SBC #54 Pikachu & Pokémon Home

This is (primarily) a videogame blog. But you know what I have noticed in rereading some past articles? I barely ever talk about playing videogames! Nearly all of these essays are written after I am done with a game (whether “done” is seeing the credits roll or giving up after a half hour is immaterial: it is done), have digested some general themes, and then burped out what are essentially “final thoughts” on the matter. In fact, writing one of my signature Goggle Bob ™ essays while actively playing the game has occasionally ended poorly. A last-minute swerve or an extensive postgame can completely change my opinion of a title or its individual mechanics! And maybe I then have to write a whole other article about a game’s ending! I have been at this for ten eleven years now, and I’ve learned that actively writing about a videogame while playing it is a road to ruin.

But maybe we can give it a try with a game that is barely a game.

Pokémon Home is the latest in the world of videogame storage as software/hardware. Did you know Japan had external “memory cards” for the Super Nintendo (Famicom) for people that just had to have ten save files for Final Fantasy 6? Did you know there was Pokémon Box: Ruby & Sapphire, a physical Gamecube disc where the entire game was “put your Gameboy Advance Pokémon here”? Does literally anyone remember My Pokémon Ranch? Basically, all of these… uh… thingys were excuses for the OCD-riddled gamer to never have to worry about losing all their precious Mario Paint creations or a single Mr. Mime.

Pokémon Home was released in February of 2020 for the Nintendo Switch to serve (primarily) Pokémon Sword/Shield, and its uses were myriad. Or… uh… two. Its uses were two. It was the only way to “backup” your Pokémon bounties, because an anti-cheat measure of any Pokémon game is that your traditional save cloud is not allowed. Play Pokémon Sword on your Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite, and you are stuck with using two different save files, champ-in-the-making. Pokémon Home is mandatory to reuse your precious shiny, max IVs Chewtle. Additionally, Pokémon Home was the only way to transfer your Pokémon from the 3DS titles to your Nintendo Switch. This was super important back in 2020, as it was the final bridge to transfer your Pokémon forward from every generation going back to Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire (and you could virtually go earlier with emulated versions on the 3DS Virtual Console). So if you really wanted to see your Mewtwo from Pokémon Fire Red (2004) dynamax, you had to get it a seat on the Pokémon Home train. And there has not been a game since Pokémon (+/- Ultra) Sun/Moon that allowed for every Pokémon! You need Pokémon Home if you have a Furfrou you want to migrate to Pokémon Legends: Z-A!

So what I’m saying is that Pokémon Home is extortion. You are buying it… excuse me… subscribing to it because you must.

Good thing it is only… let me check that renewal email here… $15.99 a year. Wait. It’s been active for six years… I’ve paid like a hundred bucks for this? What the hell!? That’s more than I paid for Mina the Hollower. And that was a modern masterpiece! Bah!

Errr… anyway.

The reason you buy Pokémon Home is storage for your Pokémon. But! They did “gamify” the videogame in a few ways. You are rewarded for banking particular species of Pokémon, groups of Pokémon, and Pokémon from precise games. In fact, when rewards were first offered, I jumped on obtaining a Magearna. That was a prize for having a complete Pokédex through Pokémon Sword/Shield, and I was damn well entitled to it, because I caught every last Pokémon going back to Pokémon Gold/Silver (Red/Blue gets an asterisk for reasons we will cover later). I always knew that one day I would be compensated for going to GameStop in 2018 to get a Zeraora.

But there was a wrinkle to securing that Magerarna. After importing literally every Pokémon I had ever caught into Pokémon Home, my ‘dex was not complete. See, I had only ever caught one Skitty, and then evolved it into a Delcatty. Or maybe I had a bunch of (evolved) Delcatty. Whatever the case, when my whole clutch of Pokémon was transferred, I had no Skitty. I had to go all the way back to Pokémon Ultra Moon to breed one single Skitty, and then transfer it forward. Every Pokédex in every Pokémon game I own is completed! But! Pokémon Home does not “read” the Pokédex, it just looks for what is present in what some trainers call the “Living ‘Dex”. So sometimes you have to go fish out a few more ‘mons for it to count.

So , four years later, I somberly remembered this experience when new “prize” Pokémon were announced.

As of October 2024, you could obtain a shiny Meloetta for completing the Pokédex for Pokémon Violet/Scarlet and its two DLC expansions. Five months later, you could get a Shiny Manaphy for completing the Pokédex of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, and a Shiny Enamorus for doing the same in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. After another month, they released a Shiny Meltan for Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee/Pikachu Pokédex completion, and went all the way back to Pokémon Sword/Shield and its DLC for a Shiny Keldeo. Finally, now nearly two years after all those releases, there is now a Shiny Volcanion available for clearing Pokémon Legends: Z-A.

I did not try for any of these challenges because I knew I would once again have to go through some “find one more Skitty in a game you haven’t touched for years” taurosshit. I could be playing anything else! There are so many other games on my to-do list! Why waste my time with an arbitrary challenge that I technically already completed!?

But, hey, I started playing Pokémon Legends: Z-A after its challenge was announced. So maybe I could see how that works…

We are starting with aiming for that Shiny Volcanion. I played approximately an hour of Pokémon Legends: Z-A immediately at release in the Fall, and then suffered through some kind of executive dysfunction shutdown due to the 1-2 punch of a DLC announcement and an online battle league that was required to acquire unique mega stones/evolutions. Look! I have brain problems! And sometimes knowing “this is going to update for the next six months” means I will wander off and do something else. So I did not play Pokémon Legends: Z-A in earnest until after it got Pokémon Home support the following February. And that’s good! It meant I could transfer in a couple of unique Pokémon from Pokémon Go (and more on that later), and actually give a Shiny Gallade something to do beyond sitting around Home and looking pretty. Also, every time I caught a box full of Pokémon, I could bounce it back and forth to register in Pokémon Home.

As noted earlier, the issue with Pokémon Home’s record keeping is that it is vaguely antithetical to how you normally play a Pokémon game. Going back to the first Pokémon adventure, the point of catching a Caterpie is seeing that in just a few battles, it will earn enough experience points to become a Metapod. But! You may not actually want that to happen when you are trying to satisfy Pokémon Home. You absolutely need to “log” that Caterpie with Pokémon Home first, and only then are you safe to let it evolve. And do not let it become a Butterfree yet! Otherwise you will have to go back and catch a whole new Metapod for the ‘dex checkmark. Does it sound absurd that you must be a slave to Pokémon Home over and over again? Obviously! But you will see what happens when you play without Pokémon Home in parallel later in this journey.

