shinies

You are right, they ARE very rare, and in my six years of prolific daily playing, I have encountered a total of three shiny pokemon!!! Two in Pokemon Gold (one was the ubiquitous Reg Gyarados that appears in the game for everyone) and the other was a Spinarak.

The other was a shiny Exeggutor my friend found on a secondhand copy of sapphire she had bought.

There is a way to use your pokeradar to find shinies. The general theory is that you use a max repel and make sure the only Pokemon that you can encounter are ones found with the pokeradar. Then you find a patch of grass that you use the pokeradar on and you look at the moving grass. The grass will move where there is a Pokemon, a small Pokemon will make the grass move a little, a large one will make the grass move a lot, and a shimmering patch of grass contains a shiny.

If you battle the first Pokemon and defeat it, the grass will shake again just after battle, go to the firthest spot of shaking grass and battle the Pokemon there, it should be the same sort of Pokemon as the one before it. Keep doing this until you see a shiny patch of grass and there should be a hsiny Pokemon there. I have never seen this work, but I believe it to be successful.

You have to use the pokerader to find shines or you can find rare Pokemon with it too.

You are right, they ARE very rare, and in my six years of prolific daily playing, I have encountered a total of three shiny pokemon!!! Two in Pokemon Gold (one was the ubiquitous Reg Gyarados that appears in the game for everyone) and the other was a Spinarak.