TRAINER'S EYE #112 - "Excellent Throw Endeavors" ft. The Excellent Pokedex

In this Pokemon interview, we are joined by The Excellent Pokedex, a content creator for Pokemon GO specializes in analyzing the effectiveness of Excellent Throws for Wild Pokemon, Raids, and other encounters in Pokemon GO.

The Excellent Pokedex shares his recent experience with Pokemon starting with watching the anime with his children. Despite growing up through both Pokemania and the initial popularity of Pokemon GO, he did not gain interest until much later due to trying to find an activity that would encourage his chidlren to be more active outdoors.

The Excellent Pokedex dives into his person journey with Pokemon GO and how one small throwing mechanic led him down the road of content creation with analyzing Excellent Throws. He goes into great depth in the mechanic and shares the dedication of his research!

Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay

Connect with The Excellent Pokedex: Youtube

Chapters

• 0:00 TRAINER'S EYE #112 - The Excellent Pokedex
• 0:00 TRAINER'S EYE #112 - The Excellent Pokedex
• 22:56 Commercial Break
• 22:56 Commercial Break

Transcript

TRAINER'S EYE #112 - The Excellent Pokedex
===

[00:00:00] The Excellent Pokedex: I am the excellent Pokédex, and this is my Pokémon story.

[00:00:03] 

[00:00:46] David Hernandez: Welcome to As the Pokeball Turns. Where we interview people about their experience with Pokemon. My name is David Hernandez and today I'm joined with the excellent Pokedex here to share his journey on how. trying to get excellent thrown every Pokemon turned him to creating content today.

[00:01:02] He's a very interesting dude I look forward to introducing him excellent Pokedex. I guess what can I call you and welcome to the show

[00:01:09] The Excellent Pokedex: Sure, you can call me Jeremy. my name is relatively public at this point, or at least can be found, so I'm not too worried about that.

[00:01:18] David Hernandez: welcome to you know the podcast I knew you're fairly new as a creator but I always kind of fell in love with the idea because Back when I was trying to find my foot into content creation, this has been before that podcast. Actually, I had this idea is like, what if I try to get an excellent throw in every single Pokemon and Pokemon go out there?

[00:01:37] And of course that didn't go anywhere, but here you are. I'm like. This guy really took my idea actually could have gone somewhere. But how did you kind of get into just doing that kind of content and where did that start? 

[00:01:49] The Excellent Pokedex: So, I Actually have been a software engineer at Google for 10 years. I started in 2012 and then I ended up quitting because I wanted to get into, I actually wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, but I wanted to do something a little bit more creative. initially what that was going to be was doing indie games. so I wrote actually a, basically boggle clone, mobile app called Toggle. and my initial plan was to, release that. So I actually have a video on my channel about this. if anyone's interested in a little bit more detail on the story, but, I released this app actually while I worked at Google.

[00:02:18] And then after I quit, I decided I was going to try to market this. Cause I wanted to turn it into more of full time job and then write some more games after that. But I quickly discovered it was really difficult to market at all. and so I was thinking like, what can I do for my next. Game to make this work a bit better because the reviews are pretty good in the game I don't think there's anything wrong with the game. It was just really really hard to get attention. So something that's always been interested interesting to me is youtube. I really love the format I love the sort of like intimacy of it and the informalness of youtube. and so I thought okay Maybe I can learn how to make youtube videos And then use these skills basically to market myself like myself as a brand or my or my games You And then I was looking for a topic, because I didn't want to start with my games because I knew I'd be really bad at making YouTube videos at first. just because it was a totally new skill to me. Like I, I took computer science in university. I'm a programmer. I don't really have video editing skills at all. Like I, I needed, I knew I needed to learn it. So I wanted something that wasn't so close to my heart. Like this, this thing that I intended to be my career. So this intersected nicely with, my interest in Pokemon Go. I started playing Pokemon Go in 2022. Uh, and this was because at the time I had two kids who were, seven and four, and they were just really getting into Pokemon at the time.

[00:03:32] I had never really been into Pokemon before. I'm 36 years old and Pokemon red. I just had to look this up cause I didn't actually know, but Pokemon red came out in 1996. so I was eight and I remember my friends, I have distinct memories of my friends playing some Pokemon game, but I don't even know which one on the Game Boy Advance SP. I remember that I had to look up what that was called too, because I didn't have one or other kid, but it was the. It was one that looked like a flip phone, basically.

