Pokémon that could not be obtained through conventional means.

Jirachi could only be obtained legally at Nintendo distribution events or through the Pokémon Colosseum Bonus Disc in the United States or the GameCube game Pokémon Channel in Europe. On the other hand, Deoxys could only be obtained through distribution events such as the Aurora Ticket.

The only thing that could happen after a certain number of launches had nothing to do with a hidden event, but with a widespread problem in the first versions of Ruby and Sapphire known as the “Berry Glitch”. A programming error caused a time lag to occur after 366 days of starting the game, affecting events that depended on the passage of time within the game, such as the growth of berries, hence the name of the glitch. This bug was fixed in later versions of these games and employing special patches thanks to some distribution events, although, as we said, it had nothing to do with the rocket or the number of launches from Mossdeep City.

In 2014, Pokémon Omega Ruby and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire, two remakes of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, were released on Nintendo 3DS. As unreleased and completely new content for these two titles, the so-called Delta Episode was included. This is an additional story that is unlocked when you complete the Pokémon League, which means it is post-game content.

In this final episode of the games, we must prevent a meteorite from hitting the planet by riding our Mega-Rayquaza into space to destroy it and face Deoxys itself with the possibility of capturing him. This is a strange adaptation and canonization of the Mossdeep City rocket rumor. In this case, instead of traveling into space in a vehicle, we ride into space on the back of our trusty Rayquaza, one of the third-generation Legendary Pokémon and Esmeralda’s mascot.

Game Freak once again proved that no one can beat them at recursion, and what better way to please the fans than to make one of the most popular urban legends and rumors about the original games come true.