- This article is about the tournament from Pokémon Stadium 2. For the tournament from Pokémon Trading Card Game and Pokémon Card GB2, see Challenge Hall.
Challenge Cup (Japanese: チャレンジカップ Challenge Cup) is one of the four Stadium Cups in Pokémon Stadium 2. Unlike the other five Stadium Cups, however, players cannot use their own Pokémon, instead being handed a random rental team each time they begin a challenge.
The Cup has four different classes, each featuring different leveled Pokémon. What remains the same, however, is that the Pokémon that are used all have nicknames consisting of their species names with nonstandard formatting.
- Any Pokémon controlled by the player will have be named their species name, but with the second half in lowercase (hiragana in Japanese) instead of uppercase (katakana in Japanese). For example, a Bulbasaur used by the player would be named "BULBAsaur" (フシギだね in Japanese). The nicknames of Nidoran do not include the gender symbol, so a Nidoran♀ and Nidoran♂ would be named "NIDOran" (ニドらん in Japanese) and "NIDOran" (ニドラん in Japanese), respectively.
- Any Pokémon controlled by an opponent will have be named their species name, but with the first half in lowercase (hiragana in Japanese) instead of uppercase (katakana in Japanese). For example, a Bulbasaur used by the opponent would be named "bulbaSAUR" (ふしぎダネ in Japanese). The nicknames of Nidoran do not include the gender symbol, so a Nidoran♀ and Nidoran♂ would be named "nidoRAN" (にどラン in Japanese) and "nidoRAN" (にどらン in Japanese).
The Battle Factories featured in Generation III's and Generation IV's Battle Frontiers may be seen as a spiritual successor to the Challenge Cup.
Available Pokémon
Although the game tries to give the user random Pokémon, there are rules it abides by while doing so:[1]
- The player has six type "templates" to choose from player: Electric/Ground/Water, Electric/Fire/Water, Rock/Grass/Water, Electric/Ground/Flying, Electric/Ground/Fire, or Rock/Fire/Grass. This rule also applies to AI, although they have only one template for both Round 1 and Round 2 versions of the class. Slots that do not favor a type will pick all Pokémon of types not already present (possibly adding dual-types twice to the list). The game also divides Pokémon into those below the cup's average BST and those equal or above it, and will prioritize picking Pokémon from one half. As certain Trainers' templates include types that are of limited availability, their Pokémon can be partially predicted.
- The game decides moves in a specific way:
- Ditto and Wobbuffet's limited movepool effectively makes them ignore this part of the algorithm.
- Smeargle's moves are picked from every move available in the game, except Baton Pass, Metronome, Mimic, Mirror Move, Sketch, Sleep Talk, Struggle, and Transform.
- For other Pokémon, the game will use moves available at the cup's level, as well and TM/HM moves in Pokémon Gold and Silver if it's Round 1. In Round 2, it will also use moves from Generation I and Pokémon Crystal, as well as Egg moves. An evolved Pokémon will run this procedure for previous stages as well, reducing effective level by 1 for level-based evolutions (except Tyrogue).
- Certain moves, such as Return or Hidden Power, are removed. Additionally, certain opponents have preferred moves that are also removed.
- The moves are then divided into good and bad status moves and good and bad attacking moves (which are further divided into STAB moves of first and possibly second type, and physical and special moves). Certain moves are classified as both good and bad. Every time the game picks a move for a Pokémon, it is removed from its personal list.
- The first move is a damaging move; prioritizing STAB over non-STAB and good over bad. If this move is part of a certain combination, such as SolarBeam and Sunny Day, the game will increase the chances of the complementary move being picked.
- If the Pokémon is dual-typed, its second move will be a bad STAB move of its second type if possible. Otherwise, it will combine non-STAB movelists and pick a move that does not share type with the first move if possible.
- If the AI trainer has a preferred move, it will be picked as the third move. Otherwise, the game will randomly pick a good status move, trying to avoid moves that are already on the Trainer's team. If there are no good status moves available at all, it will randomly pick a bad status move.
- The final move is either a bad non-STAB move of the user's higher attacking stat that does not share type with other damaging moves (using both lists if the stats are equal), or a bad status move.
- There are effectively four groups of held items: 116/256 of the time it is a Berry-related item, 89/256 that it is a held item that boosts their first move (unless the move is an attacking move that is not affected by it, in which case the game falls back to the Berry) - with Normal moves picking either Pink Bow or Polkadot Bow and Dragon moves either Dragon Fang or Dragon Scale - 38/256 chance it is King's Rock, Scope Lens, BrightPowder, or Quick Claw, and the remaining 13/256 it is a species-specific item such as Light Ball (falling back on 38/256 item for Pokémon that have none). The game will roll again if it picks a duplicate item (with Berries curing status the user is immune to counting as a duplicate) After the item is picked, the Pokémon's moves are shuffled.
- DVs and friendship are completely random (although the latter only matters if Metronome picks the move, as Return and Frustration will never appear in the actual moveset).
- The player's stat experience is dependent on the Pokémon's base stat total, gaining around 131 in each stat for every point away from 680. AI's are predetermined per Trainer, and the same across each stat (except for certain Trainers, who have separate value for Speed), with higher classes having less to account for higher BST. The AI's stat experience is higher in Round 2.
- There is a 1/256 chance a Pikachu will be treated as if it was from Pokémon Yellow; such Pikachu cannot be Shiny due to faulty RNG.
Banned Pokémon
There are 19 Pokémon that will never appear in this Cup:
Poké Ball Class
Player's Pokémon
Opponents
Pokémon
Player's Pokémon
Opponents
Battle 1
Battle 2
Battle 3
Battle 4
Battle 5
Battle 6
Semifinal
Final
Player's Pokémon
Opponents
Battle 1
Battle 2
Round 1
Round 2
Battle 3
Battle 4
Battle 5
Battle 6
Semifinal
Round 1
Round 2
Final
Player's Pokémon
Opponents
Battle 1
Battle 2
Battle 3
Battle 4
Battle 5
Battle 6
Semifinal
Final
Trivia
In other languages
References
Related articles