[00:03:57] and yeah, I wasn't really into it. Like a lot of my friends were into it. I never really got into the trading card game or the, or the game or the shows. I was into other games at the time. Like I played a lot of, Doom when that first came out. Like that was probably one of my first games. Warcraft 2 and Half Life and Neverwinter Nights. and things like that, I was never really into the, Pokemon thing.

[00:04:17] I also played a lot of like Final Fantasy VII, which is sort of in ways similar to, Pokemon. But, I guess part of it is that we did have an N64. I think it was my favorite console when I was a kid, but I don't know. It just never happened and I never really got into it. And then I guess I, I aged out of when I would have started it and gotten that affinity.

[00:04:30] But when my children, they were like super, super into Pokemon. and my son, my older son, who's seven, he really wanted to play Pokemon Go. I thought, Oh, this is great. I never played Pokemon Go actually when it came out in 2016. there was a huge craze about it. I was like, Oh, It's Pokemon.

[00:04:45] I don't really care about Pokemon. I have no connection to this at the time. but I thought, okay, this is great. he plays, he just sits at home and plays video games all the time. Let's get him out, like have an excuse to walk that he'll do. And we can spend some time together and catch Pokemon.

[00:04:56] And so we did that a few times. And I thought, wow, this game actually looks really fun. I should play this. And so I ended up taking over, so he was just playing on my phone. So I ended up taking that over and then I gave him one of my old phones. And so he had a separate account. and we did it together and eventually my other son, he also got into it. and my wife got into it. So now we have four, four phones, which is really convenient for. For rating

[00:05:17] So I got really interested. Like, I think my favorite part about Pokemon go is maybe obvious from the, the excellent Pokédex name and the topic and everything.

[00:05:25] David Hernandez: Wait, I wanna make a guess. I wanna guess, hold on. I think I have an idea. Hold on, hold on. I think I have an idea. I think Barry's

[00:05:36] The Excellent Pokedex: Yeah. Well,

[00:05:37] yeah, 

[00:05:38] David Hernandez: the metals. Oh, I'm trying to 

[00:05:39] The Excellent Pokedex: I'm like unreasonably

[00:05:41] David Hernandez: I'm gonna go on a limb. It's gonna, I think it's gonna be, I think it's, I think it's the throws. I'm, I'm going on a limb.

[00:05:46] I think it's the throws.

[00:05:47] The Excellent Pokedex: is the throws, although, you know, on berries, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that Nanab is just banana. Basically backwards like, oh, they, I mean, this is how they do Pokemon naming, right? They just do like the most ridiculous pun names and like reverse stuff. Same with, um, so this is such a tangent, but, uh,

[00:06:05] but L-G-M-I-I learned LGM is just a phonetic spelling of LGM, the letters, which stands for Little Green Man. 

[00:06:12] David Hernandez: Oh, I know that 

[00:06:13] The Excellent Pokedex: it looks an alien and like little Green Man is a, I dunno, it's kinda an old timey term at this point, but for a, for an alien, um.

[00:06:19] David Hernandez: I learned something new today. I had no idea. 

[00:06:21] The Excellent Pokedex: Yeah, the, I can't remember what the, what's the evolution of LGM called? Um,

[00:06:25] David Hernandez: behind my thinking like that.

[00:06:26] The Excellent Pokedex: Yeah, that one has a similar naming, I can't remember what the, what the stories for that, doesn't matter, 

[00:06:31] David Hernandez: You know, you grew up during the times where it was everywhere. The games, the cars, and it just hit, it missed you at the time as a kid.

[00:06:39] And that's It comes back when your kids are growing up And of course you don't have that connection with Pokemon Was it just the fact that you wanted to kind of bond with your kids more that kind of got you more interested you think? Compared to you know back saying the 90s was just your friends

[00:06:53] The Excellent Pokedex: yeah, I think it's a combination of things. So, I mean, I was looking also for something to encourage me to go outside more and walk. I think Pokemon is just, is actually very attractive like once you start to get into it, like you start to learn all of the, like, it's just, it has really good design in the sense that like all of the Pokemon just like look cool. and. it does a good job of sort of like pushing those, those, the monkey brain in you a little bit, like the collection drive where you're like, Oh, they just released primates now spawning or primates now spawning. well, whatever. That's bad, that's a bad example, but,

[00:07:26] um, whatever is now spawning, I need to like go out and collect this.

