Pokemon shiny hunter spends almost a year looking for 1 of Scarlet and Violet's rarest finds, then wins the sparkly mouse lottery by getting 2 of them back to back

One incredibly lucky Pokemon player has defied all odds to get their hands on not one, but two of the rarest shiny forms in Scarlet and Violet – back to back – after almost a year of looking for the first one.

Shiny Pokemon – sparkly, alternate color palette versions of the Pokemon we all know and love – are very rare. Admittedly, Scarlet and Violet are some of the easiest Pokemon games to find shinies in, as their one in 4096 odds can be boosted all the way to just over one in 512 if you stack all the buffs available. Even at that, though, there's no overcoming the tedium of hunting for a shiny of the rarest form of Maushold.

Maushold is one of the most unique Pokemon introduced in Scarlet and Violet, mainly because it doesn't look like a single Pokemon at all. After evolving from Tandemaus (a pair of cute mice), Maushold becomes the same mice, except with added children. Usually, they become a family of four, but there's a one in 100 chance that they can become a family of three, instead. I don't know why that's the rarer option, but regardless, a shiny three-family Maushold is one of the rarest Pokemon you can find in Scarlet and Violet, hence why it's so sought after.

In the case of dedicated hunter and Twitch streamer ShinyRyGaming, they'd been looking for one of these elusive, sparkly trios of mice for almost a year. To do so, they'd collected a whopping 115 shinies (albeit, not all Tandemaus), and had been evolving groups of them at the time, but it wasn't until the 82nd pair of mice that they got what they were looking for. They were ecstatic – as you'd expect after such a long quest – but the best part came after they calmed down and headed back into battle with their next unevolved shiny Tandemaus.

After acknowledging that they "hunted a shit ton of extra mice," ShinyRyGaming joked it's "totally fine" because "we're gonna get another one." Then, as the next Pokemon began to evolve, they joked: "Let's see if we get another one, why don't we?" On cue, the next trio of mice materialized.

ShinyRyGaming was stunned, as I think anyone would be in the face of those odds. It certainly makes finding all those extra Tandemaus a lot sweeter, anyway. The funny thing is that Maushold has one of the most underwhelming shiny variations in Scarlet and Violet – the change is very subtle, as the slight hue of blue on their bodies changes to a faint yellow, so you've got to be seriously committed to go to such efforts for one of these. Regardless, this is an enormous win for any hunter.

It could take 2,000 hours to unlock this hidden feature in Pokemon Platinum, HeartGold, and SoulSilver, but at least Professor Oak might tell you you're doing a good job.