Mystery Gift and Decorations

Table of Contents

  1. An Introduction to Mystery Gift
  2. Decorations (And Why You Want Them)
  3. How the GBC Decides What to Gift
  4. Possible Mystery Gift Items and Decorations
  5. How to do Mystery Gift
  6. Special Decorations
  7. Stadium 2... And Its Mysteries
  8. The Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS
  9. Trivia/Oddities

An Introduction to Mystery Gift

The Mystery Gift connection screen in Gold and Silver

If you're more familiar with modern Pokémon games, you may know of Mystery Gift as the name given to special Pokémon and items distributed as events from Game Freak themselves. However, in the second generation of Pokémon, where the term "Mystery Gift" was introduced, it served an entirely different function.

The Game Boy Color was upgraded from the original Game Boy to have color, of course, but it also contained an IR (infrared) sensor to allow for wireless communication between consoles and even accessories! Mystery Gift is the main feature utilizing the GBC's IR sensor. By accessing the Mystery Gift menu and putting two GBCs close to each other, they will give each other a gift! This gift can be either a decoration for the player's room, or a normal item that goes into the player's inventory. Mystery Gift functionality is also present in Pokémon Stadium 2 and the Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS virtual pet accessory.

Despite being a fairly unique feature exclusive to the generation 2 Pokémon games, documentation on this subject tends to be pretty sparse. My hope is that by the time you're done reading this comprehensive article, you may have learned something new about this little-talked about feature!

In-game dialogue that reads "MYSTERY GIFT." In-game dialogue that reads "With just a litle beep, you" In-game dialogue that reads "little beep, you get a gift."

Decorations (And Why You Want Them)

A decorated room in Crystal

In Gold, Silver, and Crystal, decorations can be obtained through Mystery Gift (and a couple other methods) that can then be shown off in the player's room. Some decorations are much rarer than others. It can take a rather large time commitment to collect them all, but it can be a fun challenge for a completionist! They don't do anything other than look cool, but having a lot of decorations is reason to show off.

While in-game, the player can alter what decorations are in their room by accessing the PC in their room and scrolling down to the Decoration option. While in Stadium 2, the player can instead organize their decorations by visiting "My Room" in White City and pressing A. All of the decorations will be seen in full 3D!

The My Room menu in Stadium 2A decorated room in Stadium 2

How the GBC Decides What to Gift

When using Mystery Gift between two Game Boy Colors, the decoration or item received is random, however, some decorations and items are rarer than others, sometimes significantly so. For the sake of explanation, I've assigned the name "common", "uncommon", "rare", and "super rare" to these categories of rarity.

First, there is a 50/50 chance that the game will attempt to send a normal item or a decoration. Afterwards, it runs through the following steps:

  1. A 10% chance is rolled. If negative, the gift will be a common. If positive, continue to the next step.
  2. A 20% chance is rolled. If negative, the gift will be an uncommon. If positive, continue to the next step.
  3. A 20% chance is rolled again. If negative, the gift will be a rare. If positive, the gift will be a super rare.

If the 50% chance for a decoration is rolled, but the decoration is one the player already has, it will select a normal item instead.

Rarity Odds
Common 90%
Uncommon 8%
Rare 1.6%
Super Rare 0.4%

In practice, this means that there's a 90% chance of a common, an 8% chance of an uncommon, a 1.6% chance of a rare, and a 0.4% chance of a super rare. However, it's not as straightforward as Mystery Gifting with the same two games over and over until all of the decorations or items are received!

There are 16 commons, 8 uncommons, 8 rares, and 2 super rares for both items and decorations. When gifting, a save file can only give a set 8 commons, 4 uncommons, 1 rare, and 1 super rare. This effectively means that any individual common gift has a 11.25% (90% ÷ 8) chance of being selected, and any individual uncommon gift has a 2% (8% ÷ 4) chance of being selected, not including the initial 50/50 item/decoration roll.

This means that not all Mystery Gifts can be obtained through just two GSC save files. The list of possible items and decorations for a save file to give is based on trainer ID, and as such, to get access to more gifts, more save files with different trainer IDs must be used. Because of this complication, I've provided a tool below so you can find out what gifts your save files are capable of giving!

Possible Mystery Gift Items and Decorations

The following list only applies to gifts that can be sent/received when performing Mystery Gift with two Game Boy Color games, and not gifting through Pokémon Stadium 2 or acquiring decorations through other means. Read below for more information on those special decorations.

The following items are exclusive to Mystery Gift and cannot be obtained any other way: Eon Mail, Morph Mail, Music Mail, MiracleBerry*, Scope Lens

*Technically, the MiracleBerry can be held by wild Celebi and Mew, but given that Celebi is an event-exclusive static encounter and Mew isn't even encounterable in GSC, it's practically nonexistent outside of Mystery Gift.

Items

Commons Uncommons Rares Super Rares

Decorations

Commons Uncommons Rares Super Rares

Items

Commons

Uncommons

Rares

Super Rares

Decorations

Commons

Uncommons

Rares

Super Rares

How to do Mystery Gift

The Mystery Gift option in the main menu The location of the Department Store Mystery Gift girl

When starting a new game in Gold, Silver, or Crystal, Mystery Gift is not turned on. You must activate it manually by making your way to the Department Store in Goldenrod City and talking to the girl on the fifth floor. This area is accessible after obtaining the second Gym Badge from Bugsy and traveling through Ilex Forest and Route 34. After talking to the girl, the Mystery Gift option will appear on the same menu screen as where you continue your save or make a new game.