Anywho, we talked about Pokémon Legends: Z-A last month, and the playthrough that inspired that article happened with an eye on Pokémon Home Z-A ‘dex completion. Anything pre-DLC was pretty easy. The biggest hump was that, despite Pokémon Legends: Z-A not being a “dual title” like the main games, there are some Pokémon that will only evolve through trading. I had to get Even Worse Streams‘ own Jeanie on the line for completion with the likes of Slowking or Aromatisse.

My final Pokémon catch was the humble Goomy, as that squirt only appeared during the rain. I already caught an Alpha version of its evolution hours before! But I was apparently palling around Lumiose during a particularly sunny time, so I had to seek out the little dude in the end.

Having completed one Pokédex “the right way”, I then officially activated the DLC for Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Mega Dimension. Mega Dimension is… Well, it is not exactly a rogue-like, but it attempts some rogue-like nonsense that is not seen in the main game. Basically, your gameplay loop is…

1. There are portals to the Hyperspace Dimension forming. Every portal leads to a (relatively) small area that may contain at least three different species of Pokémon to catch, or a series of trainer battles.
2. In order to enter a mega dimension, you must feed an NPC Hoopa a donut. Said donut will boost your levels to match your opponents, and may also confer additional bonuses.
3. To make a donut, you must consult with Ansha, who requires berries (normal finds in most Pokémon games) or Hyperspace Berries (which are unique to Lumiose) as ingredients. Hyperspace Berries are always better for this task than regular berries. Different berries make different donuts, and sometimes you require a donut with a particular “flavor profile” aka distinct berry ingredients.
4. And to obtain those valuable Hyperspace Berries, you must explore the portals, so please head back to step one.

And that is a fun way to create infinite Pokémon content. Unfortunately, Mega Dimension still wants to have a progressive story, and your donuts/portal rewards are restricted to advance with that story. So you run into the progressive rogue-like situation of how you can see this could be easier/more efficient, but all those upgrades are gated behind mandatory progress chokepoints. Basically, you have to play the game “straight” for hours, eventually hit the (DLC) credits, find out that is only like 75% of the way done, and then eventually get to the real end of all that dimension hopping. By about that point, I had obtained a lot of the Mega Dimension ‘dex, but there were still some conspicuous omissions. After completing the last few “story” sidequests, I looked up the solution to where these critters were hiding, and discovered the horrible truth: This is where Pokémon Legends: Z-A becomes work.

This happens in every Pokémon title going back to the very beginning. “Gotta catch ‘em all” and “maybe you will have to trade with some friends” was all well and good in Pokémon Red/Blue, but since that game was released without a breeding feature, Pokémon that were singular with the capability of evolving were all but impossible to obtain. The three starters were an obvious example: you needed a Charmander to trade, not a fully-evolved Charizard. If your trading partner evolved their first Pokémon (and why the heck wouldn’t they?), you were out of luck on ever seeing their “younger” forms. And while you could theoretically game those starters by having someone trade away their babies before creating a new save file, there were sticking points like evolution-choice Eevee (found about 40% of the way through the game), the hitmon duo (obtained around Eevee), or the fossils (chosen early, but revived at about the 80% mark). You basically needed to have someone play through the game in exact analog to you, always making the choices that paralleled yours, except they immediately traded to you every single Pokémon that was valuable. Technically, you could make this mutually beneficial with your swaps, but that would also mean you would have to perfectly time the three-stage evolution starters. Oh, and you would still need a third guy for the Eevee trio.

Or you could just buy two copies of the game, nab a second Gameboy, and trade with yourself. You should be able to hit completion on one copy before you have to accomplish everything on the second copy! Only, like, four-fifths!

To be clear, this was only ever if you wanted to complete-complete these titles. A literal five-year-old could see the credits roll in any given Pokémon title. But to get 100%, to “catch ‘em all,” then you had to go a little mad. Satisfying the motto of the franchise meant you had to go above, beyond, and somewhere out into the stratosphere. Say hi to Deoxys while you’re there!

Later games found new and exciting ways to stretch the final 5% into infinity. The 2nd generation introduced “runners”, so you would spend hours traipsing around the map praying that you would encounter a legendary dog (and that it would not flee immediately). Legendary Pokémon being version exclusive came shortly thereafter, but coordinating a Palkia for a Dialga would be nothing before synchronizing Pokémon that required multiple items to trade-evolve. I love you, Porygon, but you are literally never worth it. That would also be around the time where you had to play through an entire other game to transfer a mythical ‘mon (and, in the case of Pokémon Ranger, this meant absolutely obliterating your DS screen). Even Pokémon Go followed suit on making completion a bear: right at launch, there were four pocket monsters that could only be found in particular, real-world regions, so you would need to travel to Japan, Australia, Europe, and the USA to get the last four on your checklist. Now “regionals” occasionally appear at local events, but some Pokémon (as of this writing, I am talking about Mudbray) only exist at limited-time, location-specific events, so you can only snag those asses a whole eight days out of the year. Pokémon Go is asking you to plan your family vacations around virtual monsters.

Which, of course, I dutifully do. Chicago is nice in the Summer

So what is the taurosshit in our most contemporary Pokémon release? Well, we already reviewed the beats of the main story of Pokémon Legends: Z-A: Mega Dimension. Once that is complete, the last few Pokémon can be obtained through “Hyperspace Research”. Complete a handful of 1–4-star Hyperspace Research tasks, and you will earn enough points to access a special, five-star hyperspace dimension hole. Inside that magic hole, you may find…

1. A battle zone with really powerful trainers (and [theoretically] excellent rewards)
2. A collection of rare Pokémon that only exist in such quantities (or at all) in these 5-star holes. You can catch as many as you can find.
3. A maze of random Pokémon that hides, somewhere in there, exactly one (1) of seven possible Legendary/Mythical Pokémon.

Everything here is simultaneously the absolute worst option/exactly what you want. The battle zone won’t get you any new Pokémon, but it is your best chance of getting one of the amazingly scarce evolution items. An area full of rare Pokémon is awesome, but basing entire species on random chance means you may literally never see a Feebas or Rotom. And the Legendary opportunities are great, but you do have to actually find the Legendary Pokémon, and there is nothing more stressful than dashing around with absolutely no idea where to go while the clock ticks down to zero. You are not given clues to a Pokémon’s location, and there is no hot/cold system or alike. You just have to hope you guess right on matching exactly what the designers were thinking. If you fail, don’t worry, you will get another chance… after completing hundreds more instances of Hyperspace Research.

Hey, did I mention that you are guaranteed a Legendary/Mythical Pokémon chance every time you complete six whole cases of Hyperspace Research? That’s right! Pokémon Legends: Z-A: Mega Dimension has friggin’ mercy/pity mechanics. It’s a gacha! It’s programmed like a goddamned gacha!

