Manaphy Egg Transfer Troubles

Posted March 24, 2024

Are you trying to transfer a Manaphy Egg from Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs (or possibly the other Ranger games) into Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Heart Gold, or Soul Silver? Have you run into an error? Well, I have some information for you!

Manaphy, the “signature legendary” of sorts for the Pokémon Ranger series, can be transferred over into the main series games via an extra system accessible from Ranger’s main menu. This was an event distribution that required you to download the “mission” to unlock Manaphy way back in 2010. As is consistent with this blog, I did that back at the time. And recently, I was trying to actually complete the mission and send Manaphy over to Pearl so I could bring it forward (before my suspected eventual closure of Pokémon Bank).

I ran into a series of errors while trying to do that transfer, but did eventually fix it. (Manaphy is safe!)

Look how cute it is

I was playing Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs specifically. This exact set of errors and fixes might apply to all 3 Ranger games, but I can’t be 100% sure.

The Manaphy mission itself in Guardian Signs is very easy (it’s basically a cutscene). But transferring Manaphy over to Pearl was just hitting an error for me.

Everything would seem to go as planned. The Ranger game said it was transmitting and to start up Diamond or Pearl to connect to it. The dynamic menu item in Pearl’s main menu even appeared (at the bottom, before you select to continue your save), giving me the option to connect to Pokémon Ranger! But after confirming on both screens, the little wireless indicator remained red until one or both of the games timed out, saying no connection could be established.

I was caught off guard by this - I didn’t expect to have any trouble here. First I tried some other hardware combinations. Maybe this was some esoteric system that only worked on an actual DS and it didn’t work while I was using a 3DS to run one of the games? I then found that, sadly, my original DS phat’s screen is damaged.

RIP

However, it was just the screen, and you can sort of see what’s going on. And I only needed to navigate a few menus after the game started. It was enough for me to confirm that the same thing happened with two DS systems. So I went hunting on the internet, and did indeed find other people who had similar problems! What follows is a list of all of the distinct issues I’ve seen folks talk about online.

Region Locking

It’s a scourge. Region locking has caused me no end of grief across so many games. If you’re a developer, do not do it. It punishes paying customers.

For Ranger specifically, I knew about this one already. Manaphy can only be transferred from a copy of Ranger that is of the same region as the main series game it’s transferring to. (Or possibly same language, depending on who you ask. Without a whole battery of different region cartridges to test, I can’t be sure.)

Anyway, I had an elaborate import system so all of my games are US copies - so that wasn’t my problem here.

Here’s a map of Vivillon’s regional distribution, which I am significantly less angry about, from the folks at pocketmonsters.net

Already Received a Manaphy

This one is easy enough to be sure about. Each copy of Ranger can only send a single Manaphy. And that’s copy, not save. Restarting the Ranger game doesn’t allow you to send a second Manaphy. The Ranger menu looks different if that’s the case though. If you’ve already sent Manaphy, it’ll look like this:

The notice pops up when you press the “Send a Manaphy Egg” button

Each copy of Diamond and Pearl can also only receive one Manaphy. Thankfully, the game will literally tell you this. If you try to send a Manaphy to a game that has already received one, you’ll get a much more informative and obvious error along the lines of “You have already received this”. (Once I eventually fixed my transfer error, I saw that exact screen with my copy of Diamond, which had already received a Manaphy from the original Pokémon Ranger.)

I knew I hadn’t sent enough Manaphies (is that the plural? Manaphys?) to lock out all of my Generation 4 games, so that wasn’t the problem.

The Poké Mart

Then I found this discussion. Thank you, random GameFAQs users from 2009. You helped me a lot, here in 2024.

Mr dt100 pointed out that they had the same problem - connectivity seemed to just drop. And it was caused by them being saved in a Poké Mart (where the messenger appears to give you the egg). They fixed it by moving their character out of the Poké Mart and saving there (they don’t say where they saved specifically).

I was not saved in a Poké Mart. And they’re talking about Shadows of Almia, the second Pokémon Ranger game, not Guardian Signs the third one (which is what I was trying to transfer from). But that did get me thinking - if save location mattered in the previous game, where am I saved?

Upstairs in a Pokémon Center

Here was my problem. With all the transferring and trading shenanigans I’ve been doing recently, I was saved upstairs in a Pokémon Center, right in front of the Union Room.

The very spot

I simply walked downstairs and saved the game again.

The canonically correct location to stand while saving the game

And that fixed it.

Maybe dt100 and my problem were the same - maybe you have to be saved in the downstairs section of the Pokémon Center. I’ve seen some other transfer mechanics in other Pokémon games that required that. But I also didn’t see any specific mention of that requirement in or around Ranger either.

So I hope this helps at least one more person, one day! Just like all those folks on GameFAQs helped me, all these years later!