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

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!

Decorations (And Why You Want Them)

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!

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!

During the process of sending the gift, the GBC will also send the gifter's party Pokémon data to the receiver so that it can show up in the Trainer House in Viridian City. This article will not delve into the Trainer House but you can read more information about it on Bulbapedia until an article about it is written for this site!

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.

You can input your ID number with the provided prompt to find out which gifts your save file is able to give to other copies of Gold, Silver, and Crystal. As far as I'm aware, this should apply the same to every language version of GSC, not just English, but if you happen to discover that it's wrong, please do send me an email with image proof, if possible. Hit the "Reset" button to return the list to how it was before.

How to do Mystery Gift

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.

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.

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	1800
Clefairy Doll	4800
Pikachu Doll	8000
Big Snorlax Doll	22700

The other notable special decorations are the Silver Trophy and Gold Trophy . 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.

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:

• Pikachu Bed
• Unown Doll
• Tentacool Doll

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.

To my knowledge, there has also never been recorded footage of receiving any of the special Stadium 2 decorations. They definitely exist, considering they can be hacked into the game and put in the player's room, but the only accounts I can find of anyone finding these dolls are (warning for foul language, these posts are from the early 2000s) here and here, on the old Azure Heights forums which were active back when generation 2 was still the most recent generation. User Meowth346 mentions that receiving the Tentacool Doll caused the girl to "cry, whine, and mope around for about a week and a half," and that's seemingly the only information available on what dialogue might exist for this event.

Not only that, anecdotal evidence appears to suggest that while the girl can provide the player with any common or uncommon gift regardless of trainer ID number, it's possible that she may only give rares and super rares that the player is able to give themself instead of all of them. You can find people talking about their personal experience with only finding rares of what's possible to give with their own TID here and here. I can also confirm that I have never received a rare from her in my own playing that I could not give myself, and one of my friends has had the same experience, only having received a Red Carpet which is what his Gold file can gift away.

All this being said, if you happen to find any of the Stadium 2 exclusive decorations legitimately, or happen to get a rare/super rare from the girl that your TID cannot give to others, please email me with photo evidence! Any other anecdotes or knowledge about the mysterious Stadium 2 Mystery Gift are also welcome.

The Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS

The Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS is a virtual pet accessory that was released in 1999 as a sequel to the original Pokémon Pikachu device, where the virtual pet is of course, Pikachu. I will only go into its Mystery Gift functionality here until I can write a full article at a later date about the device. In the meantime, you can read more about it on Bulbapedia if you'd like.

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.

While most sources suggest that the device is region locked, Project Pokémon user bayleef's thread deconstructing all of the IR signals given out by Mystery Gift suggests that the Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS actually copies the region code of its target game, which would make it compatible with any region game, in theory. I cannot currently test this with what I own in real life, so take that with a grain of salt, but it's worth noting. Once I'm able to test it, this page will be updated.

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:

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:

For some reason, while the items Bluesky Mail and Mirage Mail are programmed as possible Mystery Gift items, they were never made available with any game or device. The only way the Bluesky Mail and Mirage Mail were distributed was through the Japanese-only and now-defunct Mobile System GB service in Crystal. As a result, the only way to obtain these items in the modern day is through glitches or cheating. (If you own a flashcart and want to force the two unavailable mails to be sent to your game via Mystery Gift, a custom-coded GBC rom can be found at the bottom of this forum thread over at Project Pokémon. Thank you forum user bayleef!)

Thank you to the following people and resources for assistance with researching this topic:
The lovely people over at pret for being kind to me and answering questions despite me being very confused about assembly code, and for disassembling GSC in the first place!
This thread, written by bayleef on Project Pokémon that was heavily referenced multiple times in this article. Additionally, bayleef's "gifts.c" program gave me the basis for coding the tool on this page, so thank you very, very much!