davidochart
David Ochart
David Ochart writes things.
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PokéTour Hiatus
Hey there, pals! I need to take a short break from the tour while I move and get settled. I should be back in the swing of things in just a few weeks. Thanks for being awesome!
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PokéTour Project - Week 4?
I’m going to travel the distance of the Pokémon world - and I want you to come with me!
Wait a dang second! What happened to week 3?
Yeah... Remember this? “It also means that I am very near Pewter Gym… I should probably plan for that.”
Well... I didn’t. But for good reason! See, the last few weeks have been CRAZY. I finished up at my dumb old job, had an interview and subsequently got my amazing NEW job (more on that soon), and I’ve been frantically packing and apartment hunting ever since.
Anyway, I finally made time to hike for the Pewter Gym badge last week. Here are some pictures!
This doesn’t look that high up in the picture, but I assure you--it is. Also, it was about 45° that morning, so you can imagine how cold the water was when my foot slipped in.
And here’s a little fun fact! This trail starts right next to the camp where the first act of The Parent Trap was filmed. The one with LINDSAY LOHAN!!!
Unfortunately, the camp isn’t overly fond of grown men entering their grounds uninvited. I can’t imagine why.
Whatever happened to Lindsey Lohan’s twin sister, anyway? I hope she’s alright.
PEWTER BADGE GET!
So with the Pewter City gym out of the way, I was finally able to continue my progress through Kanto.
After pacing around Pewter City for a week, I traveled 30 miles and caught Jigglypuff, Magikarp, Clefairy, Zubat, Geodude, Nirodina, Paras, Butterfree, and Jynx.
Oh, crap... that means I’m only 10 miles away from Cerulean Gym. And I’ll be in San Francisco all weekend for Kinda Funny Live. This is going to be interesting.
Remember, I’ll be updating you all on my journey each Monday. In the meantime, use the hashtag #PokeTour on your preferred social media platform to update everybody else on your progress. Happy touring!
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PokéTour Project - Week 2
I’m going to travel the distance of the Pokémon world - and I want you to come with me!
This week didn’t move the needle too much in terms of PokéTour progress.
Remember that episode of the Pokémon where Brock got all sick and useless? That was me for the first half of last week: hallucinations of Nurse Jenny and all. And then, of course, the Overwatch beta dropped on Thursday… I think I probably moved less in the latter half of the week than I did in the first. I certainly slept a whole lot less. Dudes, lady-dudes--Overwatch is dope as hell. But I digress (for now).
Let’s talk about Pokémon. This week I traveled 17 miles, which means that I walked all of Route 22 and most of Viridian Forest. It also means that I am very near Pewter Gym... I should probably plan for that.
Viridian Forest has always felt like the real beginning of the game to me. I remember playing Red for the first time as a kid in my tree fort and thinking how big and mysterious the whole thing felt. Even though the Gameboy was totally unable to render this kind of subtlety, I imagined beams of light streaming through the canopy and barely illuminating the path. At any moment, I thought, a new Pokémon might jump out and send my weak little team of birds and rodents packing. Now it just looks like black and white gibberish. Don’t grow up, kids.
This week I caught Mankey, Caterpie, Nidoran, Kakuna, and Metapod, and my Pidgey evolved into Pidgeotto! Here’s a little fun fact--the first Pokémon card I ever got was a Japanese Mankey card. Okay, “fun fact” might be a bit strong, but it’s definitely a fact.
I hope to travel a bit further this week, but I also need to plan for that Gym battle. Thank GOD the Overwatch Beta is ending tomorrow…
Remember, I’ll be updating you all on my journey each Monday. In the meantime, use the hashtag #PokeTour on your preferred social media platform to update everybody else on your progress. Happy touring!
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PokéTour Project - Week 1
I’m going to travel the distance of the Pokémon world - and I want you to come with me!
I am not good at making decisions. Not at all. I’m that guy who has the waitress come back two or three times before he knows what kind of pie he’s going to order. Spoiler alert: it’s almost always apple. That’s why, in the weeks leading up to the start of this project, I have agonized over which starter Pokemon to choose. Even as of writing last week’s blog, I wasn’t sure who I was going with.
All of the starters have their pros and cons, but most of those have to do with their utility in battle. And since I don’t have to worry about any of that, it really comes down to one thing: cuteness.
So obviously that means that Bulbasaur is out. He’s cute and all, and so is Ivysaur, but Venusaur is kind of a nightmare.
Charmander is also cute, and Charizard is dope, but there’s something about Charmeleon’s stupid face that I have always hated. It’s like he’s the annoying adolescent evolution. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
So that left me with two choices: Squirtle and Pikachu. And god help me, I chose Pikachu.
Squirtle is one of my favorite Pokemon ever, and I definitely think that he has the best evolutions of the original three, so it was a very close call.
But call me a sucker for brand recognition, Pikachu is my dude. I even named my first (and very short-lived) car, a bright yellow 1973 VW Super Beetle, after him.
So yay me! I have managed to come to one decision that is almost entirely meaningless. I’ll have the rest of the starters on my crew in the next few weeks anyway.
This week I walked, ran and hiked 20.4 miles, which means that I finished Routes 1 and 2, and caught a Pidgey, a Rattata, a Nidoran♀, a Spearow, and a Weedle. All-in-all, not a super active week for me. Here’s a link to my tracker, if you’re curious.
There isn’t much interesting to say about Routes 1 and 2, other than maybe how when I was a kid I thought it was dumb that you had to walk Route 1 four times before you could really start the game. Round young David was against physical movement beyond that which was absolutely necessary,
Oh, and here are some pictures that I took while hiking.
Remember, I’ll be updating you all on my journey each Monday. In the meantime, use the hashtag #PokeTour on your preferred social media platform to update everybody else on your progress.
Happy touring!
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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!
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Late last year I wrote this script for a competition held by Mark Millar’s Millarwold. I didn’t win, but it was a great learning experience. The script is set in the world of the comic book series The Secret Service - AKA Kingsman: The Secret Service.
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