How did players get Genesect?

Genesect is number 649, the final entry of the Unova Pokédex, a 300-million-year-old fossil predator that Team Plasma dug up and rebuilt with a cannon on its back, the drive in that cannon deciding the type of its signature move, Techno Blast. It was officially revealed in July 2012, weeks after Black 2 and White 2 launched in Japan, and like Victini before it, it was never hiding in any cartridge's grass. It arrived by appointment.

Japan's appointment came first and grander: a Plasma Genesect at level 50, distributed over Wi-Fi from August 11 to September 14, 2012. The international distribution was timed as a launch present for the sequels themselves. From October 7 to November 12, 2012, the exact first five weeks of the North American release, any Black 2 or White 2 player who connected to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection could download a level 15 Genesect, original trainer Plasma, and carry a Mythical Pokémon through a game it was wildly overqualified to open.

The distribution was the gift and the advertisement at once: buy the sequel early, receive the last Pokémon of the dex before most players had seen the first gym. A second Japanese event followed in January 2013, tied to the P2 Laboratory of the games' own fiction.

Miss the window and Genesect simply was not in your Unova, a rule the Wi-Fi era enforced without appeal. The Pokémon has been redistributed in later generations, but the level 15 Plasma Genesect of October 2012 remains the DS era's own specimen, stamped with the five weeks when the sequels were new.