Jack Lau has caught ’em all.



Or, at least, all of ’em that can be caught on this continent.



Lau, a 19-year-old University of Ottawa finance student, said he’s one of the first in Ottawa to catch all 142 available Pokemon in North America in the hit “augmented reality” mobile game Pokemon Go. Three region-specific Pokemon — Mr. Mime, Kangaskhan and Farfetch’d — are only available in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and Asia, respectively.



Lau posted his achievement on Ottawa’s Pokemon Go Facebook group Thursday with screenshots of his full collection, asking if he was the first in Ottawa to catch all 142. The reaction from the community was a mixture of incredulity and an outpouring of congratulations.

“I haven’t really been sleeping for the past three weeks,” said Lau, who averages 10 hours of game play per day. “Yesterday when I caught the 142nd Pokemon, immediately I stopped playing the game. I was like, I need some rest.”



Raichu, the final evolution of Pikachu, was the elusive final creature Lau needed to round out his collection. He nabbed it Thursday — and not without some resistance, as the electric type-Pokemon took around 15 Pokeballs to catch — on his way to a grocery store on Lees Avenue with a group of friends.



“I wanted to be the one of the very first people to complete the list, so I was competing against time,” said Lau, a Pokemon fan since he was young. “I actually don’t know (if I’m the first). That’s why I posted on Facebook. There must be people who made it faster than me in terms of completing it. But I’ve never seen them post it.”

A U.S. trainer publicly declared himself in a Business Insider story on July 21 to be the first Pokemon Go player to catch all 142 Pokemon available in North America.



For aspiring Pokemon players who want to round out their collections, Lau suggested staying on the move. He mainly hangs out in Confederation Park downtown and Dick Bell Park in the city’s west-end, but also drives with friends to Orléans, Kanata, “everywhere.” Lau also suggested using Pokevision, an online tracker that indicates all nearby Pokemon on a map in real-time.



Lau, who moved to Ottawa from Hong Kong last year, said he’s tried to hatch the remaining three region-specific Pokemon from eggs, but the odds of that are low, and he’s had no luck as of yet.



The six other Pokemon to round out the original 151 — Ditto, Zapdos, Articuno, Moltres, Mewtwo and Mew — have yet to be sighted anywhere in the world.