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Nick Johnson in Wan Chai on Tuesday. Photo: Sam Tsang

Pokemon master arrives in Hong Kong on worldwide quest to complete his collection

Nick Johnson catches Farfetch’d in city hours before his flight to Australia

Pokemon Go
Nick Johnson, the man who claims to be the first person in the world to catch all Pokemon ­available in the US on the hit ­mobile game Pokemon Go, made a stop in Hong Kong on his global quest to “catch ‘em all”.

There are 151 Pokemon in the game, and Johnson caught 142 types available in the US just two weeks after the game’s launch on July 6.

Pokemon Go encourages ­players to find and capture virtual creatures by going to real locations. It also has four regional-exclusive Pokemon and five ­legendary ones that have yet to appear.

 

Last week, Johnson, the 28-year-old head of mobile start-up Applico, embarked on a journey across the globe to capture the three remaining regional-exclusive Pokemon: Mr Mime in ­Europe, Farfetch’d in Asia, and Kangaskhan in Australia as well as New Zealand. Tauros, which he had already caught, is only ­available in North America.

“I was a big Pokemon fan as a kid. I played as soon as the game came out [on Nintendo’s Game Boy] in 1997 and I caught them all,” Johnson said.

Sponsored by Marriott ­Rewards and travel agency ­Expedia to scour the globe ­hunting the elusive critters, Johnson found Mr Mime in Paris last ­Friday.

In Hong Kong, Johnson caught Farfetch’d – a brown duck-like Pokemon – at 3am yesterday, just hours away before his flight to Sydney to hunt down the last remaining regional Pokemon.

If he succeeds, he will likely be the world’s first person to have collected all the Pokemon ­available in the game. Johnson has caught a total of 4,269 Pokemon so far. He achieved this by going on Pokemon hunts after work in the US, where he once walked for 11 hours until 5am the next morning in New York city, lost in Pokemon fever. He had already walked 205km – an average of 14km a day – in the US alone.

The Pokemon master, who spent about US$300 (HK$2,327) on game items, said the best way to advance in the game is to walk a lot and talk to other players.

Aside from the regional exclusives, five legendary Pokemon – the game’s rarest and most powerful creatures – have not yet been sighted or caught anywhere in the world, according to several crowd-sourced forums.

Niantic, the game’s developer, and TriplePoint PR, the firm ­representing the Pokemon brand, could not be reached for ­comment.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Pokemon global hunter calls on city
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