So I managed to complete the Mega Dimension Pokédex… with the exception of the seven legendary/mythical Pokémon that can only be obtained through grinding Hyperspace Research. After one “grinding session” between Legendary encounters took about three hours (!), I determined that I would obtain one legendary Pokémon a day, max, and then take a break to do other things. And maybe I would not play at all on some days! Resting is important! So, in addition to life and such, I also took this time off from playing a Pokémon game to play a Pokémon game.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus would be my next completion goal, as I was already most of the way there. When Pokémon Legends: Arceus was first released, there was no promise it would ever interact with any other Pokémon titles, Pokémon Home included. So I completed the Pokédex in Pokémon Legends: Arceus with no outside aid from other sources (and it certainly helps that this is the one Pokémon game that does not require trading in any way). Thus, it should just be a matter of dropping every Pokémon I caught into Pokémon Home and…

Blast. It is the Skitty thing all over again. So I had to hop into the game proper to confirm why I have some missing ‘mons. A few ‘dex entries were just part of my main party, so that was easily rectified. Additionally, there were some critters (like Cascoon in the above screenshot) that were just a matter of evolving something I already had on hand. This then left me with four remaining Pokémon that needed to be caught “fresh”, as I only had their evolved forms, and this title does not include Pokémon breeding.

Two of those were easy. The other two… Well, here is where Pokémon Legends: Arceus is taurosshit. There are “Space-Time Distortions” in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. This serves the plot excuse of explaining why random Pokémon from the future/past can be crawling around in a different time period, and offers the gameplay incentive of adding a little extra randomness to exploring an area. Unfortunately, that randomness comes at a cost: the rules are that a Space-Time Distortion can appear while exploring a particular stage between a minimum of five (real world) minutes, and a maximum of forty minutes. This is potentially a fun surprise while you are accomplishing other tasks around Hisui, but once you are hunting for one particular Pokémon, it means you could spend nearly an hour just waiting for a damn hole in space and time to appear. Then, once you get to the wonder sphere, the Pokémon you are seeking might not even spawn. So reset the clock, and hopefully the next chance won’t take a half hour. This is not nearly as grindy as some nonsense in the other Pokémon titles, but it sure does it feel like a colossal waste of time when all you need is a single Cyndaquil (that you technically already caught three years ago).

I got lucky with the previously mentioned little fire type, but it took over an hour to finally nab one Shieldon. Now actively possessing a full set, I stuck ‘em all in Pokémon Home, fired up the app…

Oh, did I not mention that the Pokémon Home Phone App and Pokémon Home Switch Game have different applications? Like, you cannot check the per-game Pokédex in the Switch version, so you have to use the mobile version? That sure does make some sense!

The Pokémon Legends: Arceus/Hisui Dex is complete!

I also forgot Pokémon Home has a “plot” about Professor Grand Oak completing his Grand Pokédex. I am guessing the last time I saw this character in this game was six years ago.

Thanks, dude. Love the glasses.

So now I have a special, shiny Enamorous. This is the only (non-Pokémon Go) way to grab this critter that premiered-in-and-has-been-relegated-to Pokémon Legends: Arceus.

So back to Pokémon Legends: Z-A. I wound up taking a couple of weeks to earn those final seven Pokémon. I would love to tell you thrilling tales of the various endeavors that happened over my journey to claiming my ultimate prize… but it was mostly just grinding. I got a good little rhythm going by about a third of the way through the process, and from there it may have just been automatic. Aside from swapping in a Heatran for dedicated fire-coverage, my team was consistent all through, and I focused primarily on murdering Rogue Mega Evolutions and rival trainers. The final Pokémon I ensnared was Meloetta. It was a shockingly quick catch.

The best way to illustrate the breadth of this task may be with simple stats. According to Mabel’s Research, since the DLC started, I “investigated Hyperspace” 259 times. So that was 259 runs of that donut loop mentioned earlier. Special evolution items are rarely found during those runs. Theoretically, I did not possess any “special” evolution items before this task started. At completion, I had acquired four Auspicious Armors, four Malicious Armors, twelve Upgrades, fourteen Dubious Discs, fifteen Prism Scales, and eighteen Black Augurites. Also, add one to those tallies, as I had used one of each of those items for evolutions. Speaking of evolutions, I evolved two Gimmighouls into Gholdengo, and still had 848 Gimmighoul coins remaining, so I must have collected 2,846 individual coins. And on the topic of maxing things out, I had 999 Exp Candies in the Large and Extra Large varieties. I had actually used those when this task started! But my Pokémon were all Level 100 for ages, and I literally do not know when I maxed out my candy reserves. And speaking of time involved, according to my in-game counter, I finished the “story” of the DLC at approximately the 65-hour mark, and I saved after catching Meloetta at 95:48. So that was about thirty hours over the course of (let me check my notes) sixteen real-world days.

To momentarily flash my Stockholm Syndrome, I do want to make it clear that the Pokémon franchise has a history as a portable game, and I am very good at multitasking. Whether Pokémon Legends: Z-A was docked or in my lap, this process always included watching a show, listening to a podcast, or sorting through my collection of F-Zero X MP3s. It was not thirty ($%*^ing) hours of begging to see the next legendary. I was doing other things! But, yes, if the whole of the game and its DLC story lasted around sixty hours, then a full third of my time playing Pokémon Legends: Z-A for nearly one hundred hours was dedicated to the task of catching just seven Pokémon.

Oh, I nearly forgot the third pillar of Pokémon Legends: Z-A: the “Mega Dex”. This is technically the final Pokédex in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and it logs all the Mega Pokémon you have obtained over the course of the game. Considering this ‘dex is partially based on items (mega stones) you have in your Z-A inventory, it is 100% verifiable proof that Pokémon Home can just look at your in-game accomplishments, and “copy” the ‘dex completion. If it did that for every other Pokédex, it would save us all sorts of hassles. Whatever! Mega Stones are primarily obtained as part of the plot or purchased through (in-game) stores. Maybe three mega Pokémon appear in sidequests. Obtaining these entries are practically automatic, and do not require the same kind of effort as sussing out a Hisuian Qwilfish. Aside from ZA’s Mega Floette (which is the finale of the pre-DLC postgame), the only hangup on this quest is that you must participate in the online battle royale system to attain the last seven mega stones. I had been putting that off…

It gets a little hectic

But when I tried it, I managed to obtain all the necessary stones inside of three matches. Hooray! I realize that part of this is that those stones were more difficult (or impossible) to obtain in earlier seasons, and I was now playing the game months after the novelty had worn off. But it was nice to experience one part of this process that was easier than expected.

That is everything in Pokémon Legends: Z-A completed, so I win my latest prize. Say hello, Banana Volcanion!

And after all that grinding, I am unlikely to ever play Pokémon Legends: Z-A again. Sorry, sidequests that seem vaguely interesting! I am done forever!

