Usada Pekora Streams Rare Pokemon Emerald Event Encounters

During her second “used Pokemon Emerald cartridge gacha” stream on March 29, 2025, hololive VTuber Usada Pekora streamed herself encountering Lugia, Ho-oh, and Mew in the game. This means that the cartridge had the very rare Old Sea Map and MysticTicket items, but the original owner of the cartridge never used them. [Thanks, Resetera!]

You can watch the original stream here:

Usada Pekora inserts the winning Pokemon Emerald cartridge (the twenty-second one) at around the 1:21:06 mark, and plays it for around twenty minutes as she uses the event items. You can also watch a clipped and subbed version of the encounter here:

For reference, the only way to get a legitimate version of Lugia, Ho-oh, or Mew in Pokemon Emerald was to use event items. If you had gotten the Mew on your Japanese cartridge of Emerald, you can also use Pokemon Home to transfer it into modern games such as Scarlet/Violet.

GameFreak distributed both event items—the MysticTickets and Old Sea Map—back in 2004 and 2005, and the Old Sea Map was exclusive to Japan and Taiwan. This means that Usada Pekora found a cartridge twenty years later that not only had the limited-time event items, but also never used them, which allowed her to experience encountering these Pokemon on stream.

The latest upcoming entry in the Pokemon franchise, Pokemon Legenda Z-A, will come out on the Nintendo Switch in Fall 2025.