This isn't the time to use that!
Professor Oak's words have never been so true. The Pokémon Company, in celebration of reaching a million Twitter followers on their Japanese "Poké Times" account, has decided to make a one-of-a-kind replica of the iconic, expensive bike from Pokémon Red and Blue. In the games, it cost one million Pokédollars to buy, unless you had a bike voucher, which you could get from the Pokémon Fan Club chairman.
If you want to be in with a chance of winning the bike, you have to follow @poke_times on Twitter, use the hashtag "ポケモンの100万円じてんしゃ", which means "Pokémon one million yen bicycle", and make sure to enter before the 3rd of August, when the competition ends. Oh, and you have to live in Japan. Sorry.
The bike is rather lovely, though, so it might be worth moving. It's covered in little details, like Master Ball treads, silhouettes of the four original starter Pokémon, and Poké Balls on the handles.
There's just one big catch: You can't actually ride it. You probably guessed that from the title, though.
Eagle-eyed researchers may have already seen that the website mentions that the bike is a "life-sized model" — or that it doesn't have a bike chain, which is one of the things that makes bikes go. To be clear: this is not a bike. It is a bike-shaped, bike-sized piece of video game memorabilia that someone is going to have to lug up to their apartment and display as a piece of art.
What do you think about this Pokémon not-bike? Gorgeous work of art, loving reference to a fantastic game, or a big thing that you definitely don't have space for, especially if it's entirely non-functional? Let us know in the comments!
[source pokemon.co.jp, via kotaku.com]
Comments 38
Ofcourse you can't ride it, look at how low that seat is!
Why not just make a bike!?
If you take it outdoors, can you ride it?
I like how the colorization is based on the GameBoy’s green-tinted screen.
Oh, you -can- ride it. You just have to figure out how to make it go really fast while you're on top of it. It just gets creativity and a poor sense of self-protection.
Tip: It doesn't even need to be on its wheels.
Can I ride it if I map it to the Select button?
they've missed a trick by not having a recording of Oak saying you cant use it, when you sit on it.
Life-size models of of useful things that don't function confuse me greatly.
The details are super nice! I wish someone would make a functioning bike with details like that.
This isn't the time to use that!
I don't know why they didn't just add a chain, it's not like adding an engine, it's a relatively simple thing to do with no real regulations to worry about and it would make it look more real.
As a Dutchie this is extremely insulting to me.
I know of a shop where you could turn that into a proper bike, it’s a chain.
Still cool looking.
I’m sure it’ll go if you point it down a hill.
Yeah, this is just stupid. Either make it too small, or just make it into a real bike.
Now we can be the Bike Collector from Let's Go
I'd leave it outside with a camera on it to see if anyone tried to steal it and ride off with it.
1 million Pokedollars is 1 million yen, which is about $10,000.
Surely you can get a pretty good used car for that price, so why would you want a bike?
(I don't know if the cheapest of new cars are that cheap anymore, I don't think so.)
Q : What do you think about this Pokémon not-bike?
Me : Useless. A bicycle is created for driving not for being an item display.
@KingMike I haven’t seen many cars in the Pokemon universe. They might be insanely expensive there, so expensive that most people don’t even set eyes on them.
@ShadJV
Gen 1 has a single car in the entire game.
That ONE truck.
Later gens are not so shy with cars. Gen 3 has a moving van at the beginning, and Gen 5 has the Sky Arrow Bridge with lots of traffic running underneath it.
@ShadJV Except Gary he rides a car full of cheerleaders in the first episode lol. Gary is the only one who can afford a car
It's not PokéDollars. That's the currency used in Orre.
It's just 1,000,000-en. I.e., roughly 10,000.00 USD. For some reason, the English-language version of Pokémon replaced the Japanese symbol for their currency (which is NOT ¥; that was made up by the Americans in analogy to $) with a symbol analogy to ¥ and $ only with the lines going through a P for Pokémon. In Japan they just used the en symbol, so we know exactly how expensive the bike was.
10k for a bike is still outrageous and impossible for a 11-year old kid. But now you can imagine why Youngers and Campers are forking over hundreds of cash - because the last two digits in Japan are not decimalized. So roughly 100-en = 1.00 USD, exchange rates changing to anywhere from half to double that rate, of course. But the important thing is not so much the exact equivalence as much as the magnitude of it.
Professor Oak can finally rest easy
Wow, that’s probably the dumbest bike of all time!
@marandahir I went for a ride with a local cycling club the other day, and one of the younger members turned up on this:
https://www.specialized-onlinestore.jp/shop/g/g94920-0144/
He was 14 admittedly, not 11, but it goes to show that ‘youngsters riding around on million yen bicycles’ is not just the stuff of video games.
Unlike the replica model at the top though, it had a chain and could actually move. And when he rode it it moved pretty fast.
@ShadJV Actually in RBY there were trucks and stuff. Didn't see a lot but they were there
Even if it had a chain and brakes, I'd be worried it would snap in half where the pedals are because it's missing the support bar above the pedals.
It still looks really cool though.
A lot of detail was lost in pixelation clearly. Now all I need is a life size poké center and some life size poké balls to pretend bringing in, pretend-driving my pretend-bike so I can finally TRULY pretend having real pokémons.
As for a chain though, I could easily accept that in the pokémon universe, just pedaling could create enough energy to maybe electrically drive the wheel. Maybe combined with solar energy, and energy stored from braking and the other wheel spinning as well. Or an actual electricity pokémon being enslaved, trapped for eternity in poké ball science, physically exploited to power the thing.
To be fair, this does not even look like a functioning bike (or a very durable bike at least). Those wheels look like toys with only a bunch of unusually thick spokes. The frame doesn't appear very rigid either. I'm sure you could turn this into a bike, but I wouldn't ride it.
If this were a real bike, and you tried it ride it, it would almost certainly snap in two where the front half and back half of the frame are joined at a single point.
Not allowed? You're not the boss of me.
Are we sure this isn’t just a direct drive/drive axle bike? Those don’t have chains, or any visible gearing.
The front and back hubs certainly seem big enough for internal gearing and drum brakes.
@spoondriver Lol, that was a good one.
I assumed that the bike would be a miniature replica by the title. A bike sized bike you can't ride makes no sense.
Hard pass. I’ll stick to my Polygon…
@ShadowSa
There's specifically a single truck in Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow (Pikachu) versions. It's impossible to view without either trading for a Pokémon that knows CUT prior to gaining HM01 from the S.S. St. Anne captain or using some sort of cheating device. This same truck is viewable in Fire Red and Leaf Green versions of the game, and rewards the players with a Lava Cookie if inspected for having had the ingenuity to perform the trick. In Let's Go! Pikachu and Let's Go! Eievui versions of the game, you can still visit the (now empty) harbour after the cruise ship leaves and once your Partner Pikachu or Eievui know how to Surf on water, you can visit the truck for a nice Easter egg moment. The Lava Cookie is replaced with a revive, which respawns every so often.
There are additional trucks in later games - such as the moving truck that you move from Johto to Hoenn via in opening scenes of Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald versions.
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