Ever since I became aware of BirdKeeper Toby’s Master Dex challenge a few years ago, I’ve been itching to try it out on my own. I’ve had several stop-starts over the years mostly due to time constraints and life challenges (was finishing up graduate school at the time). I also became overwhelmed pretty quickly– there are A LOT of moving parts to a challenge like this and many things to keep track of. Every time I’d approach a good rhythm to my attempt, I’d hit a wall. Retrospectively, I think what was holding me back/overwhelming me was to prospect of transferring them all into Pokémon HOME. Since I was playing each game on original copies, the daunting task of transferring them through several games/generations felt hopeless. Currently, that isn’t even a possibility as Nintendo has shut down the 3DS online servers. I never completely disengaged from Pokémon, but I did take a large step back. That was until I found another YouTuber: Lyra.

Lyra’s (channel name Lyra made a website) approach felt much more doable (at first– after I get into things you will see it’s quite involved). He not only decided to do a living dex challenge, but he made an amazing companion website to go along with it. What I appreciated most about his approach was how clean and logical it was. right from the beginning I could go over all of the things I needed to attend to in-game and even use his website to check off what I have completed and what was left to do. The task was still huge, but I was excited by the new look at things. For example, for Generation One games, would would do an initial playthrough and then what he called “side version” playthroughs to catch/encounter what you might have missed in your initial playthrough. Additionally, he noted how many times you’d have to play a particular game to get all Pokémon (hint: in Generation One it’s eight!). He also outlined the differences between versions and what was accessible in each one. Lyra also added Pokémon catch locations and where it was most optimal to catch each one as well as extra info on the particular game you were playing (catching strategies, key item locations, and how to catch the elusive Mew!) With all of that in mind, I have decided to embark on my own living dex challenge starting with Generation One.

I plan on blogging along as I make progress and to document my journey. I was originally going to try and stream/video record my progress, but with editing and having to be tethered to my PC to do so it just wasn’t feasible. I have the hardware to play original cartridges on my PC, but I’ve decided to use my Analogue Pocket to play as I think it is the best way to play old GB/GBA games. Since I have yet to start my journey, I am not going to commit to a schedule in terms of posting updates, but ideally, I’d like to make a weekly post about where I’m at (in addition so some other things I’ve planned for this blog outside of the living dex). My next step to make an initial post outlining the rules I have set for myself for the challenge. I plan on doing this for each game and hope that it serves as a grounding point for each game challenge– that exactly how I’m seeing it– each game is a new challenge with unique rules and approaches. This perspective allows me to not feel as overwhelmed in it all and provides a “fresh start” each time. Anyhow, stay tuned for more!