You may notice that that is Pokédex Completion Commemoration No. 6, and the Legends Arceus reward was No. 3. Due to factors that were already mentioned, I was certain that I could complete both of the Legends titles. And now I have! But what about the other four challenges?

The Sinnoh Pokédex of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl is not happening. I purchased Pokémon Brilliant Diamond at release in 2021, played it through somewhere around the first gym, and realized I was not having any fun. It is still a Pokémon game! But it is a Pokémon game based on something I already completed back in 2006, and there simply was not enough “new” about it to keep my interest. Given a Pokémon adventure is not a short affair, I decided to play anything else. I have not missed it. I admit that that Shiny Manaphy is tempting, but I just did enough Pokémon “work”.

… And I will continue to tell myself this as that copy of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond whispers in my ear on cold nights. No, Dialga! I don’t need to find you! I can go without! I swear!

The Kanto Pokédex of Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee is another kettle of fish. I completed Let’s Go Eevee back around its release. I even completed the Pokédex! But I primarily completed that task by importing Pokémon from Pokémon Go, and my lack of Pokémon Home completion indicates that that does not count. I know I imported like 20 Zapdos through Pokémon Let’s Go, but it is still a shadow on my official count.

And I technically could go venture around Kanto and catch the remaining blanks in my ‘dex, but…

This is a review of Pokémon Home, so Let’s talk about Pokémon Go – Pokémon Home connectivity.

Make no mistake: there is a Pokémon economy. There was a time you got one Mewtwo per game, it took 25 hours to obtain, and if you wanted another one, you had to clear your save file and start over from scratch. You might be able to trick the dumb kid in your class into trading you something so incredibly valuable, but odds are that even Smelly Timmy had the wherewithal to hang on to that (literally) legendary Pokémon. By 1999, you could breed a thousand kabutos or totodiles for trading, but you would still only ever have one Ho-Oh.

But things are different in Pokémon Go.

Pokémon Go has seasons, events, and festivals that all feature different Pokémon. Unlike any of the concrete Pokémon titles, you absolutely cannot just play Pokémon Go continuously for one week and catch every single Pokémon available. You will immediately run up against the fact that (for example) Starly is available in abundance this week thanks to the Birds with Big Pecks event, but Hoothoot is not included, so you will have to wait for another day for those spawns. You may get lucky with finding one through a (random) egg hatch, a (random) Team Rocket encounter, or a (random) lure/incense causing one to spawn, but training one up to be a Noctowl would be nearly impossible without catching a dozen or so. There are (… checks my Pokémon Go Pokédex…) a little over 950 Pokémon currently available in Pokémon Go, and, even if you were to travel all over the world in the span of a week to nab those regionals (one only lives in Hawaii!), you would still be stymied by limited releases and the simple fact that Unown spawn in quantities of one (1) per country per day.

And then there are the legendary Pokémon. The cycles have changed over the course of years, but the current schedule seems to be that we get to battle one legendary Pokémon a week. It is here Wednesday to Wednesday (with a featured “Raid Hour” at 6 PM on its premiere day) then Groudon stomps away to another dimension, and we get Azelf for the next week. This cycle repeats seemingly randomly, so while you might expect a “box legendary” to appear opposite its counterpart over the course of two weeks, it is more likely that you will see that specific ‘mon a month later, as this week we are featuring Tapu Fini for no apparent reason. Whatever the cycle, the result is the same: you absolutely cannot instantly get a million of every legendary Pokémon in Pokémon Go.

But during the week when a legendary Pokémon is featured? Well, you might be able to get a million of that legendary. In fact, there are often “raid day” events, where you can see how many Lugia you can catch over the course of three hours. To compare some raw numbers, the absolute fastest speedrun in the world for Pokémon Fire Red is one minute shy of two hours. That process would earn you one Mewtwo. In Pokémon Go, two solid hours of (Mega) Mewtwo raids can net you 13 Mewtwo. And I know this because that’s what I did!

If you are the fastest Pokémon Fire Red player in the world, you can match that bounty in 26 continuous hours. You don’t need to sleep, right?

So there are two conflicting philosophies here:

1. People want to use their Pokémon Go Pokémon in other Pokémon games. It would be so rad to use that Shiny Chandelure in Pokémon Champions!
2. Pokémon Go unbalances the ratio of mundane and legendary Pokémon. There is nothing unique about Mewtwo if someone can assemble a gang of twenty of them in an afternoon.

How is this accommodated? Well, Pokémon Go launched in 2016, Pokémon Home launched in February of 2020, and the solution was released in November of 2020: You can transfer Pokémon Go Pokémon to Pokémon Home, but the number of Pokémon you can transfer at one time is limited. If you want to transfer a bunch of mundane Pokémon, you can transfer approximately thirty at once. If they are shiny (but mundane) Pokémon, you can transfer around 5-6. Legendary Pokémon have about the same value as mundane shinies. And a shiny, legendary Pokémon? That means you only get to transfer one. Whatever you choose, after you run out of transfer energy, you must wait a week for it to replenish, or you can spend real world money to get another transfer going right now. Your choice!

(And, as an immaterial aside, I have no idea who worked out this payment system. You use Pokémon Go Coins to buy additional energy. But those “coins” are exclusively sold [or occasionally gifted] by Niantic [Pokémon Go’s owners when this system was established] or Scopely [current Pokémon Go owners]. It seems wrong that the company that profits from “transfers” is not the company distinctly creating the games you want to transfer these Pokémon to. And since this is coin-based, it would be almost impossible for anyone to track if someone purchased coins for the transfers or any other pay-to-play activity in Pokémon Go. So that rules out some backend split profit situation. From an outsider, “I have no idea how this deal was brokered” perspective, it really seems like the owners of Pokémon Go got the sweetest plum.)

So the end result is that you can get a single beloved Pokémon from Pokémon Go to Pokémon Home quick and easy, but if you want to transfer literally hundreds of Pokémon from the prison that is Pokémon Go, it is going to take months or a mortgage. I currently have…. Let’s see here… a little under 800 Pokémon in Pokémon Go tagged as “transfer to Home”, and I know in my heart of hearts that all those monsters are never going to make it safely to Home’s shores. But! I can transfer like six a week, and, since I continue to play Pokémon in its many forms, I will get more than a few shiny Mareeps transferred in over the weeks and years. I pay my credit card bill on Tuesday mornings, and I transfer a batch of Pokémon into Pokémon Home on Monday mornings. On Friday mornings I get a bagel for being good!

