♪ I wanna be the very best, so I can pay my biiiills♪
♪ To catch them is my real test ♪
♪ until my wallet fiiiills ♪
♪ I will travel across the land, can't afford a home. ♪
♪ Teach Pokémon to understand ♪
♪ The power that I have to- ♪
pay for every month, the phone bill,
the Internet, car payments, and then there's the house payment too!
Stop! No, just stop it. Stop. stop the song. I'm just- I'm just sad now... Real life sucks...
♫ Science Blaster by: SpellingPhailer ♫
Hello Internet. Welcome to game theory.
*sigh*
You know what? Screw this. I'm SICK of paying bills every month.
I'm sick of the rat races,
and the adpocalypses, it's time to leave behind all that YouTube drama
and start traveling the land to catch animals and make them fight in eternal bloodsport to the death!
....Uh, Sorry, I meant to the faint, to the faint. It's muuuuuuuch better. That's right. Today, we're talking about our favorite
PETA-triggering game:
Pokémon
more importantly though, we're talking about how to make dem poké-bucks.
Poké-dollars? P-poké-skrill?
Poké-bones! Poké-, whatever they are. The P with the two weird lines in it, you know what I mean.
We've all had that dream though right? To be teleported to the world of Pokémon
armed with only a few pokéballs and rise through the ranks to become a pokémon champion
We'd make friends. thwart Team Rocket a couple times. Maybe hit on Misty a little bit... Or Brock. If you're into having no eyes...
It'd be a great time!
Or, so we'd like to think. You see, video games tend to gloss over
the rest of life that comes along with.......you know, LIVING.
You'd still have to eat, sleep, use the bathroom, or whatever the most convenient tree in Viridian Forest is.
which means that all those hard-earned poké-dollars you're ripping out of the pockets of the bug catcher after burning his Metapod to a crisp
are gonna have to pay dem bills. So it got me thinking.
How rich would you be if you became a pokémon champion?
what do the earnings of a Pokémon master truly look like?
That's our question for today. So with that Pokémon Johto, Let's go.
Game Freak the developer behind Pokémon doesn't give us basically anything for the day-to-day expenses for a pokemon trainer
But they did model a lot of the games geography and culture to places IRL. I'm sure
Gaijin Goomba did something on this in some video in the past. Hey goomba. Give me your notes.
Thanks. For a guy with no arms you throw surprisingly well.
SO the regions of Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn are based on the real-life regions of
Kanto, Kansai, and Kyushu found in Japan.
Unova is based on New York,
Kalos is northern France
and Alola is based off Hawaii.
We even get hints that this is actually an alternate version of our own world
Parasect's Pokémon entry from FireRed directly references China, to quote the Pokédex,
"It scatters toxic spores from the mushroom cap. In China, the spores are used as herbal medicine."
This is further shown with the first entry for Lieutenant Surge in the famed checker that calls him "The Lightning American".
So with both China and America confirmed as countries in the game
It seems safe to assume that we can easily compare the cost of living in Pokémon with the cost of living in our own world
That means we need to figure out the exchange rates from poké-dollars to real-life Skrilla to figure out some sort of yearly income.
To get the most accurate conversion,
we're actually gonna be starting by converting Poké-dollars to Japan's currency, the Yen.
The reason that I wanted to start here is that in the original Japanese versions of the games
The currency used is, in fact, Yen
And the symbol used is, uh, THIS.
Line-box...line
The kanji for Yen.
The "Pokémon Dollar" was just created for the English translations of the games.
But staying true to its Yen roots it kept the similar symbol, the P with two lines through it,
as well as the yen's lack of decimals.
But that's not all we can even get an insanely accurate conversion rate of real yen to in-game yen
using the nice cold refreshing taste of lemonade.
Could've been you diet coke but you never write me back.
COME ON, COKE! I need that sweet brown liquid in my mouth!
Archer: Phrasing?
Throughout every Pokémon game in the series
you can find a vending machine or store selling three different drinks:
Bottled water, soda, and lemonade.
The prices are consistent across the entirety of the Pokémon universe.
