Adventures With My Pokewalker

I went for a walk today to commemorate the nicest weather we've had this year. Tomorrow is looking, as I check the weather forecast, like a nice follow up. Today was a little different than my usual long walks, its path was as winding and downright arbitrary as usual; my feet guide the way. Uphill, downhill; it makes no difference, although I do enjoy the feeling in my calves as I tackle a long uphill climb. I've become a bit obsessed with fitness and the like; ever since I lost a ton of weight (from a combination of what I'll dub getting up off my ass and...*gasp*...eating healthy) I've been trying to stay that way. Building muscle, however slowly I may do it at times, is all the extra weight I want. I'm a healthy 120 pounds (for my height, this is a near ideal weight) and I don't wanna change that too much.

To get to some sort of point, I'm going to mention that as a younger kid; I loved the Pokemon games. You're probably the same way, those damn things seemed to be the crux of the childhood existence where I came from. And to this day, I still find the games enjoyable. Nintendo recently released the new remakes of Gold and Silver (the 2nd generation games which were on the GameBoy Color) for the DS here in North America, and being that that generation was truly my favorite regarding the series ongoing evolution, I felt obligated to pick up a copy. It hasn't disappointed so far. Nintendo, for all their faults, is great at cashing in on our nostalgia. Almost a bit too good at it, it seems to be their motif as of late. Whatever, I'm not here to get into a pissing contest with myself over my opinion of Nintendo.

The new games, Heart Gold and Soul Silver, come packaged with a mysterious little device called a "Pokewalker". It kind of looks like an old Tamagotchi (ironically enough game about virtual pets). It functions as a pedometer, which is novel as hell. I decided to take a very shitty and blurry picture of it, but in lieu of the snapshot of mine being completely awful, I decided to steal a picture of it off the GIS, just for the sake of having a reference. It is located, in case you're a complete idiot; at the top of this article.

Before setting out on a walk with the Pokewalker, you can transfer one of the Pokemon on your cart to it, allowing them to take a "walk" with you. So, I snapped it to the waist of my jeans and set off, iPod blasting my favorite music. Every once in a while, I'd take a look at the Pokewalker, as you walk, you gain your Pokemon sitting in it experience points (although not many!) and "watts"; which allow you to play one of two small minigames on the device itself. One game lets you look for Pokemon on the virtual trail you assign the pedometer (basically the area in which your Pokemon is "walking") and the other lets you find items. Two basic concepts, fairly novel in themselves but they feel as if they were necessary. The Pokewalker is interesting.

So, this afternoon with the Pokewalker clipped to my jeans; I walked 15056 steps. A quick search shows that a healthy amount of steps to take in the run of one day, if you're interested enough to make walking actual exercise is roughly 10000. So, in the span of about two hours (the uphill portion of my trek slowed me...D:) I probably did my body some good. Go me!

It's no surprise that in these new games your Pokemon are actually capable of walking with you. Walking, if you didn't hear, is the new big thing in the world. Japanese people are especially fond of it; they're also fond of smoking a ton of cigarettes. With the popularity of Pokemon games in Japan and the popularity of walking, smoking, and living ninety plus years ever increasing; don't be surprised that in the fifth generation of the games; we'll no longer be a child, but a semi-successful, early thirties male wearing a nice suit and smoking enough to keep his head swimming all day long.

It's a progressive kind of synthesis between us and our video games, the Pokewalker. We are supposed to be the "hero" in the Pokemon games; we're not guiding an avatar through a narrative. That guy (or girl) on screen, with his six Pokemon (and dozens more in storage) is us. He's running around with his Pokemon, and now, so are we. The gap between us and our player character has drawn a bit thinner. I remember that Diamond and Pearl had an in-game pedometer...evolution is scary, sometimes.

I'm gonna keep using the Pokewalker for a while, too. It functions as a regular pedometer; you don't even need to put a Pokemon on it for it to function. I think this is a good hint that Nintendo thinks we should get out and exercise a bit more; and they know we're more likely to do it if there's a reward at stake. Man, the human race is pretty selfish sometimes! More importantly, the likes of us are probably incredibly lazy, too. I say drop whatever you're doing and go for a nice long walk!