My 151 (2019)

The following was originally posted elsewhere on October 13, 2019 in celebration of my 30th birthday and was titled “#My151.”

TL;DR: I decided, after catching all 800+ Pokémon, to make a list of the 151 Pokémon that would constitute a perfect Pokémon game for me. Now scroll past all my explanation to see the 151 Pocket Monsters I chose.

Or read my crazy thoughts.

A few years ago, I decided that I needed to set some sort of personal goal to complete before my 30th birthday. There were lots of things that came to mind (run a 5k, get back down to my high school weight, write a novel, etc.), but none I actually put much effort into beyond buying related equipment on especially inspired days.

Instead, I decided I should complete a task that would have impressed child Ryan: Catch them all. Yup. Catch all 800+ Pokémon that are currently available. This was something that I had never done at any point in my life, even when there were only 151 and I must have sunk thousands of hours into playing and replaying Pokémon Red (Generation I). The biggest hurdle I faced was that I never owned both games in a generation until I was 27 (when I started this task), nor did I know how to get that pesky Mew the first time around.

Of course, anyone who knows me knows that just catching them all at some point in my journey and having it marked in my Pokédex was never going to be good enough. Nope. Because I’m a lunatic. So, the goal changed from “Gotta Catch ‘em All” to “Gotta Have Them All.”

This is what is known in the Pokémon community as a “Living Dex.” Not only does my Pokédex (the device that tracks all the Pokémon a player has seen & caught) say that I have caught all 800+ at some point while playing the games, I have all 800+ on hand. Right now. I can show you. Along with every gender, regional, and all 28 Unown variations (for those unfamiliar, Unown is a Pokémon that can take the shape of any letter of the alphabet, a question mark, or an exclamation mark. According to legend, they are ancient Pokémon that create symbols, but no one knows what they mean. Unsurprisingly, in a world that glorifies animal fighting and sending 11 year-olds away from home to overthrow crime syndicates, everyone is illiterate).

So that’s it, huh? One day I decided to catch them all, and now I have them. That’s pretty straightforward.

In actuality, it was anything but. Over the last 4 years I have spent over 1600 hours working towards this goal.

Considering I started playing Pokémon games when the first games hit the States in 1998, that seems like an incredibly large amount of time to dedicate to a task that I must have already had a head start on. Well, you see, from 2002 until 2013 I didn’t play a single game in the series. That year, Pokémon X and Y released on my birthday and all my family were out of town. With nothing to do, I figured I’d treat myself to some nostalgia to see if I could still find fun in the series and, boy, did it work. It pulled me right back in.

Jump a few years into the future when I start my journey to catch them all, and I’m suddenly in possession of numerous games full of Pokémon I had never trained, regions I had never explored, and world-ending events I had never stopped. I didn’t want to simply use a rush through and not enjoy them. I also didn’t want to use a guide on the fastest way to catch them all. I wanted to enjoy the experience. See what I could discover on my own. Only looking online for where to find the remaining monsters once I felt I had hit a wall.

I started at the very beginning. I played Pokémon Red & Blue to get all 151 (successfully completing the Mew glitch and verifying that I do remember how to catch MissingNo.), revisited Silver (Generation II, and the last I played in my youth), played the remakes of Ruby & Sapphire, picked up Y, to correspond with my X from years previous, and, finally, got Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon.

Doing my best to only use Pokémon I was unfamiliar with, I beat the main stories of each game. This is when my true journey began. I began putting my Ditto to work in the breeding center. To get special evolutions, I traded Pokémon with myself (big shout out to my wife, Rachel, for allowing me to use her 3DS and not divorcing me while she not-so-quietly judged me from across the room). I spent hours riding my bicycle back and forth across the same paths to hatch eggs and walking over the same grass patches/water ways/randomly generated pathways until the Pokémon that only has a 5% chance of spawning finally appeared on my screen.

My biggest heartbreak of the entire journey came in Omega Ruby. Nearing the end of catching every monster available in both games, I finally had everything I needed to catch Regigigas. I saved the game and went to where he was located. He appeared and looked like an absolute mess. Slightly better in design than the other 3 legendary golem Pokémon, but not by much. However, the worst part was the awful color scheme. Mostly white, with green fringe and these large purple shoulder pads. I remember thinking “Wow, he looks dumb. Oh well, gotta catch ‘em all.”

As is tradition, the attack that should have left him with only a sliver of health turned into a Critical Hit. It’s annoying, but a well known pain for trainers around the world. I rebooted the game and re-engaged in battle. Regigigas once again appeared on my screen and I was confused. He still looked dumb, but the color scheme made way more sense. Instead of the clashing purple, his shoulder pads were a complimentary yellow.

No.

No. No way. No. I refuse to believe it. I refuse to believe that the only (I repeat, ONLY) shiny that I came across in the wild in all 1600+ hours of games was a legendary Pokémon. Not only that, the legendary that requires you to catch 3 other legendaries and have them in your party to even spawn. No. Nope. This yellow one has to be the shiny and I’m going to look it up before I continue this battle to ease the sorrow that is fighting to take over my entire being.

