What is the game with the fastest soft reset?

Question

Question says it all. I’m a shiny hunter I’m curious

Comments

The max amount of time it could possibly take is 30-60 seconds. But it should usually only take up to 10 seconds if nothing is broken or slow. And it'll never take an hour to load, unless it crashes.

It helps to mash the A button to skip the logos and stuff.

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you got a point pk and i agree, but it can be hard to judge because like Azelfeo said, it also depends on system and sd card. Some 3ds could be faster than others just to wear and tear, making it hard to judge.

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Well, let’s say I have them all in perfect condition in the same 3DS. Which is the fastest?

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I don't think I can test that since i only have my 3ds to use, and the speeds on my old, worn down, hacked 3ds may differ, but if no one else wants to test this i guess i will later

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I don't think the system matters. I've played Pt on both a DS Lite and 3DS, and it takes about the same time to load on both devices.

Answer 1

I timed the SR times for each game based on the time between when you first press the SR button combination to when you first gain control of your character ingame, assuming you're mashing A the whole time. I tested each version 3-5 times and took the average of each SR for the final times listed below. For these tests, I treated version counterparts and the same game, but third versions / sequels / remakes as separate (although all third versions ended up with the same SR time anyway). I don't have every game, so for some, I had to look up videos of shiny hunts in those games, so these times might not be as accurate. The games I was not able to personally test on were GS, RS, DP, B2W2, XY, and SM. Of these, XY were the only versions that didn't have a third version with an equal SR time that I was able to personally test on.

I didn't do Gen 1 because shiny hunting is a much more mathematically involved process, so if you're going for quick SRs, you probably wouldn't hunt in Gen 1 (plus I don't have any Gen 1 games).

GS/C (A+B+start+select): 8.5 seconds
GS/C (VC menu): 11.2 seconds
RS/E (with working battery): 6.6 seconds
RS/E (with dry battery): 12 seconds
FRLG: 10 seconds
DP/Pt: 16.7 seconds
HGSS: 16.9 seconds
BW/B2W2: 20.9 seconds
XY: 14.2 seconds
ORAS: 20.7 seconds
SM/USUM: 12.2 seconds
LGPE: 38.7 seconds
SwSh: 27.5 seconds

The shortest SR time is RSE, without the dry battery prompt, at 6.6 seconds, while the longest is LGPE.

Comments

Isn't it also bad to do quick soft resets if you're shiny hunting in gen 3?

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Thanks you! And @sumwun, I’m pretty sure that’s only if you have a dead battery or you are playing emerald.

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Yes, that’s correct. When the battery in RS dies, or always in Emerald regardless of the battery, the game has a fixed seed which makes them almost impossible to do SR hunts with. I’ll admit that didn’t cross my mind while I made the answer, though :P

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In emerald you can just start the encounter on each different frame assuming that's how the rng works. So it's either easier or harder depending on your frame

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I'm pretty sure waiting for different frames requires also waiting more than 6.6 seconds on each soft-reset.

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With a fixed seed, you can have an early shiny frame, which would make SRing for shinies extremely easy in that game, although that's extremely rare, and all the shinies produced by that frame would be RNG clones with the same nature, IVs, and personality value.

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Waiting for that shiny frame takes a few additional seconds on each soft reset, right?

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It can, it depends on your TID/SID combination.