One Pokemon fan has managed to legitimately capture a shiny version of every single Pocket Monster that's currently available, and it took him over three years to do it.

As fans and casual players alike can attest, the main premise of Pokemon, outside of battling, has always been to "catch 'em all." The slogan has been associated with the franchise since it made its North American debut back in 1998, and the core appeal of rounding out a Pokédex has been the goal of many great trainers. While that challenge has grown substantially over the years – with new entries adding a total of 721 monsters as of this writing – but one fan has stepped up his game substantially in order to capture a majority of these beasts... in their shiny forms.

For those unaware, a 'shiny' Pokemon is a monster that has a different color pattern than a particular beast would traditionally have. Players likely first encountered these shiny types in Pokemon Gold and Silver (where the feature made its original debut) in the form of a red Gyrados. While that Poke was particularly easy to capture, the chances in current games of seeing one in the wild are 1 in 4,096 – with older games being even more challenging to lure one out of hiding at about 1 in 8,192 odds. Suffice it to say, they're absurdly difficult to find, but that didn't stop YouTuber KangasKid18 (known in real life as Robert Meehan) from capturing them all legitimately after three years of meticulous grinding.

Take a look at a crazy collection of the original 150 Pokemon in their shiny forms below.

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Robert has managed to capture a grand total of 703 shinies, which is the current number of Pokemon that can be legitimately obtained in-game. This means that event-only monsters aren't included, as their appearances fall outside of the core games. While it's easy to imagine how frustrating it is to be just short of his overall goal, Meehan spoke to Kotaku about a few of the more devastating circumstances he's faced in-game – namely in regards to his first failed attempt at catching a shiny.

“The worst part is always losing a shiny. It’s going to happen if you’re a shiny hunter, and I’ve lost my fair share. My first loss was a Smeargle - it only knows the move Sketch, and has a relatively low catch rate. So I threw a PokeBall at it, and lo and behold it breaks out right away. [It used] Sketch, but I didn’t use a move for it to Sketch so that failed, and Sketch only has 1PP, so the darn thing started Struggling. I couldn’t catch it and it fainted from Struggling."

While Meehan attempts to secure the remainder of the known monsters, it won't be long now until he'll have an entirely new set to capture. As many wannabe Pokemon Masters are well aware, Pokemon Sun and Moon are set to arrive on the Nintendo 3DS at the tail end of 2016. As of this writing, Nintendo has only confirmed that over 10 Pokemon will appear in Sun and Moon, so at the very least shiny hunters like Meehan can look forward to locking those down in less than a year's time.

Pokemon Sun and Moon are set to arrive exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS this Holiday 2016.

Source: KangasKid18 (via Kotaku)