I like Pokemon. I have played at least one game from each main generation of Pokemon games, trained a number of my favorites for competitive battle, and spent quite a lot of time with the series in general. There’s one thing I haven’t done though, and I intend to right that wrong. I am going to obtain every Pokemon in the world.

So, when this idea finally sunk in as something I was going to do, I had to do some preparation, and I thought I would start what I intend to be an ongoing series with an entry about some of that. What did I really want to do? How was I going to do it? In terms of ‘what’, here’s where I've landed.

1. The ultimate goal is to play X/Y when they release, and after completing the campaign, to get every Pokemon into that one save file.

2. The goal is to actually own one of EVERY type of Pokemon. I don’t just want the data, and I don’t just want the most evolved form of everything. I want it all. I want Charmander, Charmeleon, and Charizard.

3. This probably goes without saying, but I’m not going to just hack my way to owning everything. I won’t use any software outside of Pokemon games.

   1. The one exception to this rule is for “Event only” Pokemon that are not obtainable through the GTS, which I believe is just 3 of them. Luckily I have a friend who gave me these Pokemon as I was getting started in this process. I’m not going to ask if they are legit or not.

   2. Emerald cloning is totally legit :)

So, with those goals in mind, how was I going to accomplish this? Well, I needed to take inventory, and I needed to get organized. So I created the ultimate organizational tool - a Google Drive spreadsheet. Setting up the list took time, filling in actual data took even longer, but I think I have it set up in a way that is simple and helpful. The most important thing was that I could clearly show every Pokemon and whether I owned them. After some thought I added Category and Number to the fields.

Number will be helpful in planning out how I’m going to get Pokemon with 3 forms in particular. If I only have the highest form of 3, it might be best to breed 2 of the lowest form and evolve one of them. Category is useful because I can basically break the whole list up by general difficulty of obtaining. Commons and Common Evos are the easiest, Starters and Starter Evos are harder, and Legendaries are the hardest. One early thought I had using these categories was that it would be nice to make sure I have all the Commons I need early on, which would fill out a lot of the bulk. From there it would be evolving and obtaining the more difficult ones.

I had, after finishing White, moved almost everything from all of my Pokemon games all the way up. So I had a head start in my collection. I don’t know the exact number when I started this process, but I think after filling in the spreadsheet I had around 300 of the 649 different Pokemon types. Not bad.

Also something to take into consideration was what games I have available to me. I don’t want to have to buy any more Pokemon games for this if I can help it - I think I've bought more than enough. I currently own copies of:

- Fire Red

- Heart Gold and Soul Silver

- Emerald

- Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum

- White, and a Japanese version of Black

I skipped Black 2 and White 2 because I just didn't feel like playing more Pokemon after White for a while. They also seemed pretty dull in general. Basically, I should have everything I need, its just going to be some amount (probably a lot) of switching between games and trading up to White.

So that’s basically it. I’m early in the process, so I thought I’d take some time to write about how this started, and I plan to have occasional updates when I have anything interesting to say about it. Between starting and getting to what I’ll cover in the next entry (the Legendaries of Emerald), I mostly focused on breeding Pokemon that I had the higher forms of, and not the lower forms. This is an easy way to fill out my collection from what I already have. Stay tuned, as there will be plenty of Pokemon adventures to come - this is going to take a while.