Pokémon Dash: Miscellaneous Tips

Here is a small collection of miscellaneous but useful tips for Pokémon Dash on Nintendo DS.
If you know any others, don’t hesitate to send them to this section’s author at the following address:
[email protected] ! 😉

We will publish the best and most useful tips.

The main difficulty in Pokémon Dash lies within yourself. How do you manage to finish a course? Simply by memorizing it!

It is the most effective technique for finishing Pokémon Dash quickly. There are 5 courses in total (making up one cup) to memorize completely, and 5 different routes per course.
It is the routes you will have to learn by heart.

For this, the developers of Pokémon Dash had the excellent idea of including a "Time Attack" mode in the game which, once you manage to get a gold on a course in Time Attack, helps you enormously to remember the courses, and so to move up to the next level.
Very handy for crushing all your opponents quickly! 😉
-> Check out the Pokémon Dash Time Attack records table

To memorize certain courses faster, especially in Expert mode, you can use a small piece of paper showing the layout of the course to follow. It is another method widely used by Pokémon Dash experts, but obviously takes longer to put together (you have to make 25, unless you already know the courses by heart).

(Thanks to Daniel for the photo)

If you want to run faster, you will have to draw long strokes with your stylus. The longer and faster-drawn your strokes, the faster your Pikachu can run.
A long stroke, once you have reached top speed on foot (100%), can earn you 10% of "hidden speed" compared with a short stroke, even though the difference doesn’t show on the screen (in both cases the maximum speed for the terrain you are on is displayed, that is to say 100% if you have reached top speed).

Note that during your balloon jump, you can reach more than 701% speed (400% with one balloon popped, and 701% with both balloons popped), which is not to be sneezed at. That is why you need to know by heart the areas where your Pikachu can crash without much harm at crazy speed.

Boosters let you run at Pikachu’s top speed on foot, that is to say 100% (a higher speed can be reached with the balloons, close to 701%), on any terrain.
Some terrains are nevertheless fast to cross without any booster, such as roads of every kind.

For this, we have designed a small section that explains all the types of terrain and how Pikachu reacts to them (in terms of speed).
-> Click here to read it!

Expert mode is totally different from the GP and GP Hard modes.
Whereas in those modes you started in direct competition, on the ground, with the other Pokémon, in Expert mode you start in the air, and you have to fend for yourself to find the first checkpoint, then the others.

On top of that, your opponents are terribly tough on you (Blaziken vs Pikachu…), and you don’t have the little multicolored arrow (which goes from green to red) to guide you.
In short, an almost impossible mode, but terribly useful for practicing for multiplayer mode and so impressing your friends in the contest for the fastest stylus in the west! =p

You know that Pokémon Dash hides secrets, and that it is possible to import your Pokémon from Ruby, Sapphire, FireRed, LeafGreen or Emerald. But what you don’t know is that little Munchlax has its own race too.
Unfortunately, you can’t unlock it; it is actually given out by Nintendo at special events.

Once Nintendo has given you Munchlax, you will be able to take part in its race, but unfortunately you won’t be able to import it into your Game Boy versions.
A future Action Replay for the Nintendo DS (which doesn’t exist yet as I write these lines) will surely help you get it in Pokémon Dash, and it is still very doubtful that Nintendo will deign to organize a mass distribution of this race, especially knowing that no event was organized to distribute Jirachi or Deoxys, for example.