Welcome to the nerdiest endeavour I’ve ever undertaking, blogging and documenting my journey to a Regional Master Dex.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m anything but ashamed of this. Luckily, I doubt anyone will ever actually read this blog, but if you are, you either know me so are not surprised I’m doing this, or you like Pokémon so you get it.
So, this is the first post on this blog, I thought it’d be good to just explain my rules for this master dex. I definitely don’t think these are unique rules, nor particularly hard, but they’re my rules and I’m sticking to them.
So, lets go through them
1. All Pokémon have to be caught in their original Region, on the earliest game possible.
This felt really necessary. Sort of like the way people feel between vinyl and digital. I want my Pokémon to have that warm, fuzzy feeling of being caught in their original region, while I stare at them on the cold, dead screen. It also gives me an excuse to play and replay some of the earlier gen games.
I’m not using Gen 1 or 2 games for this either. Mainly because it’s mentally hard to trade the pokemon from these games, but also because I just prefer the games when they’re a little more refined. I’m not saying the Gen 1 or 2 games are bad, i just prefer Gen 3+ games.
2. Cartridge Only. No emulations.
Why am I doing this? To make this as expensive and awkward as possible? yes.
This falls under the “analogue feel” thing again, it just feels right to catch these Pokémon on cartridges. No virtual console.
I’m a weirdly sentimental guy, which you’ll see clearly as we go through this, and buying, owning, and collecting the original game cartridges for Pokémon makes me immensely happy. It feels more real, like the actual Pokémon are actually living inside these small bits of plastic and motherboards. I know they’re not, I know all I’m doing is making it more expensive for myself, but I am writing a blog about Pokémon, so fuck it I might as well go all out.
3. Every Pokémon must be nicknamed.
Here’s the weird sentimentality coming back.
I’m adding an element of role-play to all of this, and I’m going to nickname every single Pokémon I catch. They will all be my Pokémon, I will care for them, maybe even love them as the journey goes on. I will get to know them, and hopefully bring them with me though this entire journey where I can. I’ve always gotten weirdly attached to the Pokémon in my run throughs, so I’m just leaning into it.
I also like the element of role-play it adds. The Pokémon stop just being bits of pixels on the screen and actually become real creatures, proper pocket monsters that are alive. It’s completely unnecessary, and maybe a little childish and silly, but again, this is a Pokémon blog written by a grown man, so anything goes really.
4. Every Pokémon that can be caught or traded by me, must be caught or traded by me.
The show literally told us to “catch ’em all”, it didn’t say trade ’em all, did it! Also, I can’t guarantee that the Pokémon traded to me will have been caught in their original regions, completely ruining the fuzzy warm feeling of all my Pokémon.
Also I just love, and I mean LOVE, making things as expensive as possible. Now I don’t need one gameboy advance, I need two! same with all my devices. Luckily, me and my wife both own a switch so the biggest expense is taken care off. The very fact you’ve just learnt I have a wife has made you think
‘why is this guy spending his money on multiply retro gaming devices and retro game cartridges instead of trips to the French Riviera for him and his wife’
You
And the answer to that is a complete lack of any ability to control my impulses.
(Wife, if you see this blog, I got everything for a great price, major discounts, basically free)
5. Cheats/Glitches allowed POST-GAME.
This is already a rather large task I’m taking on, so I need to cut some corners somewhere.
I’m going to let my heart guide me on this one. I’m not going to using them a lot, but I also don’t want to be grinding out every single Pokémon to get them through their evolutions.
So, there they are. These are my rules. I also imagine more might get added as I go along, or they might change as I’m going, these are just a first draft.
Gaming has always been one of my main weapons against the stresses of life, a vital tool I’ve used since I was a kid to help centre myself and separate from whatever it was or is I need separating from for a time. Gaming has never and will never be a waste of time for me. I want this blog to just be an extension of that love for gaming. I don’t know why I’m trying to justify this, firstly no one’s going to read this blog most likely so I’m just speaking into the void, and secondly I think in the grand scheme of blogs on the internet this is probably pretty vanilla.
And just like that, the blog is alive! First post done. I’m a blogger, it’s official.