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‘Pokemon GO’ Update: Pokemon From The Johto Region Will Finally Arrive

By Jesse Zhang
Published on: 09:50 PST, Feb 15, 2017

Pokemon GO has finally provided the update that its fans were awaiting. The majority of Pokemon from the Johto region will finally be coming as Niantic has announced its biggest update since they released their signature game. We won’t be restricted to hatching them from eggs, such as the baby Pokemon Togepi and Pichu. We will be able to catch them all in the wild as we look to expand our Pokedex’s database. Niantic released a brand new trailer, showing off the game’s expansion.

The updates for Pokemon GO, as the game’s developer Niantic announced on their website, are as follows:

There will be more than 80 Pokemon new to the game that Nintendo and Game Freak introduced in the Pokemon Gold and Silver video games back in 1999, almost 20 years ago. Fans will be especially excited to see Johto’s start Pokemon in Chikorita, Cyndaquil, and Totodile, and to evolve them. These games arguably provided the best generation of Pokemon in the history of the franchise, so for those still into the mobile game of the property, this is a huge win that was a long time coming.

As the second generation of Pokemon was in more ways than one an extension of the original, it introduced new evolutions and pre-evolutions of some of the first 150 Pokemon. Therefore, a player can obtain some of the new Pokemon immediately after the update arrives as if they have certain original Pokemon, and they can evolve them into some of the new ones, including Bellossom, Crobat, Kindra, Scizor, and Steelix. There will also be the addition of new evolution items required to make certain Pokemon evolve.

There will also be new ways to encounter these new Pokemon. When a player encounters one in the wild, Pokemon will possibly react in new ways. There will be the addition of new item carousels allowing for the selection of berries and Poké Balls directly from the encounter screen. There is not much more that Niantic revealed in this aspect, but it can be similar to how Pokemon used to be a guaranteed catch before they changed that to more closely reflect the games with Pokemon being able to break out.

Speaking of berries, players will have the opportunity to get the new Nanab and Pinap Berries by spinning the Photo Disc at PokéStops. Giving a Pokemon a Nanab Berry will slow its movements, making it easier to catch, while the Pinap Berry doubles the amount of candy the player will receive with the next successful Pokemon capture.

Players who like customizing their in-game characters will be able to play around more with their creativity with new looks and more clothing items for a more complete upgrade.

TechCrunch‘s Greg Kumparak took a deeper look at the trailer, trying to identify other potential Pokemon GO updates that Niantic did not outright share. He looked at the moment between 20 and 26 seconds into the trailer, where he saw something specific to locations to catch Pokemon.

“People are very clearly shown playing the game in mountains, woods, etc — the sorts of areas that the game has notoriously been pretty bad at populating, instead dumping lots and lots of Pokemon in Walmart parking lots.”

Perhaps this update will lead to the introduction of many more Pokemon in the future. It’s sometimes easy to forget that the game came out less than a year ago. Despite losing plenty of the hype that came with it initially, the game has kept its loyal followers, and this next Pokemon GO update will be certain to please them.

[Featured Image by Nintendo]

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