It’s time to start stocking up on Poké Balls, Trainers – Pokémon Go will soon be introducing its latest event-exclusive Pocket Monster into the wild. Starting May 7th, players logging into the mobile title for their daily session will be in with the chance to nab a particularly special version of Pikachu. Before you let excitement get the better of you, however, no – Niantic won’t be upping the occurrence rate of the yellow mouse’s shiny counterpart but rather, commencing its crossover event with the upcoming Detective Pikachu.
Due to run for an entire week starting tomorrow, this particular version of the franchise’s mascot can be encountered just like any standard ‘Mon and comes donning a suitably-themed deerstalker hat, but that’s far from everything Pokéfans can look forward to over the next seven days. In addition to the limited-time Pikachu, Pokémon known to have a prominent role in the upcoming video game flick will receive boosted appearance rates. Cubone, Jigglypuff, Flareon and Psyduck are just some of the contenders, as is iconic Gen 1 starter Charizard.
Whether Niantic will enable hard-to-obtain evolutions such as those to be caught more frequently in the wild remains to be seen, though given the event’s relatively short duration, it wouldn’t be too unrealistic a request, would it? We’ll ultimately have to wait and see, but it could well be the case that rarer Pokémon showcased in the film are confined to the several special Field Research cases being added as part of the celebration.
On the whole, Niantic has been doing a tremendous job of providing Pokémon Go players plenty of reasons to log in recently. In addition to the above, it recently stealth released three brand new Legendaries from Diamond & Pearl. Uxie, Mespirit and Azelf are the first of their kind to be made obtainable outside of endgame raids, with each being exclusive to a particular region. See here for all the details.
As for Detective Pikachu, the long-awaited film opens to North American audiences on May 10th.