A Taiwanese pensioner who once made international headlines for strapping almost a dozen smartphones to his bicycle so he could catch multiple Pokemon in Pokemon GO! faster has now taken his passion for the mobile game to new heights, with a whopping 64 phones attached to his bike.
We originally featured Chen Sanyuan in August of 2018, shortly after photos of him taken by passers-by in Taipei City had gone viral. It was easy to see why photos of the then 70-year-old were getting so much attention – here was this old man riding his bicycle around town with multiple smartphones hooked on to the handlebars. After reaching the front page of Reddit, Chen was approached by Taiwanese gaming website EXP.GG and he explained that he had come up with the bizarre setup so he could operate multiple Pokemon GO accounts at the same time. He had fallen in love with Niantic’s hit game after being introduced to it by his grandson, and now couldn’t get enough.
As time went by, Chen started dedicating more time and money to the game, and gradually increased the number of smartphones hooked onto his bicycle. When we originally wrote about him, Chen had just upgraded from 9 smartphones to 11, but then his story went viral all over the world and he apparently felt inspired to go all out on his passion, buying even more handhelds. And then he got a sponsorship…
Photos of Chen Sanyuan have been floating around the interwebs for the last two years, but they only recently started attracting people’s attention again, because of the drastic increase in the number of phones strapped to his bike. TVBS reports that the Pokemon GO super-fan‘s bike now holds a whopping 64 smartphones, most of which were donated by his latest sponsor, ASUS.
The front of Chen’s bike looks like a digital wall, and one has to wonder how he even sees the traffic because of those dozens of phones, let alone play Pokemon GO while cycling. Some people even suggested he switch to a tricycle, that way at least he won’t have to worry about losing his balance and hurting himself.
Even though the Pokemon GO craze has died down over the last couple of years, Chen Sanyuan is just as committed to the augmented reality video game as he was in 2018. Judging by the increase in hardware visible on his bicycle, i’d say he is even more so.
And just you were wondering, Chen’s bicycle now weighs a whopping 22.5 kilograms, more than double its original 10 kg…