[00:07:30] and I think, yeah, it does a really good job of being engaging in that way. I think Pokemon go. It sort of whacks and wanes over time. Cause definitely my interest in it whacks and wanes as it does for most of people, most people, cause they'll have like, regular events, which I think keeps interest really high, but sometimes those are less interesting than others and like the common complaint of, you know, the Canto spawns, just like endless Canto spawns for like months, definitely is a problem.

[00:07:50] But then occasionally they have really interesting events that kind of suck you back in. , I

[00:07:54] David Hernandez: you said your whole family plays

[00:07:56] The Excellent Pokedex: yeah, my whole family plays. And for, and for a while, they we're not watching the shows as much now, but we got into the show, the one before Ultimate Journeys, I forget what it was, I think it's called,

[00:08:04] David Hernandez: journeys, I 

[00:08:05] The Excellent Pokedex: yeah, yeah, Journeys, I think we

[00:08:06] started watching it with, with Journeys, which is really confusing because, It's like sort of a sequel to the previous one. And so they already had like leveled up Pokemon. So it was a bit confusing. We were like, like they didn't explain something. And then, I mean, later on we were like, Oh, there's like a hundred shows before this. Okay. That explains.

[00:08:24] David Hernandez: Sometimes they don't really explain it. So don't feel too bad.

[00:08:27] The Excellent Pokedex: And so then, I mean, since then we've watched, Indigo League, the original show and sun and moon and whatever we can get our hands on, not all of them are on streaming But the shows are pretty good too. It's kind of funny because it, my brain is really attracted to, like mythology.

[00:08:40] I really enjoyed, Greek and Roman mythology when I was growing up, or, or Norse mythology. And, I was really interested in, D& D, Not so much playing D& D. I never played D& D that much, but I really enjoyed reading the source books, especially like the Forgotten Realms manual that had like all this lore, just like reading a fake history book basically. and I've been really into history as well. So I really enjoyed just the aspect of learning all the Pokemon lore and having, like playing the game while also. Watching the show was really interesting. Cause it's like, Oh, like now I actually know something about Grookey or whatever. and that I guess it's sort of like what happened in the nineties.

[00:09:13] It's like this full media blitz of like every possible way that you can engage with this, like we did. And then my, my kids, I mean, they were super interested in, so we bought, Scarlet and Violet,

[00:09:24] we got those and they were playing through that, and then more recently we've kind of gone backwards in the series, like incrementally. they have, uh, Diamond and Pearl and we were playing Arceus, or Legends Arceus, which I think is, I think that's the one I played the most is Arceus.

[00:09:39] David Hernandez: What is it about Legends of Arceus that I guess maybe interest you out of compared to the other ones,

[00:09:44] The Excellent Pokedex: I mean, my, my engagement with video games now, it mostly. Has to do with, my kids. So it's like my kids, there's some game that's too hard or something. And they'll be like, you have to play it and we can watch you. Um, so I did that for, Zelda breath of the wild and, tears of the kingdom because it was too hard for them and they're

[00:10:02] we want to play this game, but we can't play it.

[00:10:03] So you have to play it. And I was like, Oh, okay. And then I really enjoyed them. And it's kind of the same with, Arceus. I think I don't like the. I mean, obviously there's varying quality of all these games. Like I know there's a lot of mixed opinions about Scarlet and Violet. but I definitely enjoy Pokemon Go more.

[00:10:18] So I haven't kept up engagement with that. And I'm, going back to the 2D ones, like I used to play, Final Fantasy seven, A lot when I was a kid, like I had like hundreds of hours played on final fantasy seven, which is not really the same thing, but it's sort of similar in a way to

[00:10:32] to the, or like final fantasy in general is sort of similar to the Pokemon in the way that it's an RPG. I can't, I just can't play those games anymore. I don't know. Like, I mean, I just don't have the time to like sink hundreds of hundreds of hours into something or like grind Pokemon or whatever in a game. I guess I have time on, on the phone. I don't know. Cause it mixes with walks and everything.

[00:10:49] So it seems like time well spent.

[00:10:51] David Hernandez: I mean, I get that because, you know, I used to spend hundreds of hours on Pokemon games growing up. And even, you know, my favorite game all the time is Skies of Arcadia, which came out on the Sega. And I spent hundreds of hours on that game. It was an RPG. But now, you know, as we've grown up, it's like, do we spend this time playing a game or do we gotta do this other activity?

