One hour, 18,508 encounters, three shinies — why a retro full-odds hunt at EUIC felt important

One hour, hundreds of handhelds, and the reminder that some hobbies only sing in a crowd

One hour, 18,508 encounters, three shinies: Magikarp, Totodile and Trubbish. That tidy scoreboard from the 2026 Pokémon Europe International Championships says less about luck and more about what happens when a solitary, tedious ritual becomes a public event. Full-odds shiny hunting in old Pokémon games is absurdly slow and deeply idiosyncratic – and when you put three dozen strangers, a pile of Game Boys and DS units, and loud encouragement together, it turns into one of the most earnest celebrations of nostalgia I’ve seen at a competitive gaming weekend.

• Scale and math: Over 70 players logged 18,508 encounters in an hour; statistically that predicts ~2.26 shinies at 1/8,192 odds – the group found three.
• Why it works: Full-odds hunting is boring alone but social, low-effort and ritualistic in a crowd; it becomes background activity that rewards patience with communal highs.
• Retro hardware matters: This wasn’t about Switch comforts or speedruns – it was about old cartridges, older odds and the feeling of finding something that was literally waiting inside a plastic case for years.
• Community over competition: The event was grassroots, organized by fans and casters, and it highlighted why Pokémon’s culture remains durable outside official channels.

Not nostalgia theater — this was ritualized chance

GamesRadar’s on-site account captures something that’s easy to miss in press photos: the hunt wasn’t staged for content; it was a ritual. People set up across three rows, swapped consoles, lent games and filled tally sheets. I showed up expecting a handful of enthusiasts — I left understanding why decades-old odds still feel meaningful. Charlie Merriman, the VGC caster who organized the hour, put it plainly: modern shiny systems give you a guarantee within a short session, but “back in the day … they’re so rare that you probably have a playthrough and never find one.” That long-shot quality is the commodity here, and sharing that low-probability grind turned it into a social glue.

The uncomfortable, heartwarming truth the PR hoped you wouldn’t notice

Big Pokémon anniversaries come with slick campaigns and product drops — but the thing that made the EUIC hunt memorable was not corporate momentum; it was a room full of players propping each other up. The event leaned on attendees’ own hardware and goodwill: people borrowed 3DSes and DS units on the spot, waved away cartridge incompatibilities and treated each small victory like a stadium play. That grassroots spirit undercuts the tidy narrative of polished anniversary programming and reminds you the brand survives because people keep turning these plastic boxes on, year after year.

And yes: the math is worth a nod. With 18,508 encounters at 1/8,192 odds, the expected number of shinies is a bit over two. Finding three is not a miracle — it’s chance — but watching a crowd erupt for a shiny Trubbish discovered by streamer Simon “Shmon” Van der Borght made the randomness feel generous. GamesRadar captured those moments: the cheer, the stunned streamers, the strangers who became teammates for sixty minutes.

The question I would’ve asked the organizer

If I had one blunt question for the event leads it would be: how scalable is this? One hour and 70 people produced a story; a thousand people could turn a novelty into a headline. But would that still feel like community, or would it become spectacle? The best answer from Merriman was practical: “we just gather as many people as we can and try to hunt for an hour and see how many we can find.” That hedges toward keeping it fan-first — a good sign.

What to watch next

• Will other international events adopt similar full-odds hunts? If NAIC or Worlds repeats the formula, this is a movement, not a one-off.
• Are more fans going to organize larger coordinated hunts (and track aggregate encounters publicly)? An increase would mean this becomes a community metric, like stream viewer counts or TCG box hunts.
• Watch Nintendo’s retro strategy: more official Gen 4/DS rereleases on Switch could shift these gatherings from cartridge nostalgia to easier, faster sessions — and that will change the vibe.

For now, the EUIC hunt mattered because it proved a solo, time-consuming hobby scales into something joyous when shared. The shinies were incidental; the real win was a crowd rediscovering why turning on an old game can still surprise you.

TL;DR

• 70+ players logged 18,508 encounters in an hour at EUIC and collectively found three shinies.
• The event showed full-odds, retro shiny hunting is less about the drops and more about shared nostalgia and low-effort camaraderie.
• Watch for repeating events and whether Nintendo’s retro releases change this fan-driven ritual.