From pokémon red/blue all the way to the newest re-release of pokémon ultra sun and ultra moon.
What we're most interested in, though, is lemonade
Or in the Japanese versions, Mikkusuorre...
Yeah sounds about right.
Line-line-line, line-line-swoop,
swoop-line-swoop, Naruto Run, one-legged balance, and stupid "L".
You see when translating the game,
the drink was actually turned to "lemonade" but the Japanese versions translate closer to "mix au lait"
which is a French term that translates to "mixed with milk"
and wouldn't you know it but you can actually purchase Mix Au Lait at Pokémon Centers throughout Japan in real life!
During one of my last trips to Japan, I actually visited one of these Pokémon centers to sample some of the food.
Everything there is so super cute!
The Mix au Lait in case you're wondering is a fruity milk drink that reminds me a lot of Lassi.
If you've ever had that.
it's kind of a watery fruity yogurt drink
But as you would expect everything at the Pokémon Center including the Mix au Lait was super overpriced and totally tourist trap-y.
So instead to stay as true to the game as possible
I found that there were vending machines actually selling cans of Mix au Lait
for the low, low cost of 150 yen.
Compare that to the in-game cost for lemonade at 350 poké-dollars,
and we're actually able to get the conversion rate of 2.33 poké-dollars to 1 yen.
Basically what that translates to is one poké-dollar equal to just under half of a real-world yen
or to translate that to dollars a 100 poké-dollars is equal to about 39 US cents.
So now knowing that, before we calculate how much we earn as a pokémon trainer
We should figure out the costs of being a pokémon trainer. Thanks to Sun and Moon
We know that the Pokémon world functions on the same 24 hour time cycle that our own earth functions on
sun shows us that day in the real life is day in game and the same with night
So with that in mind I headed over to howlongtobeat.com
Which is a website that tracks how long to beat games pretty self-explanatory there
to find the average time to beat a typical Pokémon game
that turned out to be 52 hours
So if you were to work the average workday of eight hours your journey would take you seven days
But seven days to be a fully fledged Pokémon master doesn't seem right
I mean sure in game you might be able to speed run your way to the top of the poké-charts
but if we're looking at this seriously
Like literally walking between cities battling trainers spending time to train up your Pokémon
a trainer's journey to the top is gonna last way longer than a week
So instead to figure this out, I followed a different trainers journey
Ash from the anime.
Sure, we all joke that Ash stayed ten years old for twenty years of the show
But if you stop and look at the narration and context clues, there is in fact a clear passage of time
that gives us a sense of how long Ash's Kanto journey takes him
according to Takeshi Sciuto creator of the Pokémon anime in Pallet Town
The rule is that new trainers begin their journey on April 1st
following their tenth birthday in episode 9 the school of hard knocks
We actually hear that Ash has had two months of experience and two badges "with two months of Pokémon experience
You got two badges with only three" now fast forward to the episode holiday high jinks
which according to official numeration is episode 39
that puts us at Christmas of Ash's first year as trainer
another handful of episodes later, we have "Princess Vs. Princess"
Which we know is set on March 3rd because it specifically refers to
The celebration of Hinamatsuri also known as doll's day or girls' day a special day in Japan
Dedicated to celebrating women that trip to Cinnabar Island for badge number seven takes place during the early summer and shortly thereafter
We learned that earning his eighth badge the indigo League is only two months later
Gary:"the Pokémon League only meets once a year, in the exact same pla-"
Ash:"WHERE IS IT? WHEN IS IT? YOU GOTTA TELL ME!"