[00:11:10] But with Pokemon Go, it allows us to kind of cheat, I guess, to kind of do both, to where we can kind of play game and exercise, which has always been a good appeal for many people 

[00:11:19] The Excellent Pokedex: Yeah, and I just remembered that all of this was getting to the point of like how I created the channel, so I'll continue that story, which, yeah, I was super interested in excellent throws. And at a certain point, I was like, I think I feel like I'm good at this. Like, I was getting, say, like, 60 percent plus of all my throws are excellent throws or something like that. and actually I looked up a lot of YouTube videos that were like, how to get excellent throws. And they're all, these generic guides, which are not bad. Like they're, they generally have accurate advice, but they're very generic. And I quickly learned there's nothing generic about excellent throws.

[00:11:49] Like every single Pokemon is different. Well, to a certain degree, like some of them are similar to each other, but basically everyone's different. Cause I started looking this stuff up and early in Pokemon's life, like people were making like 3d printed guides for excellent throws where they would like 3d print like a, an edge and then like put it on the screen and then throw with this thing.

[00:12:07] I don't know if you know what I'm talking about. If you've ever seen one of these, but what they would do is like 3d print, like a full sheet, like say like just a rectangle you put on top of your screen, but then there's like a channel in it so that you can only touch the screen along the certain line or, and they will like make it the shape of a curve ball or make it just a straight line. And I realized like that doesn't work at all. That concept is completely wrong because all of the Pokemon are different. and then I thought like, no, one's doing this. Like maybe there's a market. Well, first of all, I wanted to learn YouTube videos. I wanted to choose a subject where I didn't have this huge personal investment.

[00:12:38] Cause I knew it'd be pretty bad at first, at least. and I thought I'm, I'm kind of good at this and I don't, I don't feel like anyone's doing this. So I decided I would record. excellent throws and just put them on YouTube, with little explanation, little overlay, I can put a little overlay with an arrow and like, pause the screen so you can see exactly where you're supposed to throw. and initially it actually, it got a pretty good reception. Like I, I posted, the first one I ever did was an electric excellent throw video, just because it happened to be spawning at the time, and that's ended up with thousands of views on YouTube. on YouTube and I posted it on the self road and people are like, yeah, you should keep doing this, I guess. Like it wasn't super enthusiastic, but there were a lot of comments. and so I decided to keep doing it. I ended up getting like 6, 000 views on this video about Scatterbook. well, actually it's kind of funny. The way I started is that I was so nervous, like I didn't have any of the equipment also for making videos.

[00:13:22] So I didn't, I didn't have my face in videos and I didn't even use my own voice. I used, an AI voice. because I didn't have a good microphone or anything. I just had like, what was on my laptop. and to say I was not confident is an understatement. I was not confident at all. and so I had this like really, I found this on 11 labs, which is an AI voice thing. They had this really dramatic, like trailer voice guy or voice that you could use. And I thought that was kind of funny. So I decided to use this and just make like the most dramatic possible video. And I have like, really epic music and then have this like trailer voice guy talking about the Excellent Throw.

[00:13:53] 

[00:15:06] The Excellent Pokedex: I thought, it was funny. and yeah, I ended up getting like 6, 000 views on this video about Scatterbug that has just like this epic, intro that's like a trailer. It's like, they thought it couldn't be done. They said it was impossible. And then the slow motion video of the Scatterbug Excellent Throw.

[00:15:19] David Hernandez: Is it like if you don't make this excellent throw the world will not

[00:15:24] The Excellent Pokedex: Yeah,

[00:15:24] exactly. I can't remember exactly what I said, but, um, something like that. 

[00:15:29] And I was trying to figure out how to get these into the world, basically. Because I soon realized that making these videos was extremely slow. like, again, I didn't have any skills in video editing, so I was really slow. I started using, this thing called Filmora Wondershare, because it was free, And I was also kind of bored. I think it was the same thing you found with the excellent throws. is that it's boring just to make a video about an excellent throw. You have to, uh, spice. I mean, this is like my way of entertaining myself is making like the epic intros and the trailer voice and stuff. Right. Like, I didn't know where to go with it, because some of the videos weren't getting that much traction. Because I think, like, the audience for these things is an extremely small niche. Because it's like, the nerdiest of the nerdiest Pokemon Go players are like, Yes, I want to learn ahead of time how to get an excellent throw instead of just learning it.

[00:16:11] Like, most players probably don't care that much. Or if they do care, they're just like, learn it in real time, because that's a totally valid way to do it. I mean, that's how I did it.

