Soft resetting

SR redirects here. For the move commonly shortened to "SR", see Stealth Rock (move).

Soft resetting (often shortened as SRing) is a feature found in the core series Pokémon games, as well as several other Pokémon games. It involves holding certain buttons on the game system at the same time, which causes the game to return to the startup screen. A "soft reset" contrasts to a "hard reset", which is restarting the game by rebooting the system itself.

A soft reset can be performed at any time during gameplay, except while the game is saving.

Purpose

This practice is widely considered useful, as rebooting the game will affect the values generated by the pseudorandom number generator. Commonly, it is used to attempt to generate an in-game event Pokémon that is Shiny, or has particular IVs or Nature. Soft resetting is faster than hard resetting because only the game and not the system needs to reboot, so it's often used due to the already time-consuming nature of attempting to generate a Pokémon with these specific qualities.

Soft resetting specifically for a Shiny Pokémon is often called Shiny resetting.

Games

This section is incomplete. Please feel free to edit this section to add missing information and complete it.

Soft resetting exists in all core series Pokémon games, as well as the following other games:

• Pokémon Trading Card Game
• Pokémon Puzzle Challenge
• Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness
• Pokémon Channel
• Learn with Pokémon: Typing Adventure

Additionally, all games released on Wii or Wii U have a reset function built into the system firmware. Likewise, all Virtual Console titles have a reset function accessible from the Virtual Console menu (in addition to any built-in soft reset methods they may already have).

Button combinations

• GB/GBC/GBA games: Press and hold A, B, Start, and Select.
• XD: Gale of Darkness: Press and hold B, X, and Start.
• DS games: Press and hold L, R, Start, and Select.
• 3DS games: Press and hold L, R, and Start or Select.

This article is a part of Project Fandom, a Bulbapedia Project that aims to write comprehensive articles on every aspect of the Pokémon Fandom.