Run on the Bank

You remember ages ago, when everyone was getting massively het up over the fact that Pokemon Bank was overdue? People were on the internet, posting images of all their filled-up PC boxes? Then it came out, and everyone was massively relieved and started wonder trading ten-year-old Wingulls to each other? Yeah, well, I have a confession to make:

I’m still not ready.

I know, I had ages. But what with one thing and another, I just didn’t get around to it. I was trying to hatch several hundred eggs. I was trying to find a shiny Drifloon. I was playing on FireRed and LeafGreen. In short, I have absolutely no attention span.

This is why I never completed Red or Blue. This is why it took me FOUR YEARS to finish the Pokedex on Pearl. And I mean regional, not national.

I have never completed the national dex in any generation, even disregarding event pokemon. Because the boredom threshold needed to line up a plethora of pokemon in neatly labelled PC boxes is too damn high.

I can’t be the only person who feels this way. I’m an ex competitive chess player, accustomed to playing a single game over a nine-hour period, and even I find the repetitive nature of certain aspects of the pokemon games dull as hell. If I, who can spend nine straight hours staring at the same thirty-two pieces moving over the same sixty-four squares, am bored, then why does it feel like I’m the only person without a Shiny Charm?

It’s not like I don’t really want one. I hate the bastards who run around with a team full of max-IV shinies that you just know have been dragged from the bowels of PokeGen. Someone I played against had a full shiny team and had hatched less eggs than me. Either that’s the luckiest bastard alive, or they’re a dirty cheat.

The Destiny Knot went half-way to ironing out the damage caused by these unscrupulous scrotes*. The Shiny Charm is the other half of the bargain. But either I have to pay a whole fiver (five squid???), or I have to pull my socks up.

Thankfully, there seem to be just thirty evolutionary lines absent from both my X and my White 2 cartridge. Unfortunately, I was rather hoping to process those lines before throwing them into the abyss of the Pokemon Transporter. I may not be afforded this luxury. All I can say for sure is that there is no way in hell I am trawling around Mt Coronet for days looking for a Feebas ever again.

One of the pokemon missing from my collection is Manaphy, because it’s still an egg, which means that I have to walk around for days waiting for the blighter to hatch.

See? See why I don’t want to do this? Regionals are in a month’s time. I have two pokemon at competition standard, and two which aren’t even eggs yet. I was very proud of myself for coming up with a few pokemon that pretty much nobody seems to be using, but another part of me is worried that this is because they’re terrible pokemon.

Part of me wants to say bugger it, I’ll pay the five squid, just let me walk around hatching all the Scyther eggs I decided to hatch back when I still wanted a Scizor. Or that entire box filled with Chespin eggs from when I wildly overcalculated the number of eggs I’d need. I like doing those things. Just don’t make me sit with my scrapbook in one hand and my DS in another, walking around in circles for a Weedle to hatch because I need it for my White 2 dex.

I’m exactly the wrong sort of patient. When I can see the goal, I’m an obsessive. Wild horses cannot stop me from ruining my own Christmas by playing all my new games immediately. However, faced with the enormous, and in my experience, impossible task of all 718 pokemon… how could I ever have been ready for Pokemon Bank?

I am rubbish at pokemon. I have been since I was a kid. I got through the Elite Four by level grinding Blastoise and stocking up on revives and ethers. Needless to say, I only managed once. It’s only my fervent gladiatorial spirit that forces me to compete in tournaments I’m in no way ready for.

Losing sucks, though. Registering a battle box for a competition safe in the knowledge that I am going to spend all day getting my arse kicked from bollocks until sundown- it’s not a nice feeling. I can put my competition chess hat on and say “I can learn a lot from getting repeatedly mullered”, but really the only lesson I need to take away is that I probably should have got ready in time.

Yes, there are distractions: Twitch, my blog, my Blue cartridge, trying to do a Nuzlocke challenge and so on. But I need to be stronger than that. What good will playing Blue do me? Do I really need to prove myself doing a Nuzlocke? Have I now seen everything Twitch has to offer?

Or, how about, if I knuckle down over the next month, I can have a complete team, and a substantially dented pokedex. After regionals, after pokemon transporter, I can dick about again, maybe shuffle my team around. But focus is key. I knew this as a chess player, and I know it now.

Reject pokécrastination.

*Literally, a scrotum. Metaphorically, a wanker, bastard, knobhead, dickhead or person you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire.

It’s my Poke-birthday!

Four years ago today, I bought pokemon pearl and started my first adventure with it. A poor student, I had bought it second-hand (or “pre-loved”). That didn’t matter. Despite issues with the game (primarily, the absence of a real rival), it would become the first game I managed to play half-competently.

And when I say “half”, I mean half.

Four years later, the pokedex is still unfinished. So, rather than celebrating this rather unusual anniversary in an ordinary fashion, by having a quiet smile to myself and not telling anyone at all, I have spent today trying to catch Feebas.