[00:16:18] but as a nerdiest of the nerdiest Pokemon Go player myself, I

[00:16:21] remember distinctly that like when Swinub, I just like, couldn't figure out how to get an excellent throw on a Swinub because they're pretty far away.

[00:16:28] The circle's pretty small. and I started looking on the internet. I was like, can anyone explain to me how to get an excellent throw on a Swinub? And the answer is no like there are some videos of excellent throws on swine abs, but they don't tell you how to do it because they don't show the overlay.

[00:16:41] So I just use the Android, dev tools, basically, they have a way of showing the, like, where your fingers actually touching on the screen. so I include that in the video so you can see exactly where my finger is touching on the screen, because that's what I wanted to see for swine ab and I couldn't, And so that's, I mean, if there's anything that's an origin story, it's like looking for swine up.

[00:16:58] David Hernandez: I mean just on that notes Why not this hard hit excellent throws because it's very far away. It's a small circle for me. I'm an iPhone I usually have to remember I have to hit the edge of the phone just to get it to the correct trajectory So, I mean, that's a fair question. It's hard to get excellent And if you're listening to this podcast, post a picture of swine up and Pokemon go and tag me.

[00:17:19] But I feel that though, because there's just some Pokemon that are difficult to get the excellent throws for me. It was like zoo bad. Of course it's a flying Pokemon. I have problems getting Latios and just throws in general, because for some reason, them floating just throws me off.

[00:17:34] I don't know what it is, but those two specifically, I always have problems even just getting. Great throws, excellent throws on those Pokemon.

[00:17:41] The Excellent Pokedex: Yeah. You know, the more I look into the game, the weirder I realized the physics of the game actually are. like I had fantasies at one point that I could like write, cause I'm a programmer. So I was like, can I write an app that just has the exact same ball physics as Pokemon go and then there's data available, like Pokemoners has extracted all the data for the game.

[00:17:58] So you can, in theory. Like fully reconstruct the throwing minigame in a separate app using that data. but then I started like thinking about how they actually do the throwing. It's actually very. It's very complicated because like when you throw, you are moving in a plane, like your fingers moving in a plane that is, the ball needs to go forward to the Pokemon, but you're moving your finger up and down.

[00:18:16] So somehow the game is translating your up and down motion to your speed throwing forwards. And you can most notice it when you have a flying Pokemon, especially when they're in the fully up position, like some things will fly upwards on the screen, like, you have to throw generally pretty fast. I'm not expert on that, but,

[00:18:32] 

[00:18:33] David Hernandez: so, you talked about how, you know, you got into Pokemon, you still aren't learning, you know, you don't know as much. Do your kids kind of quiz you and just to, you know, teach you how to like learn about these Pokemon more? Sure. 

[00:18:43] The Excellent Pokedex: yeah, definitely. We have talked about Pokemon quite a bit. I mean, my brain, like I was, I was saying with like learning history and like fake histories and everything, I just like, love the lore now. I kind of, what I was getting to before is like, I never thought I'd be one of these people who could name, well, I don't know if I could name it off the top of my head, but I definitely know all of the original 151 Pokemon. and many more beyond that, obviously, because of Pokemon Go. I was like, Oh, I know something about basically every Pokemon. This is weird. I always, I always thought that was weird that people knew all of them and they could like do the Pokemon rap and whatever. but it turns out it's just, you know, you're exposed to it enough and you learn these things.

[00:19:17] and definitely my kids are the same way where they know all the Pokemon. well, not all of them. There's too many now to know all of them really well. But, You can definitely be familiar with all of them. the kids are less interested in Pokemon Go now. I think it's a little bit too grindy. Like we go out on community days together and they are like, okay, we're just going to get our shinies and then stop and go, go play on the playground because it's. I mean, as much as possible.

[00:19:37] I do the insane thing of, you know, just try to like catch like 400 Pokemon on community day and get all the XL candy, especially. like my goal is usually to get the, at least three shinies and then also get enough XL candy to max one of them out,

[00:19:49] they do not have the patience for that, which is not surprising.

[00:19:51] I mean, there's no reason really to do that except that, you know, obsession with the game.

[00:19:55] they've kind of moved on to other things, which is kind of funny. They still enjoy the. We'll do the raids together and stuff like that, because we have the four, phones now. So which is really convenient it's really nicely added the party power feature, I think, I feel like that's kind of slept on.