But there are a few Pokémon that can slip through customs…

Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu & Let’s Go, Eevee were the first “mainline” Pokémon titles on the Nintendo Switch, and they were released in 2018. Pokémon Go debuted as a national phenomenon two years earlier, and it is difficult to discern whether the mobile game was supposed to drive people to the Switch game, or vice versa. Whatever the case, there was a planned connection between the two (three) games from day one: if you transferred Pokémon from Pokémon Go to Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee, you would be able to catch the unique Meltan/Melmetal Pokémon in Pokémon Go. And, since Pokémon Go has always had (deliberately) limited space for your monsters, a ‘mon transferred to Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee would have a much longer lifespan hanging around the save files of the Nintendo Switch. And, thanks to eventual Pokémon Home support, you could then transfer ‘em to other games! Get ready to visit Pokémon Sword, Melmetal!

So, to put a point on it: two years before you could directly transfer Pokémon from Pokémon Go to Pokémon Home for a fee of time and/or money, you could transfer Pokémon from Pokémon Go to Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee for free. And this service is still 100% available.

There are a few issues, though. First of all, you are limited to Pokémon that could be found in Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee, so that is the original Kanto 151, plus Meltan/Melmetal (and this does include Alola forms, but not Galar or later). Second, you must complete about 70% of the story of Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee to unlock the “Safari Zone” area where transfers are possible. And third, you must “recatch” any Pokémon that are transferred from Pokémon Go, which means using Pokéballs with a catch rate that is appropriate to your chosen species. A PoGo ‘mon cannot run or be “lost” as part of this process, but they can get pretty feisty. A Level 5 Rattata, shiny or not, is going to get sent to your PC pretty quickly; however, you may spend the rest of your afternoon chucking balls at a Level 40 Moltres.

And Pokéballs ain’t cheap!

I’m gonna need a bigger backpack

Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee is based on the original Pokémon Red/Blue(/Green/Yellow). So it has the same economy: you receive cash from defeating other trainers, and said trainers can only be fought once. If a trainer has been defeated, they will just stand there and say “shorts are comfy and easy to wear!” or other such platitudes for the rest of time. Thus, if you have completed the game, and conquered every trainer in Kanto, then the only income source available at all is repeatedly defeating the Elite Four. And that only provides enough cash to buy another 139 or so Ultra Balls. Want to know how I know that number immediately? Go ahead, ask. It might be because I have robbed the Elite Four dozens of times for more Pokéball money!

So, yeah, I have “beaten” Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee more times than I care to admit so I could fund my desperate need to import Pokémon from Pokémon Go. Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee has been floating in and out of my Nintendo Switch (and Nintendo Switch 2) for eight years now, and I really do not want to consider how much time I have inadvertently spent on this one.

I tried to give it a shot. There is no breeding in Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee, so any incomplete entries are going to require a new catch. I sought a Pinsir, which has a 1% spawn rate on two routes. After a half hour of nothing, I used a special lure to attract “rare” Pokémon. You know what showed up? Not a Pinsir, but a legendary Articuno! I had to catch that! Except that task wound up wasting about 35 Ultra Balls.

So I got something rare and valuable, but it put me that much closer to another mind-numbing Elite Four run. And I still didn’t have a Pinsir! So after having played this game for years, I am not going to do extra Elite Four pilfering on top of everything else just so I can have the cash on hand to catch a “natural” Poliwag. I will save my Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee time for Mewtwo transfers.

And besides, I already have five shiny Melmetal.

So that leaves us Pokémon Violet (/Scarlet) and Pokémon Sword (/Shield). Will I complete those challenges? Well, to see if it is possible, I am going to hop over to Pokémon Violet.

Here is the “work” of Pokemon Violet/Scarlet. The final DLC introduced Blueberry Academy, which features the League Club. The League Club runs on points earned from Blueberry Quests. For instance, you might get 20 BP for catching one (distinct, but randomly determined) Pokémon. You can then use BP for cosmetic options or adding starter Pokémon to different biomes. Trainer cosmetics cost around 150 BP. Designs for rooms are around 400 BP. Adding Pokémon to an area costs 3,000 BP. There are four different areas that can be expanded, so you are looking at 12,000 BP total to earn all the Blueberry Academy Pokémon expansions. The most any singular quest will ever reward is 150 BP.

So I took one look at the math required to get a damned Sobble (which you still have to actually catch after all the business of unlocking the opportunity), and I said “nope!” on my initial, 95-hour playthrough of Pokémon Violet. However, I have already proven that I will commit to that level of labor for a shiny Mythical Pokémon, so let’s investigate what can be done…

Here is my hypothesis: I can ignore all that Blueberry nonsense, and make new starter Pokémon. I have, at one time or another, caught all of these Pokémon, and they are living in my Pokémon Home. So I am going to take out a… what do I still need here… a Chesnaught initially caught in Pokémon Go, drop it into Pokémon Violet, and then go on a picnic with a Ditto.

If you are unaware, this is where babies come from in Pokémon Violet. After eating a jam sandwich, three eggs appeared (sex is so confusing in this universe). I walked along, hatched those eggs…

And now I have three Chespin born in Pokémon Violet. I fed two of them enough XP Candies to immediately evolve, and that creates the whole evolutionary line. Drop that trio back into Pokémon Home and…

Success! It counts! Even if the parents came from a different game, hatching a species counts as a Pokémon Violet-based catch. That means that the vast majority of my blanks can be filled by excessive picnicking. So I am at…

I know that, unlike in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, there is some overlap between Pokédexs here, so there are not quite as many Pokémon to find as it appears… but this is definitely going to take a hot minute. And, as a solemn reminder, if I had had the capability of interacting with Pokémon Home when the I was first completing these Pokédexs, or if there was some “game scanning” that confirmed I did catch a Hoppip in Pokémon Violet a few years back, that would save a lot of time. But nope! Let’s get into the breeding grind and see how that goes.

I already had about 96 hours on my Pokémon Violet timer at the start of this particular adventure, so I was able to log that the first third of this journey was easy and only took about… five hours? Huh. That seems longer than I would expect. Regardless! The official (limited to) Paldea ‘dex had all the difficult or time-intensive Pokémon completed back when Pokémon Home was not available, so this was almost entirely baby and “middle” evolutions. Can you believe I had every Eevee-lution registered, but not the original little dude? And no Bruxish! Because I hate that guy! Must have traded mine away to go menace an orphanage or something.