Keep in mind that Mystery Gift is region locked! While initiating Mystery Gift, the game will check for the region code of the other game and will fail the whole connection if the region codes are not the same. As such, don't try connecting a Spanish copy of Gold with English Silver, etc.

To perform Mystery Gift, line up the IR sensors of two Game Boy Colors with either yourself or a friend and head to the Mystery Gift option on the main menu. The IR sensor should be at the top left of the GBC. When prompted, press A to make a connection. You should hear a beeping sound and it should tell you what gift you received! (Since an IR sensor also exists on 3DS, doing this with Virtual Console GSC is also possible!)

A single Gold, Silver, or Crystal game can only receive gifts from a save file once per day. The amount of save files that can be Mystery Gifted with in one day is capped at five. To do multiple a day, you'll need multiple games to connect with. Keep coming back everyday for the chance of something new!

If your Mystery Gift is an item, it won't immediately show up in your inventory. You'll have to pick it up from the guy behind the counter on the second floor of any Pokémon Center. Assuming you have space in your inventory, he will give you the item when talked to.

In-game dialogue reading "I have something for you" with a yes/no prompt In-game dialogue reading "AYANO received X DEFEND!"

Additionally, Mystery Gift cannot be performed on non-GBCs because of the lack of IR sensor. The option won't show up in the menu and the girl in the Department Store will remark that you need a Game Boy Color to do Mystery Gift.

In-game dialogue reading "The MYSTERY GIFT option requires a" In-game dialogue reading "option requires a Game Boy Color."

Special Decorations

There are a handful of special decorations that are not obtained through Mystery Gift of any sort, and instead through other means.

For one, there's the decorations that are only obtainable through the player's Mom. When saving money is enabled with the player's Mom, sometimes she will buy items for the player, that include doll decorations! Once bought, she will call the player telling them that she bought something for them. These consist of the following:

Decoration Amount of Money
Charmander Doll Charmander Doll sprite 1800
Clefairy Doll Clefairy Doll sprite 4800
Pikachu Doll Pikachu Doll sprite 8000
Big Snorlax Doll Big Snorlax Doll sprite 22700

The other notable special decorations are the Silver Trophy Silver Trophy sprite and Gold Trophy Gold Trophy sprite. When the Gym Leader Castle is defeated in the first Pokémon Stadium, a Pokémon will be rewarded as a prize. When one of these special gift Pokémon is traded to a generation 2 game, it will either be carrying a Normal Box if it was rewarded for Round 1 or a Gorgeous Box for Round 2. When opened from the inventory in GSC, the player will unlock the Silver and Gold Trophy respectively.

The Stadium 2 exclusive decorations are listed in its section below.

Stadium 2... And Its Mysteries

Stadium 2 is notable for its Mystery Gift functionality, which allows the player to receive one free Mystery Gift from the Goldenrod City Department Store girl per day. To do so, the Transfer Pak must be attached with a copy of Gold, Silver, or Crystal inserted that has already unlocked the Mystery Gift feature from the aforementioned girl. Afterwards, the player can navigate to the Mystery Gift option on the Stadium 2 menu and get a gift. The time and day shown is based on the time saved to the GSC cartridge. The girl's dialogue will vary based on the rarity of item that she receives, or you receive.

The Mystery Gift option in the Stadium 2 menuThe Mystery Gift girl offering to be the player's Mystery Gift friend

Of course, this is super useful, especially if you don't have two GBCs or games or friends to Mystery gift with!

Additionally, the following super rare decorations are exclusive to Stadium 2's Mystery Gift and cannot be obtained through normal GBC Mystery Gift:

However, all may not be as it seems. Despite being over two decades old at the time of writing, Pokémon Stadium 2 has not been fully disassembled, and as such, still contains many mysteries as to its internal functions. As far as I am aware, the exact odds of the different gifts have not been datamined. Through anecdotal evidence and personal testing, all of the items seem to be roughly the same probability as they are in GSC, in the same rarity categories... But of course, the true probabilities aren't the same because of the addition of the exclusive Stadium 2 decorations.

The Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS

A Japanese promotional image of The Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS

The Watts earned by walking with the device can be "spent" on items by connecting it with Gold, Silver, or Crystal over Mystery Gift. Unlike usual Mystery Gifts, these aren't up to random chance, but instead how many Watts are saved up and sent over. These are the items available (there are no decorations):

# of Watts Item Received
0-99 Eon Mail
100-199 Berry
200-299 Bitter Berry
300-399 Great Ball
400-499 Max Repel
500-599 Ether
600-699 MiracleBerry
700-799 Gold Berry
800-899 Elixir
900-998 Revive
999 Rare Candy

Utilizing the Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS is notably the only way to receive a Rare Candy over Mystery Gift.

Trivia/Oddities

Depending on what Game Console decoration is hooked up to the TV, different games can appear on screen when entering "My Room". The possible games are:

Famicom/NES
  • Super Mario Bros.
  • Donkey Kong
  • The Legend of Zelda
  • Kirby's Adventure
Super Famicom/SNES
  • Super Mario World
  • F-Zero
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
  • Kirby Super Star
Nintendo 64
  • Super Mario 64
  • Wave Race 64
  • Star Fox 64
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Leftover and unused graphics in Gold and Silver's code suggest that there may have once been two more types of carpet for the player to decorate their floor. The unused tiles can be seen here at both their original and 4x size:

Unused carpet tiles at original size Unused carpet tiles at 4x the size


Last updated 3/7/23. Page created.