My Shadow Snorlax Ribbon Master Journey
Table of Contents:
Introduction
One of my original goals when I got into Pokémon video games from the beginning was to develop a Ribbon Master that originated as a Shadow Pokémon. Ribbons were introduced in generation three and serve as permanent markers that are affixed to your Pokémon for accomplishing certain tasks, and these markers persist as you trade between games and migrate to new generations. A Ribbon Master, therefore, is completed when a particular Pokémon has earned every ribbon possible based on which games it can visit and which tasks it is eligible to accomplish. Shadow Pokémon purified in Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD are the ultimate ribbon masters since there is a special ribbon earned for the purification process.
At first, I was thinking that I would do a whole party of six Shadow Pokémon, taking them up through the generations together, but I have now settled on just doing one since I think it is quite a lot of work. I want to take my Ribbon Master into as many games as possible, which at the time of this writing means that I'm quite limited (see this Reddit post for compatibility with Switch games). Only 18 of the original Shadow Pokémon may visit every game to earn every ribbon, and only one of these is able to additionally acquire a Gigantamax mark: Shadow Snorlax. I therefore have selected this as my first Ribbon Master, and I think it will also be fun since I have never used Snorlax in any of my playthroughs.
Generation Three
You could say that I am still in the preparation phase for my Ribbon Master challenge, since all I have done so far is snag Shadow Snorlax from Ciper Admin Ardos in Pokémon XD. I accomplished this on January 31, 2025, and Shadow Snorlax has been waiting patiently on my Nintendo GameCube memory card while I pave the way by completing one title from every generation to the present. In fact, I have not even given Snorlax a nickname yet, since I want to do this when I am ready to make this my primary task. I plan to also work on my Living Origin Dex while developing Snorlax as a Ribbon Master, which has delayed me further. Whenever I make progress on this Ribbon Master journey, I will update this page.