Next up was the Kitakami Pokédex. This was the first wave of Pokémon Violet/Scarlet DLC, and I distinctly remember utilizing earlier ‘mons to fill in some entries. As a result, I had to breed out the whole Poliwag family, apply items to creatures like Gligar, and fish out a baby Goodra (again!). So there was a greater percentage of blank spots on this one, but less Pokémon to find overall (based on the proviso in the next sentence), thus this bit only took about two and a half hours. Though I technically did not completely finish it all before moving on, as I piled up all my trade-to-evolve Pokémon (like Feebas. Again!) for part three…

The Blueberry Pokédex is goddamned miserable. On one hand, at this point, I had a pretty good rhythm going with egg hatching and leveling up. I knew exactly where to picnic, what sandwiches to eat for egg power, and then exactly where to stalk around Area Zero so I could utilize my Iron Valiant to harvest every critter for the most EXP gains. Honestly, I probably would have knocked at least an hour off the clock in the first portion if I had the same tempo from the start. Unfortunately, the flipside of that is that the Blueberry ‘dex is expansive, and I had the smallest percentage complete to start (86% vs 70.5% vs Blueberry’s 60%). Additionally, damn near everything I was distinctly missing had some extra task involved. Alolan/Galarian Pokémon required everstones for breeding their regional forms. Evolution items were a recurring issue. Fuggin’ Porygon (again!). And, as previously mentioned above, I needed an example of every single starter Pokémon, and each of its three phases of evolution. Every generation has three starter Pokémon, and there are nine generations of starters! That’s 81 Pokémon right there! I already had nine registered from the Paldea section, so only 72 to go!

So, all told, this section took about seven hours. And it wasn’t even entirely on Pokémon Violet! I hopped back over to Pokémon Legends: Z-A, because I had extra evolution items for Scyther (to Kleavor) and Galarian Slowpoke (to Slowbro and Slowking). Those evolutions went smoothly, but because Pokémon Legends: Z-A counts as a new generation (or some such distinction), any Pokémon that travel to Z-A cannot return to earlier Pokémon games. That does not matter to Pokédex completion, though! A Scyther born in Pokémon Violet and evolved in Pokémon Legends: Z-A is forbidden from ever going back to Paldea, but it counts for the Pokémon Home’s Pokémon Violet Pokédex. It’s weird!

I could theoretically do this for a few of the “trade requirements” that Pokemon Legends: Arceus subverts with items, but I have to trade some Pokémon that are outside that Pokédex, so I may as well trade ‘em all…

So after trading with Jeanie (on a whole different game from last time), I completed all of Paldea’s challenges. I guarantee it would have taken longer if I did all that Blueberry “work” for getting the different biomes, but this was otherwise kind of… zen? Like, it took hours, but it was hours I was listening through the Splatoon 3 soundtrack, so it was just “nose to the grindstone” general videogame work. Totaling up the 15 hours involved… Well, that seems like a lot of time, but it was effectively a “long weekend” of gaming. I have invoices that confirm I have spent longer on more pointless tasks.

He should, like, get a new watch with every accomplishment or something.

Shiny Meloetta can now sing my praises.

So how about Pokémon Sword? I would expect this process to look a lot like Pokémon Violet, but there are a handful of differences. First of all, unlike Pokémon Violet and the fact that I still consider that game “active”, my boxes from Pokémon Sword look like there was a Poképocalypse.

I transferred nearly everybody from Pokémon Sword to Pokémon Home back in the day, so all we have left are a few Galarian Slowpoke, my theft Pokémon, my battlin’ Pokémon, my incubating Pokémon, two Eevee, some apples, ice cream, a washing machine, and a Ditto. Time to migrate some Pokémon back for breeding!

Pokémon Sword/Shield has the old hatching method of relying on daycares, so no more picnicking for me. This significantly changes my “flow” from Pokémon Violet, as forsaking sitting around with sandwiches for pedaling back and forth to see if an egg has even been produced is time that could be spent hatching the eggs already available. So we will get some steps in with completely random species!

Also, unlike Pokémon Violet, I literally do not remember the most conducive place to earn experience in Pokémon Sword. These monsters are just being fed from my copious EXP Candy reserves. I am mostly missing “middle” forms, so one EXP Candy L is all it takes with “normal” Pokémon. We will see how that goes with some of the later ‘mons.

That is just a matter of grinding, so let’s look at the more interesting weirdos. Silvally is a Legendary Pokémon that was created by nefarious means in Alola, and that data was stolen over to Galar. More important than its backstory is that it evolves from Type:Null, and you only ever get one Type:Null for completing story mode. I likely evolved that Type:Null seven years ago, so my only hope for another Type:Null is either to reset my save file and beat the game again, or trade for it. To the Global Trade Service!

Pokémon Home Mobile (but not Pokémon Home Switch) grants access to the Global Trade Service. On paper, this is very straightforward: you offer a Pokémon, and tell the world what you would like. You walk away, and someone out there sees what you are presenting, and then trades it for whatever you requested. Easy peasy. Unfortunately, if you are looking for anything specific, there are some issues (that have never been corrected in six years):

1. You cannot trade for Mythical Pokémon at all. This distinctly means that filling in those last two slots in Pokémon Legends: Z-A would have been impossible through trades.
2. You can denote that you are looking for trade requests that are not for (always rare) Legendary Pokémon. This technically weeds out the millions of Jerk Trainers that are sticking a Magikarp on there for a Mewtwo. But the whole “Legendary” designation does not apply to Pokémon that are effectively Legendary/equally rare. AZ’s Eternal Flower Floette or the singlular Bloodmoon Ursaluna are technically more difficult to obtain than their game’s Legendary Pokémon, but here they are continually being requested as a trade for an Applin.

To be absolutely clear, Applin are as common as apples
3. And important for today’s (weeks-long) task, you can see the origin-game of a Pokémon when you are looking at the Pokémon of others, and you can request to find a Pokémon that can travel to particular games, but you cannot distinctly search for a particular Pokémon from a particular game. “I want a Terrakion that can transfer to Pokémon Legends: Z-A” is just as likely to get you something from Pokémon Legends: Z-A as Pokémon Go. And only one of those options will positively impact your Pokédex.

So the fact that I have literally decades’ worth of Pokémon available to trade is not the shortcut I might hope for, because fishing out a certain Pokémon is just as much of a random crapshoot as those Hyper Dimension portals that cost me thirty hours of my life.

All the same, I have a pile of shiny Pokémon thanks to that Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee transfer, and I do not have any other options in this case. So I can just keep spinning this wheel until I get it to land on black.

Don’t worry, I have a lot of Shiny Machamps from PoGo

I offered three shiny Kanto Pokémon for trade, and I got two (out of three) Type:Null that fit the criteria that I need. Hooray! I am certain that Type:Null not being available in Pokémon Go has helped my cause at this moment, but whatever gets me to 66% odds makes me happy.

The legendary Kubfu of the Isle of Armor has a similar “you only get one, then it evolves” issue that could have thwarted my progress, but I did account for that back when that DLC was new. In fact, I similarly accounted for trading for extra Type:Null back in the Pokémon Sun/Moon days, I just never bothered to get an extra Type:Null that was distinctly from this game. Live and learn. It also looks like the Cosmog (a Legendary with three stages of evolution, one branching) and Poipole (an Ultra Beast with two stages of evolution) that are found in the Crown Tundra DLC are not part of the Crown Tundra Pokédex. Small favors!

