pokemon

Pokemon Sword and Shield have been going through a rough patch for these past few months. Though The Pokemon Company's marketing machine is in full gear, Pokemon fans keep coming back to one topic in particular: the national Pokedex, or the lack thereof. During E3 2019, Game Freak confirmed that the Pokedex in Pokemon Sword and Shield won't include all previously-released Pokemon, making them the first mainline games in the series to do something like that.

Continue Reading

What would you do if Niantic closed their doors tomorrow, and there was no more Pokemon GO? That's a question I had to ask a friend recently when they voiced concerns that Pokemon GO used to be fun, but more recently felt more like an obligation. This is the overarching issue with video games in general, but doubly so when the entirety of said game is played on servers at some remote location: After it's done, what's left?

Continue Reading

We're now a week out from the launch of Pokemon Sword and Shield, which are scheduled to launch on the Nintendo Switch on November 15th. What should be an exciting launch has been marred with controversy, as a number of leaks have indicated major cuts to the Pokedex in Pokemon Sword and Shield. A number of longtime fans of the franchise seem to take issue with that, leading to conversations about Sword and Shield that are dominated by talk of the incomplete national Pokedex.

Continue Reading

Pokemon GO Wayfarer is the only way Pokemon GO players can officially submit new Pokestops to Niantic - but it's not made for everyone. Until now, the "Wayfarer" system has been limited to early testers only. Starting as early as November 11, 2019, Wayfarer will be released to the public for all players of Pokemon GO - provided they're Level 40 in the game.

Continue Reading

Pokemon Sword and Shield are nearly here, and it seems the floodgates have opened. Leaks have been hitting the internet left and right, with one huge leak detailing the entire Galar Pokedex. Assuming this leak is accurate, we now know all of the Pokemon that will be in Sword and Shield, and there are probably going to be a lot of upset players.

Continue Reading

Here in November of 2019, we've got the full list of Pokemon GO research ready to go! This is the part of the game where the Pokemon trainer gets to do work that's sometimes easy, sometimes incredibly taxing, but always rewarding. Every two months, Field Research Tasks are refreshed, and November is the place where a Pokemon GO update means a big change in the way users are able to pick up the latest and/or best Pokemon in the game!

Continue Reading

Today we're looking at a variety of changes made to Pokemon GO this morning - the most interesting of which was a tiny mistake in the moves code. Those players who had Pokemon with the move "Giga Impact" could've (and in some cases did seem to) take advantage of a listed power of 9001 instead of just 200. This level of power in a single Pokemon move in Pokemon GO would, essentially, devastate any Pokemon opponent.

Giga Impact Power!

According to sources including Poke Miners, the Pokemon move "Giga Impact" had a lot more power than normal for a short period this morning. At approximately 16:53 hours on October 31 (last night), PokeMiners reported that changes had started to be made to the game's code - including moves like Giga Impact and Locked On. Giga Impact, at that time, had its power changed to 150.

At some point between then and approximately 7:24 AM this morning, another change was made, and the move Giga Impact had a listed power of 9001! That's enough power to knock out basically any Pokemon in the game in one go! The 7:24 AM update changed the power of Giga Impact to 200 instead of that whopping 9001. The image you see below shows one of the effects of the Mistaken Evolutions in the next section. This image comes from 8bitCR on The Silph Road.

Mistaken Evolutions

A few other oddities were in play for a while this week, too, fixed just this morning. One was an evolution of Bellsprout. Instead of Bellsprout's standard evolution into Weepinbell, it was reportedly evolving into Sandslash!

At the same time, reports suggest that the Pokemon Victreebel had a new evolution option - evolving into Dugtrio! It would appear that this was more of a mistaken image file situation, where a Diglett looked like a Victreebel, instead of an actual Victreebel having the ability to evolve into Dugtrio.

Shadow updates!

Another major set of Shadow Pokemon additions were made to the game's latest game files! You'll find these Pokemon listed in the image above! This could have a lot to do with the mistaken identities in evolutions above - or it could just mean we're about to get a very DARK FUTURE!

[timeline]

There's a Pokemon GO Battle you're about to drop in on with Regice or Registeel, and you'd like to know the best Pokemon counters. The good news here is that while these Pokemon have a different set of Pokemon Types, they've got relatively similar best-possible counters with which you'll be able to take them down.

Continue Reading

If you're looking in the right place, it's easier to find a Shiny Pokemon in Pokemon GO right now than it's basically ever been before. This is largely because of the Shiny spawn rate of the Costumed Starter Pokemon, but also because of current rates at which several odd (and seemingly randomly chosen) Shiny Pokemon are appearing. It's not clear yet whether this second part of the equation will stick into the future.

Continue Reading

Today Niantic reported a new sort of device that'll appear in Pokemon GO. This device might remind some veteran players of the first iteration of Pokemon GO, a version in which you were able to see how close you were to (or conversely, how far away you were from) any given nearby Pokemon. This new piece of equipment seems as though it may be a sign that Niantic COULD BE bringing elements like that into the future of the game.

Continue Reading

With Pokemon Sword and Shield a few weeks away, Nintendo has put together a new TV spot for the games. Though the trailer that debuted today is only 30 seconds long, it'll probably still resonate with a lot of Pokemon fans. That's because it pays homage to previous Pokemon games, beginning with the very first generation.

Continue Reading

The Legendary Pokemon GO Darkrai Raid Hour begins tonight, and you'll want to get ready with your best and brightest. This monster will be available for battle starting at 6PM local time - that's local wherever you may be, so don't worry about time zones! This event will roll out today, October 23, as well as October 30 - because this Pokemon is spooky!

Continue Reading