Feebas is incredibly common- to four tiles in Mt Coronet. So, today I drew out a map of the area and am currently checking off squares I have looked in. Still no Feebas, but staying positive. Despite the fact there is a less than 1 per cent chance that the next tile I check will be a Feebas tile.

Still. I have eight pokemon left to go. The promise of a Shiny Charm for completing the entire dex on White 2 is almost too much to bear, and taking that one step closer today would be a lovely poke-birthday present to myself, don’t you think?

I have such a long way to go, and am hampered at every turn by the sheer ridiculous rarity of event pokemon. I’m doing this by the book, too, no hacks. No charity either. It might not even be possible for me. There aren’t a lot of Celebi out there, and they haven’t been released in an event since 2011. Arceus was released the week before I realised what was going on, and I kicked myself for it. Meloetta was just released everywhere but the UK, which was upsetting.

If anyone did manage to get Meloetta in the UK recently, please don’t tell me. It would be kindest not to tell me.

After all, it is my poke-birthday.

The Master Ball, or First World Problems

After fighting my way up Mount Coronet, defeating four hundred and seventy Team Galactic goons as well as three of the top dogs, coming face to face with the legendary pokemon in charge of all of time was not the respite I had hoped for. After ineffectually hurling my weakened level 30-odd pokemon at Dialga’s godlike frame and realising this wasn’t going to work, I reached for the Poke Balls and decided to hurl and hope.

With legendary pokemon, this is essentially the strategy to opt for. They’re too powerful to hurt, too strong to survive and so good at escaping pokeballs that even lowering the HP to 1 and freezing them means you’ll have to use 30 Ultra Balls minimum. The exception to this is of course, my Palkia, which, tired and frustrated, I threw a simple Poke Ball at without even bothering to damage it first. It worked, and remembering the countless miserable hours used trying to catch a Moltres I had no need for, I nearly cried.

So, me, face to face with Dialga, Ball pocket open. I spot my Master Ball, the one I’d been saving to catch Cresselia. I’ve already bought fifty Ultra Balls, and it’s night-time so those twenty Dusk Balls are also available. I bought all of them specifically for that moment. Still, after wasting 7 Max Repels on the way up the miserable and pointlessly Graveler-filled Mt Coronet, there was no good reason in my mind not to save myself the tears and throw the Master Ball.

To cut a short story shorter, I now have Dialga.

Catching legendary pokemon is a tedious business. Aside from their being ridiculously powerful, there’s absolutely no reason to do it. It’s like bothering with Togepi pre-Gen IV. You’d have to be a seriously obsessive completist (cough) to bother with something so weak, and so awkward.

I’m not a genwunner by any means, but it did cut through the crap of all that switching your game on and off by only having one really hard legendary pokemon to catch. That was what the Master Ball was for. A level 70 psychopathic psychic cat to add to your team as a reward for bothering with the game so long.

Then, someone at Game Freak thought it would be a wonderful idea to introduce roaming pokemon that you needed to use the Master Ball on, because they’d run away from you otherwise. Even if you had a Diglett with Arena Trap on it, they had that base covered- the legendary beasts would either a) Kill your Diglett instantly or b) use Roar and flee from your tiny, useless Diglett.

Generation 3 packed a particularly cruel punch by having the roaming pokemon afflicted by glitches, making them not only difficult to catch, but in the case of Raikou and Entei, liable to disappear from the game. To add insult to injury, the roaming pokemon had their data incorrectly stored, making them unusually feeble.

Roaming pokemon are awkward, rubbish and upsettingly easy to kill. And because you didn’t know you were going to encounter them, you just have to either accept that it’s never coming back or just switch off your game without saving.

The Master Ball gives you the chance to turn these problems into opportunities. With a flick of the wrist, you can catch the blighters on the spot, add them to your pokedex, and continue on your merry way.

Unless, of course, you’re playing Platinum, and you have no fewer than FIVE to catch, and only one Master Ball to do it with.

So, why in hell did I chuck my only Master Ball at the non-roaming, perfectly stationary Dialga? Put simply, because working your way through the game and getting another Master Ball is less frustrating than throwing seventy Poke Balls at a hideous beast who keeps devouring your precious pokefriends.

Last time I caught Moltres, it took over 140 Ultra Balls. I had a level 60 Charizard by then. But, thanks to a cruel mantra drilled into me for over half my life, I have got to catch them all. Repeatedly. Game after game, forever.

Now that I have Dialga, Skuntank, Murkrow and Mime Jr. (it’s been a busy week), I am just 12 critters away from completing the Sinnoh Dex on Pearl. I’m too close to achieving it to back out now, but can’t help but think that it’s a) been a terrible waste of my time and b) not going to be worth it. And then I think “Gotta catch ’em all!” and I’m helplessly lured into trying to evolve Drifloon into Drifblim. Only, now I’m 21 and understand EVs, I can’t use the Day Care, because what if I wanted to use that Drifblim in battle later?

Pokemon is a cruel mistress, and the Master Ball is her darkest temptation.