PokéTour Project - Intro

I’m going to travel the distance of the Pokémon world - and I want you to come with me!

I don’t know about all of you, but this Pokémon 20th anniversary business is making me super nostalgic. I’ve glanced at the Pokémon cartridges lying on my game shelf countless times in the last few months, tempted to pop one in. The thing is – I have no time! I’m barely able to make it through recent-ish games without going back to put 50 hours into an old Gameboy RPG.

So I started to think: how could I recapture the feeling of Pokémon without disrupting my life too much? And then it hit me. One of the main mechanics of Pokemon, really, is the journey itself. You start in your little home town and travel the huge mysterious world, mostly by foot. Rather than going that distance in-game all over again, why not do it in real life? I’ve been trying to walk, run and hike a lot more lately, so a little gamified incentive couldn’t hurt.

I’m going to travel the entire distance of Kanto from Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow - but I don’t want to do it alone. What’s a Pokémon journey without some other trainers trying to be their very best?

More on that later, though. First, I should probably explain how all of this works.

It turns out that Kanto in the first Pokémon generation is actually based on the real-world region of Kantō in eastern Japan. It’s certainly not one-to-one, but most of Kanto’s towns are representative of real locations.

I mapped it out, town-by-town, and it came to about 430 miles. I bumped that up to 500 miles to make up for some of the locations that lack real-world analogues.

Of course, the journey itself is only part of the… journey. The games also focus quite a bit on “catchin’ ‘em all,” as it were. Until Pokémon GO comes out, there really isn’t any way to catch Pokémon in real life, so I settled for the next best thing. I balanced it out so that you get a Pokémon every few miles, either by catching or evolving.

Behold: the excel sheet of a crazy-person.

So I had travel and Pokémon catching down, but there was still something missing - battles.

Again, Pokémon battles don’t really have a solid real-world analogue, other than maybe dogfights, so I had to get creative. The main battles in Pokémon are the gym battles, so I figured that each one could be represented by a real-life thematic challenge. Pewter Gym, for instance, could be a mountain hike, Cerulean could be a swimming challenge, and so on. I guess for Vermillion I’ll find a power plant or something? I haven’t really thought that far ahead. I’m lucky enough to live in an incredibly diverse area of Southern California, so I won’t have to travel far.

The other important battles are the rival battles. Now, in the originals, you have 8 battles with Gary (or blue, or whatever.) I decided to drop that down to 5, one every hundred miles. At 100 I’ll be running a 1K, at 200 a 2K and so on, culminating in a 5K to represent the Elite Four and final rival battles. At this point in my running career, a 1K is not really a problem. A 5K, however… that’s going to take some training.

So that’s all of the main ingredients for a Pokémon Game, but there’s still one piece missing: YOU! Of course, I’m going to need a little help from my dude Professor Oak first…

Alright, now that that’s out of the way… Here’s a Google Sheets Template to track your progress. It’s pretty rudimentary and will more than likely be improved later, but it’ll do for now.

Step one is to pick your trainer and starting Pokémon sprites. I used GIFs from this site, but you can use whatever sprites you want. Whichever starter you choose, just ignore catching and evolving it later. If you choose Pikachu, evolve him to Raichu at the point where the others would hit their third evolution.

Step two is to set your gym goals. If you don’t have access to a diverse range of nature spots like I do, you might need to get a little creative. I suppose you could do something at an actual gym, but… gross.

Step three is to set your goals for rival battles. For me personally, a 5K is doable with some training. If you don’t already run, you might consider working your way up to a shorter run or even just a long walk. Likewise, if you’re already a badass runner, then don’t let my basic-level running skills hold you back. Wanna finish this thing off with a marathon? Go for it!

I’ll be updating you all on my progress in a weekly blog starting next Monday, so make sure to come back and see how my first week went! In the meantime, use the hashtag #PokeTour on your preferred social media platform to update everybody else on your progress.

Happy touring!

Your very own Pokémon legend is about to unfold! A world of dreams and adventures with Pokémon awaits! Let’s go!