Being a Pokemon Master sure is an exhausting endeavor.
The games and merchandise may be marketed to kids, but make no mistake, this is a lifestyle for grown-ass men and women. Between the competitive battling, unexplained in-game mysteries, and Garbodor just being a tool in general, there’s a myriad of stressors that will make you pull your hair out, and/or pull the hair out of an unfortunate passerby.
Of all of the pressure points, however, none stand quite as tall as the concept of completionism. For more than twenty years, we were instructed to ‘catch ‘em all’ — at least up until Sword and Shield jettisoned the unworthy excess, tasking us instead with the far less marketable ‘catch ‘em some, I guess. Just buy the DLC and go away’.
Hundreds of hours sunk into seeking out that elusive Goomy on a rainy day, or gently coaxing your Golbat to evolve through sheer love (to be boxed thereafter for all eternity). Then, just when you think it couldn’t get any tenser, those damned mythical Pokemon resurface and the fandom is whipped into a frenzy.
Ever since the days of the humble Mew, mythical Pokemon have always been a cut above the rest. The fact that they can’t be obtained through conventional means renders them finite, and if you miss out the first go around, you can never be too sure if and when they’ll ever appear again.
Me personally, I have some serious issues with the notion of an incomplete collection. As I’ve discussed in a previous article, I once spent the majority of a work shift phoning various retailers in pursuit of a coveted Diancie code. It’s one of the many attractive qualities I bring as an employee, and perhaps not coincidentally, I’ve been fired no less than three times in my life.
And yet, I still have lapses every now and then. Despite my best efforts to stay in the loop, I only just found out about the short-lived Zarude promotion that came and went late last year, and once again, my Pokemon assemblage was threatened with imperfection.
Cue that gnawing, uncomfortable feeling, as the grotesque primate leered at me from beyond the void. Expedient trainers could obtain a code from their local retailer, or alternatively, nab the cheeky chimp by signing up for the Pokemon Trainer Club newsletter before the cutoff date of November 20.
Against all logic, my first recourse was to sign up for the newsletter immediately, some 45 days after the deadline. It was a long shot, but I thought maybe they’d throw me a pity code for my efforts. Alas, I received nothing, despite my decades of loyalty.
Zarude of them, wasn’t it?
The next stop was to trawl the internet to see if somebody had worked out a loophole. Those nerds with their computers, they were bound to be good for something, and — jackpot!! — Reddit was rife with helpful suggestions, albeit from mid-December when the promotion was still in progress.
Under the guidance of the world-renowned sage justacc123, I explored the various international options to net a last-minute distribution code. Would Gamestop Ireland prove an unlikely savior, or perhaps its counterparts in Germany and Italy? How about a curious French offshoot called Micromania, or this Swedish website that I think is openly swearing at me?
The idea of a foreign Zarude was even more enticing, and I followed the instructions to sign up for each website with glee. The more I looked at Zarude, the more I had convinced myself that he was indeed European, and as such, ought to be named Andre or Klaus. He’d drink espressos and ride a Piaggio scooter to his day job as a cobbler.
And by night? He’d do my bidding, diligently and without question, fulfilling his life’s ambition to be the plaything of a thirty-something shut-in from the southern hemisphere.
With every registration form I fumbled through in languages I barely speak (you should hear my French, it’s absolument affreux), I was met with further disappointment. The codes, you see, had been swept away quite some time ago, and my only reward would be eventual marketing campaigns for discounted products from countries I’ve never been to.
Honestly, when I get the first Swedish newsletter in my inbox, it’s going to be so damned confusing. The absurdity of that moment practically makes the whole thing worthwhile.
My hopes were dwindling by now. The GTS won’t allow for Zarude to be deposited (and yet it’s still perfectly okay for me to be stockpiling Bulbasaur like a madman), so I couldn’t acquire it via online trade.
The most responsible option was to wait until the next opportunity, whenever that may be. The original Japanese distribution was tied into preordering tickets to the upcoming movie; hopefully, that promotion would come to Australia as well? Surely the other attendees wouldn’t judge me for attending the children’s movie alone, right? I’m not a creep, I just needed a furry friend, you see.
But no. The limits of being a petulant man-child are nigh interminable, and my justification was downright admirable (I want it and I want it NOW). So I did the same as anyone seeking out a boutique animal; I turned to the black market.
Before long, I happened upon a potential suitor on eBay. This one offered not just a Zarude but a shiny Celebi and a pair of Master Balls to boot, all for the low, low price of $8 AUD, the equivalent to about $6.20 in USD.