And beyond Type:Null? Let’s see what was left here… I apparently did not have a Dhelmise, Klefki, Emolga, or (BEAT’s favorite) Relincanth with Sword/Shield designation by the time Pokémon Home was available. They were properly registered in my in-game Pokédex, though, so I have to wonder when I traded away a single keychain Pokémon. Goomy was required for the third game in a row, and I once again tossed some Galarian Slowpoke over to Pokémon Legends: Z-A for easy evolution item usage. I was reminded of the weird fact that Nidoqueen is apparently infertile, and Nidoking is the only Nidoroyalty that can produce offspring. And speaking of distinct breeding issues, Azumaril was the only time in this whole process where I needed an incense item to produce a “special” baby Pokémon. Oh, and I used way more Exp Candies than I would like on all the Fossil Pokémon (like Kabuto) that evolve at level 40(ish), as well as the pseudo-legendaries (like Dragonite) that stalk around the Crown Tundra. I still never ran out of EXP candies, I just wound up using 200 or so. It feels wasteful.

After all that, it was a matter of ringing Jeanie yet again, and trading some nonsense. Karrablast and Shelmet were new to this process, but I once again had to trade the likes of Seadra, Electivire, Magmortar, and Machamp. And Porygon! I am so goddamned tired of seeing you, Porygon! I never want to have to fish a Dubious Disc out of a remote island again!

For anyone curious on numbers, I started this process at 109:30, and wrapped the first third at 111:30. 114:06 saw completion of the Isle of Armor, and then we got to the end of Crown Tundra at 116:42. All told, a little over 7 hours to see Pokémon Sword/Shield ultimate completion.

Sorta.

I really thought I had completed all “story content” across every Pokémon game I had played going back to 1998. But I discovered that I had skipped Sonia’s task of collecting the Swords of Justice around the Crown Tundra in Pokémon Sword. I know why I would have skipped this: it is a vaguely annoying task, and I already had a full set of Swords of Justice from Pokémon Black/White, Pokémon Black/White 2, and Pokémon Go. And I don’t even like those three musketeers much anyway! But now I needed this gang of three to distinctly register as Pokémon Sword/Shield catches, so I was off to complete one last task…

There are footprints (vaguely) randomly generated across the Crown Tundra. Each footprint counts as 2% of your special research, so you need to find 50 footprints of the three different pocket monsters. So 150 footprints. Find a whole set of fifty, and you can battle/capture the related Pokémon.

It was rather pleasant to close out this whole journey with some old school Pokémon catching. I imported a Gallade with False Swipe, and a Magnezone with Thunder Wave (paralyze). Catching Cobalion happened almost immediately, but my final catch, Virizion took a few more balls. I maintain that Pokémon needs to figure out a better system than “random gambling” for catching Pokémon.

It was not necessary for Pokédex completion, but catching those three Legendary Pokémon grants access to the Mythical Pokémon, Keldeo. May as well get one of those, too! This “battle” took a full half hour of just chucking Ultra Balls until the dang thing was mine. That well and truly demolished my happy, nostalgic vibes of playing an earlier Pokémon title. Goodbye forever, Pokémon Sword!

The plot excuse for this adventure is that Sonia migrated to the Crown Tundra on a hunch, and then relied on “me” to find these Legendary Pokémon that she suspected might be running around. So I choose to believe that Sonia rented this little house in Freezington in October of 2020 (when the DLC was released), told my avatar about the “legendary footprints” that needed to be investigated, and then lived there until 2026 when I finally completed the task. And then Sonia went home. Good thing she brought her pet!

So, with the futzing around for those Legendary Pokémon (which may have required a little reacclimating to how Pokémon Sword “works” beyond the scope of hatching eggs), my final count on the clock was 119:00. And I could still be doing more in Pokémon Sword! The “work” that was introduced with its final DLC was called “Dynamax Adventures”, and it was a weird little dungeon crawl-y thing that involved cooperating with online randos. It offered cool items (like Ability Capsules and Beast Balls), but, more importantly, you could catch nearly every Legendary Pokémon and Ultra Beast in the franchise’s history. The only drawback was that it was completely random, and you were pretty much 100% reliant on the kindness/aptitude of strangers. And good luck with that! Arceus knows that the dynamax raid AI was not going to help you one iota. Luckily, none of the Dynamax Adventure Pokémon are required for Pokédex completing in-game or in-Home, so I do not have to look back on that nonsense.

… Though, considering Pokémon Go’s stinginess, it is the only way to rack up multiple Zygarde…

No, no. I should be content with the Zygarde I have…

But while we are looking at Pokémon Home, it is time to cash in.

Come on over, Grand Oak.

“One step closer” forever because they will keep making Pokémon games.

I almost feel bad for you.

But I have my prize, so we do not need to dwell on it.

Hey, I technically wound up with two Keldeo thanks to this whole process. Neat!

And that is everything. We assessed every game that can funnel into Pokémon Home, and I have completed the challenges I sought to complete. I have my shiny prizes. Pokémon Home done.

Hmph. Now I guess I am going to produce some kind of “final thought” anyway…

I am looking back at the numbers. About ten hours in Pokémon Sword. Fifteen for Pokémon Violet. A meager couple of hours in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, but about thirty for Pokémon Legends: Z-A. All told, that tallies to about 57 hours over the course of a month. Coincidentally, that is nearly exactly the amount of time I spent on the main campaign/story of Pokémon Legends: Z-A (with DLC). I literally played to complete the challenges of Pokémon Home for the same amount of time as a “real” Pokémon game.

As stated repeatedly, it was “work”. But it was “work” playing Pokémon. And I like playing Pokémon! I can hardly believe I am typing this after all of that, but I enjoyed doing this. There were unmistakably places where this whole process could be better, or somehow more fulfilling than “okay go do this task over and over again for hours”, but it was still entertaining. These are good games! I reexperienced a lot of terrific games that I might never have touched again, and it was all to satisfy an arbitrary checklist in Pokémon Home. And I’d do it again! God help me, I’d do it again. Yes, it was grinding, but grinding in good games is better than wasting your time on bad games. And I have played a lot of bad games! I am as surprised as anyone, but setting this goal and accomplishing it was unequivocally engaging.

It is a shame there are no more challenges left to complete. Now I really have a good groove for this whole Pokémon Home thing. Starting a game “from scratch” with a distinct eye on completing its Home ‘dex would be an interesting experiment. I suppose I could even…

No, I already said I wouldn’t! Sure, I just have to run around with some on-screen encounters and not even worry about reducing HP or status effects or…

Dammit. But at least that was only like an evening of playing a game I already beat. Not like it is a complete…

Ack. Son of a Beedrill…

23 hours later…

There! All done!

