The one million-Pokémon Dollar bike that drove you crazy as a kid is back.

By the very nature of their gameplay, the Pokémon video games attract people with a compulsive collector mindset. If you’re enticed by a game that wants you to catch ‘em all, you’ll probably not only want to get your hands on every species of Pocket Monster you come across, but also to obtain every possible inventory item.

So for anyone who plays Pokémon Red and Blue, the first-gen Game Boy games that started the entire franchise, it feels like a slap in the face when you walk into the Bike Shop in Cerulean City and want to buy a bike, only to find out they cost an unbelievable one million Pokémon Dollars! Making the price-gouging even more painful is that the amount of money you’re allowed to have in the game maxes out at six digits, meaning you will never, ever have enough cash to buy the bike.

With Red and Blue originally coming out in 1996, it’s been a bitter memory for fans for a quarter century, but now Pokemon’s impossible-to-buy-bike is coming to the real world!

▼ “Do you remember that bike that everyone wanted?” asks the teaser video.

In honor of the official Pokémon Information Bureau/Poké Times Twitter account reaching a million followers, the Pokémon Company took some numerical inspiration and created an actual bicycle modeled on the in-game graphics and official illustrations of the Pokémon Red and Blue one.

It’s got a number of cool little details, too, like silhouettes of Pikachu and Snorlax on the inside of the wheel rim…

…and a Poké Ball pattern to the tire tread.

▼ Even upgraded versions like the Great Ball and Master Ball are represented.

▼ Poké Balls can also be found at the outer edges of the handlebars.

However, in a display of fidelity to the source material, you can’t buy the bike. This isn’t because it costs more money than any one person in the real world can hold, however, but because only one is being made, and in another parallel to the game, instead of purchasing it outright, you’ll have to perform a task in order to have it given to you for free.

Thankfully, you won’t have to go to Vermillion City and sweet-talk anyone into giving you their bike voucher. Instead, all you have to do is follow the Pokémon Information Bureau Twitter account (@poke_times) and send out any tweet containing the hashtag #ポケモンの100万円じてんしゃ (which translates to “Pokémon 1 million-yen bicycle) before the end of the day on August 3.

The randomly selected winner will be contacted in mid-August, at which point they can start plotting a cycling route for a pilgrimage to Japan’s Pokémon manhole covers.

Source: Pokémon official website via Twitter/@poke_times via IT Media
Images: Pokémon official website
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