[00:20:06] I don't hear people talk about this that much, but the party power feature is so powerful. obviously you need to know people because you need to join their party or you need to at least, you know, meet up with people in discord or something, but, because it basically doubles your, it's sort of like, instead of four people, you're like eight people. And so we can essentially do any raid except some of the really, really tough raids. We can just do it with the four of us, which is, really convenient. And then occasionally for the really tough ones, we'll meet up with people in Discord. But,

[00:20:30] David Hernandez: think that's kind of the fun part with party because I've got to use it with my friends. And you know, for me, it's good because I kind of like that kind of stuff when we go out and play together. But it's also good for your case, a family of four, a family of three. You know, that's pretty easy. We all can just go out and y'all can turn on party because you're already together.

[00:20:48] Anyway, you can do these raids and kind of I've always called Pokemon Go for some families like a traveling game night almost. To where you can go to local park, do some raids, and experience that kind of social interaction between the family dynamic, which is very nice, especially through Pokemon,

[00:21:02] The Excellent Pokedex: yeah, it is really nice. And especially with the, kids now, like, don't enjoy the outside for its own sake that much.

[00:21:09] David Hernandez: right?

[00:21:10] The Excellent Pokedex: Uh, which is a general, I mean, to be fair, I didn't when I was a kid either, like I was a huge video game nerd and like my parents were like, go outside. I was like, no, I'm playing this game.

[00:21:20] It's, I'm sure this is a common experience with many people, especially like my parents didn't play video games because You know, it's a generation thing. I guess it's quite different with now. Cause a lot of parents like my age play video games when we were kids and our kids play it. So I feel like I have more of an understanding of what they're doing. But at the same time, I'm also like, Oh no, the dangers. Like I didn't go outside when I was a kid, you need to go outside, especially because as an adult, I've developed more of an interest in doing things outside of video games, like, rock climbing or, even just like walking around outside.

[00:21:53] I have like an actual appreciation for that now, which when I was a kid, I was like, no, it's taking away from my time.

[00:21:57] David Hernandez: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's also maybe the way we grew up because, you know, we grew up playing video games, but. Our parents did it most of the time. And, you know, I remember, you know, growing up and saying like, you know, video games are gonna make people like, bad people or cause, people to hurt somebody else, or it's going to cost people to be kind of socially awkward.

[00:22:16] And then, you know, we grew up that way. And then later in life when we realized, Oh, we probably needed some of them social skills. And now, you know, when we have kids, we see the value of videos because we kind of grew up playing it. You know, you grew up playing Final Fantasy. I'm sure your parents probably didn't grow up playing Final Fantasy.

[00:22:31] For me, I play Pokemon. My parents definitely didn't play video games at all. My dad was born in the 1930s. He didn't know what a video game was. My mom still calls computer a brain. They're not really technology savvy at all. But that's the different dynamic to where we're growing up and now our kids are growing up in this technology world and we see the value of both going outside as well as being connected to technology and Pokemon Go is a very good cross blend between those two worlds.


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[00:22:56] 

[00:23:24] David Hernandez: I was wondering so, you know as you've done your YouTube channel and it's grown over time, How has it evolved and what has changed since you originally started like the electric throw in video,

[00:23:34] The Excellent Pokedex: I think I mentioned earlier, I was getting kind of bored towards even within a couple of months of starting because the, the excellent throw videos are, you know, they're There's only so much creativity you can express in them. And I found this tension between just conveying the information and, making something creatively fulfilling. Um, because it was like, this was my medium, but then I would, so I do these things, like I'd have an intro that was completely unrelated. It was just like about the Pokemon. So I do something, little thing about the Pokemon and then follow that by the guide. and I felt like in some ways that wasn't really serving anyone very well.

[00:24:04] Or it was like, there might be an audience for the first stuff, which is more like lore based and then audience for the second stuff. I feel like there were different people. and honestly, they weren't doing that great in terms of views. I didn't care that much at the time, cause it's really just a learning tool. but it's still like, you want your stuff to be seen. Right. Uh, I

[00:24:19] know that you're you're a creator too. It's nice when people actually look at your stuff. so I kind of, went a few weeks without doing anything. And then something really fortuitous happened, which was, someone discovered this perfect throw mechanism where. if the circle is like super small or the excellent throw circle is super small and you hit it, then you get a guaranteed catch, which was really exciting for me, obviously, because my entire, like my entire niche is excellent throws and this is like the ultimate excellent throw. 

[00:24:44] David Hernandez: The ultimate final boss.