Prof. Oak: "Atop the indigo plateau, exactly two months from today."
which places the yearly indigo league championships around July or August
in short Ash and quite honestly
Gary who we also see in "Showdown at the Po-ké Corral" that specific episode have their first shot at being a true Pokemon master
A year and three months after they started their journeys
You know now that I've done that I back and calculate how old Ash is for the entirety of the series if you want to
See that episode sometime in the near future
Make sure you hit that subscribe button and let me know in the comments below
I want Ash's age in the next three seconds three two, if that was annoying to you
At least it wasn't a mid role according to online cost to raise a child
Calculators the cost of a single parent raising a ten-year-old in the Kanto region of Japan for 15 months is gonna be about
Twelve Thousand dollars that translates to a million three hundred twelve thousand one hundred twenty-eight yen
Or just over three million poké-dollars geez with it costing that much
It's no wonder that the parents are sending their kids out into the woods to fight dangerous creatures for the better part of a year
Anyway, those costs are broken down like you see on screen. But remember this is if they're living at home
Ash stays in tents most nights and doesn't get himself an education so we can eliminate some of those larger ticket costs
let's even eliminate the cost of clothing since the most ash has ever gotten himself is like a new hat that cuts our costs for
his 15 month journey in half now sitting at six thousand dollars six hundred fifty six thousand yen, or
1.5 million poké bucks that is a whole bike and a half which doesn't make it sound like that much
But seriously, that is a four
Thousand dollar bike that the shop owner just gives you for free is the best free voucher ever
Okay
So six thousand dollars is the base cost of your journey and of course leaving out the prices of all Pokémon and related gear pokeballs
Revives potions food for the Pokémon etc. But then again Aston's to get himself distracted on his journey
So his quest may take him a little bit longer than your typical trainer
It should all balance out the end
Now it's time to start beating up on some random kids pets and stealing their cash the way to earn money as a pokemon champion
Is defeating other trainers and taken their money
I went through the entirety of Pokémon Red and Blue adding up what you earn from every battle each
psychic bug catcher and last out there and then double check that amount via some player guides for the games and if you go undefeated,
Against every random trainer on your journey you conquer every gym the first time and you send every member of Team Rocket
You would make a total of drumroll please
Three hundred twenty five thousand four hundred fifty poké dollars which equates to one hundred and fifty six thousand two hundred
sixteen yen, or only one thousand four hundred twenty one dollars and fifty seven cents, uh,
Honestly, I expected it to be much, MUCH, higher when putting this theory together
But then I stopped and thought about it and it actually makes a lot of sense just take for instance the Elite Four
Which should be the most profitable fights of the game sure earning five thousand poké dollars per fight. Sounds great
But not so much when you're shelling out three hundred fifty dollars for a fee boss and lemonade the Elite Four
Plus the rival battle gets you a total of twenty nine thousand seven hundred ninety nine polka dollars
Which sounds great until you consider that it's only 85, cans of soda from the vending machine it converts to a whopping
117 dollars and that is the top of the top. We are talking the elite flipping four and don't forget
This is just the base adventure if you're doing the Pokémon journey a second time
I don't think Team Rocket has the turnaround time to take on the Silph company every week
Plus misty isn't going to take you on again if you already have her badge
So if you take out the special events that you most likely wouldn't be able to do again like the Silph company
Takeover in the gyms the journey actually pumps out significantly less
one hundred and eighty seven thousand sixty nine poké dollars or seven hundred twenty nine dollars and 57 cents. Whoo
That is a hefty pay cut
Literally cut in half and I'm not even including the trainers who aren't gonna fight you again
Since you beat him, so badly the first time the long story short here is that being a pokémon trainer is the single worst financial?
Decision in gaming ever. you spend a year out of your life slaving away climbing to the pinnacle of your chosen field
living outdoors and getting shocked over and over and over again by Pikachu and you end up with a net loss of
Four thousand five hundred seventy eight dollars and forty three cents. You lose money on your journey
Even if you get to the end of it, honestly, it's like pursuing a career in theatre
Where most places make you pay them to work there good times
True story. all this is probably why you don't see too many adults out there trying to become Pokémon champions
they eventually have to support a family and that is simply something that you cannot do as a
Traveling battler. unless you're a gym leader or part of the Elite Four
There is no way to make a living off of being a pokémon champion chase your dreams just prepare to file for bankruptcy
Later, but hey
That's just a theory a game theory and we didn't even talk about taxes
Don't even get me started on taxes
But now that we've proved that my backup career isn't gonna be backing me up quite as much as I hoped
It would I'm gonna have to figure out a new way to save up some serious bucks luckily
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