The Muffin is Forever with Me

I can't remember when I first heard of Random Number Generator (RNG) manipulation, but it was quite a while ago. I remember browsing around Bulbagarden, and seeing these people talking about how this RNG abuse was a much easier way to get legitimate shiny Pokemon than chaining or the Masuda Method, and it was so easy that it was decreasing the value of shiny Pokemon. Curious, I decided to look it up. I quickly found my way to Smogon's RNGing guide, and I scanned through the entire page. It looked really complicated, and it required that you downloaded this program. Determined, I decided to give it a try anyway. I downloaded the program and read through the guide step by step. You first had to find your Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum SID through use of an Action Replay (or by calculating it through the IVs of a randomly encountered shiny Pokemon) and then insert that along with your regular ID into the program. You had to have a party with no more or no less than five Pokemon, you had to have your Poketch open to the app before the Friendship App, and you couldn't have any Pokemon in the daycare. You had to save in an area where you could encounter wild Pokemon that were level 50 or higher, and then shut off the game. Then, you had to start up the game and record the time of when you hit A on the title screen in a space on the program. Next, you went into the tall grass and caught a Pokemon level 50 or higher. You would then record its stats and information in the program, and have it calculate an initial seed for you. Using the initial seed, you would use the program to generate a list of seeds that would create shiny Pokemon, with each one saying what nature and gender the Pokemon you'd be breeding would have. You'd pick a seed and have the program calculate how many times you had to tap the Friendship App and flip the coin on the Coin Toss App. These numbers vary greatly-- you usually get things in the 100s or 1000s for double taps, but sometimes they're surprisingly low. The number of coin flips is almost always less than ten. You'd proceed to tap the apps the required amount of times, unless you got undesirable numbers and decided to reset. You had to be very exact-- you had to tap the apps the exact number, or else it won't work. Once that was over with, you'd fly to Solaceon and insert your parents in the daycare. If you did everything right, the egg will hatch into a shiny Pokemon with the same nature and gender the program specified.
So I tried it. I somehow ended up messing up along the way-- probably on the app taps. I recall the number of taps being relatively high that first time, so I probably ended up miscounting. Frustrated, I tried again. No success. I gave up RNGing, and I didn't try again for months. When I tried again a while later, I still couldn't get it to work. I'm not sure how many times I ended up trying it between then and now, but every time it didn't work.
Until yesterday.
I was talking about shiny Pokemon with Dapple, and I mentioned how I was no good at RNGing, and she asked me what it was all about. I showed her the website, and I had a sudden urge to try again. So a few minutes later, I took out my Pearl game and opened up the program. Like always, I tried for a shiny Charmander, which was my dream shiny. I went through all the steps, resetting every time I got a ridiculous number of taps. I eventually got 221 Friendship App taps, which I thought was fairly reasonable. I counted carefully, and then did my coin flips (I think there were two, but I can't remember). I didn't have very high hopes. It's never worked before; why would it work now? Still, I inserted the parents in the daycare (I accidentally put in the Purugly I caught for the first part at first, which I guessed would ruin the thing if I actually did get it to work) and crossed my fingers. Soon, an egg was laid, and I rode my bike through Solaceon with a Camerupt in my party to help it hatch faster. Several minutes later, the little message box that said 'Oh?' popped up, and I crossed my fingers. I watched as the egg began to crack, and to my sheer disbelief, this popped out:

I instantly started to nearly hyperventilate. It actually worked! I couldn't believe it! I had just hatched my dream shiny using a method that had previously never worked for me! I didn't even bother to give the hatchling a name; I rushed to save the game as quickly as possible. I later named my Charmander Oro, which means 'Gold' in Spanish. It's a rather unfitting name, considering that shiny Charizards are black. I transferred him over to White where I eventually evolved him, fulfilling my dream of owning  shiny Charizard. Successfully using the RNG method, I then obtained a shiny Totodile, Cranidos, Trapinch, Growlithe, and Electrike, and I decided to restart my Platinum game with a team full of shiny Pokemon.
It's really awesome to be able to hatch whatever shiny Pokemon I want whenever I want, but at the same time this method takes away the excitement of finding a shiny, along with their value. It's still really nice to be able to own legitimate Pokemon with cool shiny colors, and shiny legendaries and Unova Pokemon are still as rare as ever.