Playing to Lose with Pikachu

How I learned to stop worrying and love the pedometer
By Chris Mikesell

“Is 3000 steps enough to get a Munchlax?”
“No, you have to walk 8,000. Ten-thousand if your pokèmon is the wrong type.”

March 14, 2010 marked the beginning of the latest chapter of the Pokèmon game franchise’s fanaticism: the “HeartGold” and “SoulSilver” editions.

My inner 12-year-old is enraptured with each new edition – but my outer 26-year-old doesn’t mind the maelstrom of consumerism, cockfighting, and morality that Pokèmon is and has been to this day.

Don’t laugh. Pokèmon games have sold over 200 million copies combined over the past 14 years. They must be doing something right.



The people at Nintendo – manufacturers of the Nintendo DS game system and all-around overlords of all things Pokèmon – have been pushing out pedometer-like Pokèmon accessories ever since the series’ third American installment, but past iterations failed to address one specific issue.

Previous Pokèmon pedometers were clicktastic “shaker” devices, with loud accelerometers that snapped audibly when moved up and down in a rhythmic motion while comfortably seated.

Then came the Pokèwalker.

“Dude, you can put pokèmon on this thing!”

“No way!”

“Yes wayyyy!”

No doubt it’s a miracle of modern science. But what was more miraculous was that harvesting steps from your chair no longer worked.

Shake. Shake. No click. No tactile feedback, no nothing. My strategy of efficient – the preferred, politically correct term for lazy – step-gathering was a failure.

A quick search on YouTube delivered only 617 videos on how to “cheat” the Pokèwalker, and all of them were quite labor intensive. Lego robots. Contraptions with washing machines and duct tape. Repurposed electric fans.

All of a sudden the lazy route seemed like it took a lot of work. It’s not like I was trying to lose weight. I was just trying to get a Munchlax.

It’s impossible to avoid trying to “catch ‘em all,” even in the microcosmic world of the Pokèwalker. There’s some Pokèmon you can only get by Pokèwalking, and naturally all the cool ones are on the hardest routes to unlock.

According to game guides, it takes close to 1000 miles of walking to unlock everything on the device, and players sometimes have to walk 10,000 steps per day just to get the good stuff to appear.

At midnight, the counter resets, and there have been times at 12:01 a.m. when I’ve filled my bedroom with words my 12-year-old self would never have used.

Now, I might be playing a game marketed to people half my age, but I’m not just some random fluke. According to a 2007 review of 26 studies on pedometer use from the American Medical Association, it was found that people who used pedometers increased their physical activity by almost 2500 steps a day.

That same study also said that people with specific step goals – like, for instance, trying to walk 10,000 steps a day – would be much more likely to increase their activity levels than people who didn’t.

Though I finally found my Munchlax five months and 513,263 steps after I got the game, I feel like I lost something along the way.

But I’m not in any hurry to get those 25 pounds back.