… Why the heck did that entire game take less time than ZA’s DLC?

No matter. See you in October when Pokémon Fire Red/Leaf Green gets Pokémon Home support, Professor Grand Oak!

SBC #54 Pikachu & Pokémon Home

Pikachu in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

• They any Good? Pikachu is and has always been a monster. And that’s great! They are fast, can do a lot of damage in swift little combos, and, when necessary, bring the thunder. Oh! And Quick Attack! Their ridiculous little lightspeed recovery! Man, everybody loves Pikachu.
• That final smash work? Volt Tackle is one of those “dash, hit, and then batter whoever you hit” affairs. Aside from being as light as a feather (but not as light as Pichu), this is Pikachu’s worst trait.
• The background work? Saffron City is the original Pokémon stage, so that is the only place for Pikachu. This one has a weird layout, and Pokémon rooftop travel would not be a thing until Pokémon Legends Z-A, but I cannot get mad at a stage where a low-resolution Chansey can start chucking eggs. Now bring back PokéFloats!
• Classic Mode: I choose you! is like if Smash Bros. only featured Pokémon. So there is a little variety with multiple Jigglypuff and the Pichu twins, but it is mostly just fighting Pokémon in Pokédex order. That… feels appropriate for today.
• First Appearance: Ah yes, back in Pikachu’s younger, chunky days. Pikachu is the best rodent on the N64 roster, bar none. It is shocking how easily you can win with this mouse. Get it? Shocking? Oh, I kill me. Just like Pikachu is going to kill everybody else. I suppose the only other interesting thing about OG Pikachu is that they have not changed much over the years. Link is not even the same guy anymore, but Pikachu will always be Pikachu.
• Smash Trivia: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate acknowledges Detective Pikachu with a sticker, but only luchador Pikachu Libre is available as an alternate costume. Pikachu is allowed all sorts of hats that have nothing to do with anything! Let the guy drink some coffee!

• Amiibo Corner: Pikachu’s Amiibo is extremely basic… but that’s Pikachu. He is just a yellow blob (I can say “he” for the Amiibo, that is distinctly a male tail). The ears are not exactly symmetrical (complimentary), and the expression is alright, but that’s about all I got for basic Pikachu. Detective Pikachu is double Amiibo size, and has a base that displays a town map (complete with coffee shop). Also, he has extremely intricate detailing on the trademark cap. So good job on improving on a classic rat.
• Does Smash Bros Remember Today’s Game? Here is my secret hot take: Pokémon in Smash Bros. was Fire Emblem in Smash Bros. before we even got to Melee. You had all the Nintendo mainstays that went back to the Nintendo Entertainment System… and Pikachu. This told gamers in 1999 that Pokémon was not just the latest fad, and Pikachu was as important as Fox McCloud and Kirby. Super Smash Bros. established Pokémon as a real franchise, and not just something for kids with Gameboys. And since Pokémon Home is all about every last Pokémon, we are going to claim that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate recognizes it as the most important game to ever exist. Yeah… that’s the ticket…

Pikachu in Pokémon Home

• System: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and “Mobile”. Note that the Mobile version is a completely different experience from the Switch version, but they both must be tied to the same account/”bank”. Like, imagine if Mario Kart had two different “versions” across platforms, but you could only choose your kart on the Mobile version, and then race on the Switch version. It’s that stupid.
• Number of players: The Global Trade System allows you to trade with anyone on Earth! But you are only playing this one by yourself.
• So, you going to talk about Pokémon Brilliant Diamond? This article is already long enough, and the fun thing about the Sinnoh Dex is that it only covers the pre-credits portion of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, and not the postgame. So I’m still playing it! I’ll cover it later! Probably!
• Not All Monsters are Created Equal: The Pokémon Sword/Shield ‘dex requirements do not include the extra Legendary Pokémon that are available in its Dynamax Adventures, nor does it include some of the “random” acquisitions in the DLC like Cosmog. The Pokémon Violet/Scarlet ‘dex does not include the many Legendary Pokémon that can be acquired through the Snacksworth Quests (which is a whole other kind of grinding I am not getting into today), nor some Mythical Pokémon like Meloetta (which you get for just spinning in a circle). The Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl ‘dex is just the “Sinnoh” section of the game before you acquire the National Pokédex, and that does not even include Pokémon Platinum’s box Legendary Pokémon, Giratina. But, for whatever reason, the two Pokémon Legends titles require every Pokémon you can find in their entire games, Mythical and Legendary Pokémon alike. So… uh… good luck?
• Personal Hangups: In reviewing my experience here, I am struck by how much I hate trading Pokémon. It’s easy! I was never stuck on a trading task because I have friends who share my interests (hi again, Jeanie!), but I always think of trading as “the hard part” of completing the Pokédex. Maybe it is because I am an only child, and if I cannot complete a task alone at 3 AM, then what is the point? Whatever the case, I support Pokémon Legends: Arceus, as that was the only game on this list that did not require any trading at all.
• Favorite Pokémon of all time: I could probably write an entire other article about these guys, but there was meme format floating around a little while back, so I am just going to post that:
  

  I do not have all day to talk about Pokémon! I swear!

• Moving Forward: It was not mentioned (much) in this article, but despite Pokémon Home’s ostensible purpose of allowing your Pokémon to travel freely between games, there is definitely a hierarchy of which games become one-way gates that prevent Pokémon from going to earlier titles. Pokémon Go can only transfer Pokémon to Pokémon Home, and can never receive Pokémon. Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee can only receive Pokémon from a pool that predates Pokémon Sword. Anything prior to 2025’s Pokémon Legends: Z-A cannot receive anything that has touched that game or Pokémon Champions. In short, listen to those continual warning messages, or your favorite Hypno will never be able to visit Paldea again.
• So, did you complete all these challenges now because you were afraid of Pokémon not being able to backtrack after Pokémon Wind/Waves? Brother, that game is releasing in 2027. There is no way I am looking forward enough to account for Pokémon a year in the future.
• Did you know? When you trade Pokémon over the Global Trade Service in Pokémon Home, it will not evolve Pokémon that would naturally evolve through trading. I’m not mad, just disappointed.
• Would I play again: Wait… is the question here, “Will I ever use Pokémon Home again?” or is it, “Will I ever complete seven different Pokémon games in an effort to produce ‘easy content’ that accidentally becomes a 10,000 word oral history of the last ten years of Pokémon games?” … The answer is “yes” regardless, but I just want to know the parameters.

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Robocop! No more monsters! Only men! Who are robots! Please look forward to it!