[00:24:45] The Excellent Pokedex: yeah, exactly. It was like, Oh, that's, that's cool. and people got really excited about this too, in the community. So like, this is Something people are actually excited about. Plus it's something that's in my wheelhouse. This is perfect. and people got really excited because at the time they were thinking, Oh, we can catch Galarian birds with on the tiniest possible circle. and it'll be a guaranteed catch. Isn't that amazing? And it turns out that's not true, unfortunately. pretty quickly people figured that out. That wasn't true. And you also couldn't catch legendaries that way. so they're quickly like videos or pictures of people that people would put up where it's like, I hit this, uh, Regigigas on the tiniest possible circle and it didn't, instant catch. the other one was people would try to exploit it with buddy catch assist. So the thing where if you have a great buddy, then, and the Pokemon attacks while you're throwing the ball, it'll bounce back and you're. Buddy will bounce it back. And sometimes that will give you an excellent throw if the circle is small enough, 

[00:25:32] Anyway, all this stuff is really interesting. There's all these interesting ideas around this mechanic that had appeared. and so I decided to make a video about it. And so I, tried to get a bunch of footage of X of perfect throws. 

[00:25:42] And so people were saying on the perfect throw stuff that the smallest circle, or they're saying if you hit the smallest possible circle, you get a guaranteed throw.

[00:25:51] I thought surely it cannot be the smallest possible circle because no one can do that. Like it would have to be frame perfect and I'm getting these occasionally I don't think I'm hitting it frame perfectly every time. Like it, the success rate is too high.

[00:26:03] and so I thought, okay, there's some contribution I can make here where I can figure out. what that actually means. Like what is smallest possible circle actually mean? And so I recorded a ton of, perfect throws. Like, I don't know, probably like 10 and then painstakingly like opened up these pictures in an editor and like counted the pixels

[00:26:19] David Hernandez: Oh gosh, you were dedicated this one

[00:26:22] The Excellent Pokedex: I had to figure out the ratio of the, excellent throw circle so you have like the outer gray circle and then the inner colorful circle.

[00:26:28] So you want to figure out the ratio of those things. Because the theory was that if the, it depends on the ratio of those things, whether it counts as a perfect throw. and I figured out that it was, like the normal range, it goes from the colorful circle is is the size of the gray circle.

[00:26:40] And then it shrinks slowly until it reaches 10%. Of the size of the gray circle. So 10 percent diameter of the gray circle, and then it will reset to the largest size and this whole cycle takes two seconds. So I figured all that out first, cause that actually wasn't documented anywhere either. Like people would, as a, as a analytical person, I hate this imprecision and also just people saying things without any actual evidence, because websites talking about excellent throws, they'd be like, Oh, it will go up to A 95 percent a boost, but in fact it doesn't.

[00:27:08] And it goes, the maximum excellent throw boost is 1. 9 times a multiplier to the catch bonus. because it depends on the percentage and it only goes down to 10 percent size and then it resets, and that's pretty easy to figure out. Like I just looked at a few, you know, circles rotating and measured pixels. I figured out it always resets at 10%. And then perfect throw, basically, if you get under 13. 5%, So if the colorful circle is between 13. 5 percent and 10%, which is when it resets, then you'll get a perfect throw and you'll get this guaranteed catch. so I put that in the video and then also, the sort of debunking some of the, or not debunking, but investigating the, the other things that people talked about, like the buddy catch assist, like, is it possible these buddy catch assist to get these perfect throws? Yes, it is, but it sucks. It's terrible because You have to waste a lot of balls throwing and then also the one the body catches this triggers It doesn't always get an excellent throw. In fact, the rate at which it gets an excellent throw is pretty bad and then also the thing about legendaries like the Galarian birds and I took people's pictures like all the evidence that they gave because like people would post like Galarian birds I was like I got a excellent throw on this and it still fled and people in the comments would be like You don't know if this is the smallest, smallest, throw circle or not, like you don't, this isn't good evidence, but I took all that evidence and I looked at it, I measured the pixels, and I figured out that it was good evidence, in fact, because they were getting under the 13.

[00:28:21] 5 percent size, And then ultimately the video was really down. It was kind of depressing on the, whole idea of perfect throws because they're not actually useful for anything you would want them for. They're only good for the easy to catch Pokemon anyway. but don't work on legendaries.

[00:28:34] like, they don't work on even Snorlax or things that are of that kind of, catch rate,

[00:28:38] And then, what I ultimately ended up doing was kind of pivoting.

[00:28:41] I, I, I made, I had an experiment. 

