Pokémon GO community day: real life pugging for dratini

Tomorrow Pokémon GO celebrates Bulbasaur Community Day. For the first time I'm actually planning to participate, and that has a lot to do with how much fun I had the last time around, catching dratini.

Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos and Lugia: calculating legendary bird catch rates in Pokémon Go

Last week Pokemon Go's legendary birds (Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos and Lugia) departed to make room for generation 2's legendary dogs Entei, Raikou and Suicune. The past weeks, I've been passionately hunting down these birds with other pokémon enthusiasts in my town - and with success. I now own all legendary birds; of most I even have multiple copies. During this period, I've kept track of the raids I attended and the times I managed to actually catch them. All so I can now calculate how I did. Have I been lucky with catching them, or unlucky? Let's take a look.

Pokémon Go day trip to the Amstelveen Safari Zone

Last weekend was the last opportunity to visit one of Europe's so called Pokémon Go Safari Zones. For three weekends in a row, in various shopping centres that partnered with Niantic, kangaskhan (normally only available in Australia) could be found. In addition, an increased spawn rate of the unknown letters forming E-U-R-O-P-E was in effect in these areas. You didn't have to pay anything in order to participate in the event; you just had to be there and look for those pokémon.

I do love catching myself some cool pokémon. And while I don't usually travel beyond my municipality for pokémon and shopping isn't exactly my greatest hobby, it seemed silly to let the opportunity go. Especially so when I found out that the closest Safari Zone, in Stadshart Amstelveen (the Netherlands), was less than an hour drive away.

I was prepared to spend some time on my own, maybe drop by the Cobra Museum (modern art) if I got bored of the shopping centre, but then I found out my brother and his girlfriend wanted to go as well. So past Saturday, all three of us got in the car early to catch us some pokémon.

Pokémon Go's Halloween event

Although I haven't written about Pokémon Go recently (I haven't been able to write as much as I'd have liked overall), I have been catching pokémon whenever I could. I know the hype has died down a bit, but that's no reason for me to throw in the towel. Catching "wild pokémon" just doesn't get old for me. Despite my relative immobility, I have even managed to catch up to most of my friends - who became less fanatic over time - by sheer obsessing determination.

So when I heard there was going to be a Pokémon Go Halloween event, I was pretty excited... that is, until I realized I would be abroad in Sweden without mobile internet for the full duration of the event.

Playing Pokémon Go when chronically ill

One morning, about one year after I started Ravalation, I fell on the floor and couldn't get up again. It happened a few times that month, and ever since I'm experiencing chronic pain in my legs and extreme fatigue. An MRI scan revealed irreversible brain damage and from that moment onward it was clear my life would never be the same.

I will spare you the details of my journey onward, but for this article it's useful to mention that, as I had to give up most of the things I like doing, gaming suddenly became a more important part of my life than before. Physical activity makes me suffer more when in a lot of pain; gaming, however, requires little of it and creates a positive distraction so I am not aware of it as much. Due to my fatigue, I don't get out to meet people as much as I'd like anymore: I simply don't have the energy to spare. Voice chat allows me to still socialize with people on a regular base. I can definitely say gaming has saved me from isolation, in a way. But what about augmented reality?

If you read Ravalation regularly, you know that I loved the pokémon Game Boy games and that I couldn't wait to start playing Pokémon Go. There is one problem, though: the game revolves around moving around in the real, physical world to find pokémon, and it is necessary to walk distances to let eggs hatch. Because of this, I was a bit worried that I would not be able to enjoy the game. Nevertheless, I had to try. In this post I'll share my experiences of playing Pokémon Go while chronically ill. I am aware that everyone is affected differently by disabilities in some form or another and I definitely do not want to pretend that my story represents that of everyone in a similar situation! However, I could not write about my experience of playing Pokémon Go without mentioning my health: the two are strongly tied together. Thus I hope you'll forgive me that this post will be a bit more personal of nature than usual.

Pokémon, mobile phones and hype resistance

My latest blog post I'm dying to play Pokémon Go mostly got responses from fellow bloggers that said they did not grow up with pokémon and hence didn't understand what all the fuss is about. (I decided to take this as a compliment: I'm obviously young in spirit.) Bhagpuss even wrote a post in response entitled Why I'm Not Playing Pokémon Go (Like I Have To Have A Reason). Spoiler: it's because he doesn't own a phone. To keep up the tradition I'll now reply to him with another post about hypes and, err, phones. (I know, it's not exactly MMOs, but it'll have to do.) This is a lengthy one, so you're warned.

I'm dying to play Pokémon Go

1 April 2014 I geeked out on Ravalation about Google's April Fool's joke of catching pokémon with your phone. You'll have to forgive me for using this drawing I made back then once more. I still can't believe it's reality now!

Like so many, I grew up with Pokémon. I never really liked the TV series (I was a bit too old, I guess), but I dug the Gameboy games. Pokémon Gold was the first game I bought in my life, after jealously watching my younger brother play Pokémon Red; he shared his Gameboy with me and let me train his pokémon sometimes, the sweetheart. I spent months working in the garden and doing all kinds of menial tasks to earn enough money to buy it, but it was so worth it!