Living Pokedex: Complete! (Also, tips)

I don't post about other games very much on here anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm not playing them!

Since I was a kid, I've always wanted to "Catch 'Em All!" Well, last week, I did! And not just completing the pokedex, but actually having one of every single kind in my bank at once. With new storage functions only recently available which allow you to send your collection to your other (and, I'm assuming, future) games pretty painlessly, it seemed like it was finally time to give this a shot. 11-year old Mike is so pleased! So is 28-year-old Mike, but it is kind of a clouded victory.

It took a LOT of time. Way more than I thought it would. But, once I started getting close, I just had to keep going. Lots of researching, trading, battling, leveling, catching, breeding, and everything else. The new trading utilities within the game make pretty much everything easier than the old games, but that's countered by the sheer number of pokemon now (720). Additionally, fewer and fewer pokemon evolve from just your standard "raise level to X." There's tons of other requirements, including ones that has to be leveled at a certain times of day or certain in-game weather. There's even one where you have to level it up and then hold your gameboy upside-down for it to trigger the evolution.

I was going to share some screenshots, but then I put off publishing this post for like two weeks. Plus, it'll look to same no matter what. It looks just like this, except it's my username and not this guy's.

I'll also share some general "how to get the pokemon you want" tips.

In Game Trading

There are kind "tiers" for how a Pokemon can be traded. It's not based on rarity so much as convenience/effort to obtain a pokemon. From highest-inconvenience to lowest it goes as follows: Mythical pokemon (which aren't tradeable on the GTS, but you can still request them for some reason) -> pokemon that evolve by being traded while holding a certain item -> legendaries -> pokemon evolved with stones or friendliness -> pretty much everything else.

Examples:

1. You can deposit a Porygon with its Up-Grade item attached, and get pretty much anything you want. It's a great way to get legendaries that you need or want a duplicate of.

2. You can get any 'standard' pokemon with a Magby or Elekid. They're a pain to get, but once you have one, you can evolve it once and duplicate the crap out of it. Whatever you have to trade to get one, you'll get a good return on the investment.

3. More on Magmar...you can trade this guy for literally anything except a legendary or the aforementioned "trade with item" revolutions.

Reddit

The Pokemon Plaza subreddit is amazing. You can get pretty much any pokemon you can imagine, with any stats/moves/whatever by making a deal on there. There are also lots of giveaways, which can be a lot of fun. It's also pretty much the only way you will ever obtain all of the mythical (not obtainable in game, only through events from Nintendo) pokemon. Just ask someone to hack you one of each and trade them to you via Friend trade (which lacks the restrictions that GTS has).

The Breeding Dittos subreddit's sole purpose is to give away Dittos with 6IV's for breeding. Save yourself a ton of trouble and go get one.

Secret Base Leveling

Also online, you can use QR codes to manually import other players' secret bases into your game. So here's my guide for high-octane low-effort leveling.

1. Get five of these bases where the owner has three level 100 Blissey's with a Toxic Orb equipped (they're worth a ton of exp, can't attack, and will eventually kill themselves),

2. Add all five to your "Pals" list or whatever, so they appear in your base.

3. Get a "level release" so their pokemon won't be capped at 50.

4. Profit.

O-Powers

These horribly-named abilities don't make or break you, but they can sure help keep things moving. Get yourself a party of 6 Magby's, pop the Exp. Boost and Befriending boost, and Bam! One battle later and you're looking at 6 Magmar's, which, I repeat, can be traded for just about any other breed of pokemon (or literally any other breed if you give it a Magmarizer before you attempt to trade it).

External Tracking

Sure, almost all of your in-game computer is labeled and ready to go for all your pokemon, but it helps to be able to see it on a real computer screen and see where you are and really get a sense of your progress and what you have remaining.

I had a hard time finding just one app that really did everything that I wanted. LivingDex is great because it's light, easy, and travels with you wherever you go. PokeCheckList is also great because it lists each pokemon, has some sorting functions, and lists how to obtain every pokemon. However, it only works in one browser and if you clear your cookies, it all gets cleared out. Why isn't there one app that does it all? I don't know.


But yeah, that's all of my tips for getting pokemon. I'm not sure I'd really recommend to anyone else that they do it too, but hey, I've officially got them all. And with Pokemon Bank, I'll hopefully have them forever and never have to do anything like this ever again. Win-win!

The Pokemon Trading Card Game Video Game

Once upon a time, when I was growing up, I was a huge nerd. 

This will probably not come as a surprise to most. But I still wanted to preface this post because we're about to go pretty deep into my geekhood. And it's not even cute or awesome like my Starcraft History post. 

So yeah, I was in middle school and a huge nerd. This was during the period of time where Nintendo was basically printing its own money in the form of Pokemon cards for the trading card game. it's embarrassing to think about just how much money I spent on those cards. I'm pretty sure they're still in my parents' basement too. But before I had any money at all to burn on Pokemon cards, I discovered that there was such a thing as the Pokemon Trading Card Video Game for the Gameboy Color. Yes, it was a game where you would collect digital versions of the cards, build decks, and play the card game against NPC's. In Japanese. Only obtainable (as far as I was concerned) through the wilds of the internets. So I got an emulator and downloaded that sucker so I could play the TCG w/o having to buy the cards.

This worked for about as long as it took for me to get through the intro video when you turned the game on. Turns out not knowing any Japanese will make playing a text-heavy game pretty difficult. I was eventually able to remedy this with a fan-made translation patch to edit most of the text into English. Or at least something that resembled English. 

I played the crap out of this game. Then I showed it to a friend of mine and he also began to play it a ton. Then, after a couple weeks, we started having problems progressing as the translator hadn't really finished his project and we were having problems understanding what was going on in the game. So we gave it up in favor of becoming completely addicted to the actual cards and dropping pretty much every cent we could get our hands on to buy more cards. 

I had three of these. It was a big deal.

That, too, eventually died out. The English version of the gameboy game was eventually released (I just checked wikipedia, it was almost a two-year gap between the release of the Japanese and English versions of the game) but I never bothered with it.

Fast forward to this past Monday. I was listening to some Familyjules7x (as should you!) and came across the boss music from the Pokemon TCG video game! A couple hours later, I started to get "the itch." So I again turned to the wilds of the internets, found myself a copy of the game in English, and fired it up. 

The game HOLDS UP! Granted, the official translation actually isn't much better than the fan-made one I found forever ago, but I'm willing to bet it's at least complete. I played during my lunch hour and I had a blast! Each match seemed way shorter than I remembered too. I doubt this game will entertain me quite as much as it did before. But hey, maybe this will finally be the motivation I need to jailbreak my iPod.