How to get Gengar in SoulSilver emulator

Edit 2, March 2017: I'm so glad this guide continues to help people years after I made it. Unfortunately, I'm too busy to field questions about it any longer, and probably won't respond to PMs about it from this point on :( I'm sorry about that—I know next to nothing about this subject beyond what I wrote in the post below, and can't keep digging through help forums to try and educate myself enough to troubleshoot it.

If you do encounter problems, it would be a good idea for you to check over the instructions below one more time and make sure you did everything the way they suggest first; if you made a mistake, just restart from the beginning of the list and try again. If it still doesn't work, your best bet would be to look up the subreddit for the emulator that you're using, and post about it there—those people might be able to assist!

Edit 1, July 2016: I wrote this up over a year ago, and I get messages about it all the time to this day. I'm happy to field questions as best I can, but please be aware that I'm not affiliated with the universal randomizer in any way and that I know next to nothing about ROMs and emulation beyond the instructions below. If you're having trouble with this, your best bet would be to look up the subreddit for the emulator that you're using, and post about it there—those people will almost certainly be able to give you more specific troubleshooting help than I will!

People ask a lot about how to evolve trade-evolved Pokemon on emulators that don't support trading. I recently learned a really easy workaround to do it by changing the way certain Pokemon evolve from trade-based evos to hold item or level-based evos.

0. If you've already started playing, make sure you get your save file out and back it up. If you haven't started a game yet, just download the ROM you're going to use.

1. Go here and download the Universal Pokemon Randomizer application, if you don't have it already. Don't worry that it's called a "randomizer." You don't have to randomize your ROM for this trick to work.

2. Open your Pokemon ROM in the application. Select the option at the top left called "Change Impossible Evolutions." DON'T SELECT ANY OTHER OPTION unless you want to make other tweaks to your game. Please double check this before you continue—this is where most people screw it up if they're going to.

3. Click the "Randomize (Save)" button on the right. Again, this won't randomize your ROM unless you selected other options beyond "Change Impossible Evos"—it's just saving the changes you made.

4. Load the new ROM file into your emulator. If you have a save file from before, make sure it gets into the new ROM's folder in the appropriate place.

5. Start the game and play! This page has a guide on how formerly trade-evolved Pokemon will now evolve.

Joined Nov 10, 2007

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3,089 Posts

In-game? Most likely not, since trading is not possible with emulators yet. PPSE-DS is said to be compatible with HG/SS, but you'll need to convert your save to a supported type and I haven't tried this app yet, so I can't say it works for sure.

Joined Feb 20, 2006

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23,263 Posts

Pokesav is HG/SS U compatible for the most part.

Joined Jan 7, 2007

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28,630 Posts

What Inferno left out is that without wifi connectivity, your best bet for actually accessing your save data is purchasing the NDS Adapter+, which will allow you to connect your DS cart directly to your PC and transfer the safe file to said PC. That way you can edit the file, transfer it back to the DS, and call it a day.

Is there a way to get Gengar without trading?

How do you evolve Haunter into Gengar in soul silver?

Can I trade Pokémon on an emulator?