Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a blog post about starting a Pokémon living dex. 12 months on and I’ve made some progress! When I wrote that blog post, I clearly didn’t expect to make much tbf, but some is better than none

Am I underestimating how difficult this challenge is going to be? Probably. Am I going to get distracted by something else in a few weeks time and then forget all about this? Almost definitely. Am I going to have a good time along the way anyway? I bloody well hope so

Well in creating this new website, I thought it’d be a fun opportunity to revisit the Pokédex and, most importantly, break out of my nightmarish Google Sheets

So just to recap, I’m trying to

• Complete an Origin Form Dex
• Complete every National Dex

But what the h*ck does that actually mean? Well an Origin Form Dex is more complex version of a Living Dex. A Living Dex requires storing one of every Pokémon (all 1025 of them) in Pokémon Home (it’s iCloud but for Pokémon). This means storing, for example, Bulbasaur, Ivysaur AND Venusaur, rather than just registering the pre-evolutions and storing the final evolution.

A Form Dex requires storing all form, regional and gender variants for all 1025 Pokémon. That includes both Original and Alolan Geodude, all 28 Unown variants (A-Z and ! and ?), and male and female Gyarados (male has blue whiskers, female has white)

And an Origin dex means catching those Pokémon in the game (or at least the region) that they first appeared in. This means catching a Pikachu in Pokémon Red, Blue or Yellow

As of the time of writing, this means that I’ve got 1394 Pokémon to catch and store in Pokémon Home to complete my Origin Form Dex

And as a separate challenge, just for funsies, I’m trying to complete every National Dex too. This is much more straightforward - it just involves completing the Pokédex in every game. The Pokédex in Pokémon Gold and Silver for example contains 251 Pokémon - 151 from Kanto (generation 1) and 100 from Johto (generation 2). I want to catch all 251.

I’ve been playing Pokémon since I was a kid, but I’ve never actually completed a Pokédex. Now as a grown-ass 33 year old man, it’s probably about time I did