[00:28:44] I realized once I was a little bit better at editing that. I could streamline my process quite a bit. So I could put out a lot of these individual excellent throw guides. so like, I was like, can I make five excellent throw guides in one day? And then just like release them every other day or something. and then do some other something else with my life and then just like once a week make five more, kind of thing. And I started releasing them and just like, there was no real interest.

[00:29:06] Like there were a few views, but I think what I was saying earlier about, it's such a niche audience where. Like Meowth is generally spawning a lot or Pidgey is spawning a lot. So there is theoretically interest, but people just don't care, it appears. Or like not in small number of people care. It has this like core fan base. there's not a wide appeal to that. 

[00:29:22] my initial ambition was to make a video about every single Pokemon ever. and I've decided that's probably not really worth the time, but instead I targeted towards. Just the ones that are really relevant.

[00:29:34] So I'll make still every time there's a five star raid change, I'll like try to remote rate it like the night before, as soon as Japan comes online, I'll try to do remote raids of this thing. You get a bunch of footage for the next legendary and then release a video the next day. So the first day that it's available. And those do reasonably well and like, there's interest in those because the reason I chose those, like, I don't do it for mega Pokemon or three or, or less than that, because the five star raids are the ones where you really have the risk of them running. And it's really frustrating to people when you are trying to catch a five star raid and then it, it flees. Cause a lot of people like you have one chance, maybe like you get your group together, you have like one chance at this raid, or maybe a couple of chances. And it's really annoying when it flees. So having ahead of time, the ability. So, I mean, I know now that people will look at my channel to find those things.

[00:30:16] So I try to get it out as soon as possible because I get occasionally comments. like, if I'm a day behind, it's like, where's the video for this?

[00:30:23] David Hernandez: got expectations now, 

[00:30:24] The Excellent Pokedex: Yeah, exactly. And I don't mind making those. Those 

[00:30:27] I also do them for community days. And those ones actually, you get even more comments that are like people, like four days away from the community, they will be like, where's your Tynemo video? I

[00:30:37] David Hernandez: to see it

[00:30:38] The Excellent Pokedex: that. Like it's coming. Don't worry. Like I can't release that early. It's, it's such a, YouTube is such a, interesting and frustrating, platform because the algorithm totally controls your life.

[00:30:48] So I'm trying to time it because eventually, like occasionally the algorithm will be like, okay, now you get a bunch of views. The decides, you get views now. And then, you want to sort of time that for the period of max interest, you get the biggest bump possible.

[00:31:00] David Hernandez: Well, the excellent Pokedex, thank you for coming on the show. I did want to ask one final question before we close this interview. What is your favorite Pokemon?

[00:31:10] The Excellent Pokedex: That's an excellent question. You know, I, I had wondered if you were going to ask that question. I think I'd have to say. and it's embarrassing 'cause my, my mind is blanking. The, the like base form of Agron

[00:31:20] David Hernandez: Aaron,

[00:31:21] The Excellent Pokedex: Yeah, that's right.

[00:31:22] David Hernandez: Aaron. Okay. Why that one?

[00:31:24] The Excellent Pokedex: yeah. I'm under pressure. So I forgot his name, but I have a little plushy of Aron. and I find that one really cute. So that's probably my favorite.

[00:31:31] David Hernandez: Well, thank you for coming on the podcast before you go. If people want to check out your content, if they want to connect with you, where can they go by all means, please plug away.

[00:31:39] The Excellent Pokedex: yeah, sure. So the, basically the only place you can find me is, the excellent Pokedex channel, which you can usually find us by looking for the excellent pokedex on YouTube. 

[00:31:47] that's basically it. You can also email me if you have any specific, like, I always welcome if people want to send me videos, especially things like, Galarian birds. You can enable basically the finger tracking that I have in the Android developer settings, which you can enable on your phone. There's, you can figure out how to do that. if anyone wants to send me videos, especially like things like Galerian birds, like excellence on Galerian birds, Or anything that's kind of really difficult, like execute, or, or zubat, or anything like that. I totally welcome that. I have an email address, which is v. excellent. pokedex at gmail. com, 

[00:32:17] and if I like it, I might put it in a video.

[00:32:19] David Hernandez: Thank you for listening to As the Pokeball Turns. Follow all my socials and join our Discord community to stay connected by clicking any of the links in the description of this episode. Tune in next time for more episodes featuring more people, more stories, and more Pokemon. Until next time.

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