A Pokémon Fan Explains Why He Set Up 58 Consoles Searching For A One-In-Nine-Million Shiny - Kotaku

What the report says

Kotaku reports that a Pokémon fan known as Professor Rex has built an unusually large shiny-hunting setup to pursue an extremely rare Golduck in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. In an article published July 27, 2026, Kenneth Shepard and John Walker describe how Rex is running 58 GameCube and Wii systems at once, not because Golduck is a personal favorite, but because the probability problem appealed to his interest in rare Pokémon and statistics.

The target is a shiny, underleveled Golduck found in the Safari Zone. According to Rex’s calculations cited by Kotaku, Golduck has a low encounter rate there, with an additional chance of appearing at level 25, below the level at which Psyduck normally evolves. Combined with the standard shiny odds in the older games, Rex estimates the ideal level-25 shiny Golduck could appear roughly once in nine million encounters under favorable conditions.

Rex uses Pokémon Box Ruby & Sapphire, a GameCube storage application that can also run the Game Boy Advance games on a television. Kotaku reports that after launching the game, the disc can be removed and used in another console, enabling many simultaneous game instances. The setup is controlled with Nintendo’s WaveBird wireless controllers, whose receivers can share a radio channel so one input reaches many systems.

Despite the scale of the project, Rex told Kotaku he has not yet found the Golduck. He said recent Safari Week hunts produced multiple shiny Psyducks instead, but those do not improve the odds because each encounter is independent. The story highlights how older Pokémon mechanics, fixed random encounters and rare shiny variants continue to drive elaborate fan challenges years after release.