Damn.

That green-fringed abomination was, in fact, the shiny. The now dead, never to return, purple mistake was the 1 in 8192 chance (Source: https://www.ign.com/wikis/pokemon-omega-ruby-alpha-sapphire/Shiny_Pokemon). I know that I didn’t want him when he was right in front of me, but now that he was gone I had so many regrets.

Dejected, I turned off my 3DS with the battle prompts still on screen. About a week passed without touching the game. With misplaced hope, I reminded myself that I still had 4 more games to play through and the odds were in my favor to catch another shiny (they weren’t). I booted up the game and settled for the normal, yellow shoulder-padded letdown.

In February of this year, Nintendo announced that Generation VIII (Pokémon Sword & Shield) was on its way. For an extra added layer of stress in my journey, the date they gave was simply “late 2019.”

Oh no.

Nintendo likes to release Pokémon games in October. My birthday is in October. For the next few months, I was completely convinced that Generation VIII was going to release on October 11th and ruin my dreams the day before I turned 30. Fortunately, in the summer it was announced that it wouldn’t arrive until November.

Phew.

In early September, I achieved my goal. I took all of my Pokémon from across the games and loaded them into Ultra Moon and received my in-game notification.

Yay, me.

That’s it. I’m done. No more Pokémon. That accomplishment is good enough for me.

…

No, it’s not.

While playing I realized that I really liked a bunch of the creatures that I discovered throughout, and really did not care at all for a whole of bunch of others. Thus, this crazy idea was born: My 151.

If a new Pokémon game was going to be released that only had 151 Pokémon (like the original release), what 151 would be my perfect game?

Then that thought, quite appropriately, evolved into the most time consuming of ideas: “Of course just picking 151 random Pokémon wouldn’t be a satisfying game. It would need to be balanced, only have 1 trio of starters, a limited number of legendaries, all the tropes of the series (such as pika-clones, limited fossil choices, an evolution line that’s clearly just a group of the same Pokémon, not actually a unique Pokémon), and include every evolution, baby, and variation of an evolutionary line.” So, for example: I couldn’t have Charmander AND Cyndaquil in the game since they are both fire starters. I could only have one. It doesn’t matter how much of a badass Bellsprout is because I’d have to take the Waluigi of Pokémon: Weepinbell. Now my list was getting interesting.

So, for the last month I have been narrowing down and balancing my 151. The biggest challenge I found was my need to keep the game balanced. I have always loved fire-types, and if I was given the choice, at least a third would be fire. But that wouldn’t be an enjoyable game. In forcing myself to be more selective, I learned some things about myself that I didn’t expect.

For example, when people think of ghost-type Pokémon, they tend to think of the Gengar line. Gengar is a dope Pokémon who is terrifying and mischievous, just like any good ghost. Perfect. Didn’t make the list. Turns out, I found the ghost-types that looked like possessed objects or entities more interesting. The hypothetical in-game location that they would all be found started to appear in my head. “You approach a decrepit house in the middle of a dark forest. The trees outside seem alive (Trevenant); inside the lights flicker as if to taunt you (Chandelure and Litwick); in the basement there is a sarcophagus lined with gold. As you approach, the strands of a mummy attacks (Cofagrigus).” There isn’t room in this story for Gengar AND balance.

Also, if the Pokémon doesn’t offer evolutions or variations, I found that I do not care as much. Bouffalant? A buffalo with an afro, what’s not to love? Doesn’t evolve into a giant bison with dreadlocks? No baby version that looks like a calf with cornrows? Don’t care anymore. Nintendo could have taken the easy route and made him an evolution of Tauros and they would have both made my list.

With one major exception. Hawlucha. He is a god damn, high-flying, mask-wearing, luchador hawk. He could never get an evolution or variant and he will still be in my top 5 all-time favorites (although, a dark-type, heel variation would be dope).

Finally, if a Pokémon ever gave me a sense of wonder or amazement. You were in. If at the age of 27, you made me feel like I was talking to my friends on the playground, then you are in. (I’m looking at you Inkay)

Because for those of us that fell in love with Pokémon 20 years ago, this is why we love it. In the beginning it wasn’t just about catching them all, it was about the discovery and the rumors. “Mew is under the truck by the S.S. Anne, you just can’t get over there.” “The next game has a new water-type Pikachu called Pikablu.” “You can get unlimited master balls if you talk to this guy and then fly to Cinnabar Island and then surf on the coast and then…”

So, here it is. My 151. I would recommend others who love Pokémon do the same, but it’s really not worth it. Don’t waste your time. Maybe just give my your top 10. Don’t even worry about evolutionary lines. Just a random hodgepodge. It’ll make me smile.

Happy 30th Birthday, myself. Young-you is quite impressed at what he grew up to be. And slightly disappointed. Basically the same as Present-me feels now.