As outlined in my previous post, I plan on completing a living dex in every Pokémon game from each generation. Naturally, I’m starting with the game that started it all. Pokémon Red/Blue. I’d like to talk about my approach as well as some rules I’ve set for myself. I plan on using Pokémon Blue as my main cartridge where I’ll be transferring all of my Pokémon to. Blue was the version I chose way back in 1998 when I picked up my preorder from EB Games. It will always be my favorite. I’m also going to be playing with the original cartridges for all of the games as I own them all. While I am a fan of emulation and can even do it via the Analogue Pocket I’ll be using to play these games, there is something to be said about using original software. As a gamer AND collector, this is the only way. The save batteries in both my Red and Blue cartridges have been replaced, so I’m good to go there.

I will not be using Pokémon Yellow at all in my Generation 1 quest as it (in my opinion) does not add any bonus or buff to my quest. The starter in Yellow is an un-evolvable Pikachu, and while there are opportunities to get the other three starters, you have to play through a large chunk of the game to get all of them. It’s easier to just play Red and Blue as you only have to obtain the Pokédex and catch on other Pokémon to open up trading (something that takes maybe 15 minutes or so). Also, there are no Pokémon that I can get in Yellow that I can’t get by just playing Red and Blue. Lyra made a good video on the topic that expands upon some of my points. With that being said– because I’m quite particular and HATE the name of the Farfetch’d you are give in Blue/Red (it’s name is DUX– ugh), I may play Yellow just to obtain a wild Farfetch’d so it can not have the name DUX and I can be the original trainer. Still thinking about it.

As a way to track my progress, I plan on not just documenting my journey via this website, but I’ve adapted a Google Spreadsheet from BirdKeeper Toby’s Master Dex Challenge to keep track of what I’ve caught. You can find the link to that here. I’m not sure how often I am going to post on this site with narratives of my journey. I think if I did an update after every badge, that would be a bit much. Perhaps I’ll divide the game into quarters and do it that way. I of course may make changes to that idea based on how things are going– we’ll see. One final note (and one I almost forgot to mention) is that of how I will obtain Mew. I won’t go into too much detail here as I plan on making a separate post on how I did this, but I plan on using a custom-made cartridge with the original ROM from the Toys R’Us distribution cartridge. As of publishing this, my custom flash cart has not arrived and when I do get it, I need to flash the ROM to the cart. Stay tuned!