ok but lemme break this down because you guys gotta understand how long this took
in this game, there are three bonus rounds:
- Bonus 1 is Kecleon in Ruby, Duskull in Sapphire
- Bonus 2 is Groudon in Ruby, Kyogre in Sapphire
- Bonus 3 is Rayquaza
every three pokemon you catch (evolution counts as 2), you go to the next bonus round. the first bonus is, of course, bonus 1. after you beat bonus 1, the next bonus is bonus 2. after bonus 2, the next bonus is bonus 1 again. you only go to bonus 3 after you beat bonus 2 twice. and after bonus 3 you go back to bonus 1 again. you have to beat bonus 3 twice to catch rayquaza, meaning you also have to beat bonuses 1 and 2 four times each. and yes, you do have to win the bonuses, losing will just send you back to the start of the sequence. and remember you have to catch 3 pokemon to trigger the bonus game, so we're talking 30 pokemon in total here.
(in the screenshot you'll see I only caught 26 pokemon; this is because evolving a pokemon counts as catching 2 pokemon for bonus game purposes, and moving to the next bonus game has a chance to appear in the roulette triggered by lighting up all four HOLE letters. this still took like two hours to achieve)
now how the heck do you catch latios/latias oh my gourd they're random encounters
finally got the rng boy. now I just gotta get his rng sister on the sapphire board and I'll have all the legendaries
further proof that sapphire is the superior version. now to finish the pokedex
please explain to me how I found 4 latias before 1 castform. now I'm gonna look into other handheld pinball games (maybe the original pokemon pinball at some point)