It’s exactly 26 years since the first Pokémon games released in Japan and the developers of the series lived up to the hype of this year’s international Pokémon Day by offering up a ton of updates on current games and one major surprise reveal: new mainline entries Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are coming to Nintendo Switch in late 2022.
When the latest Pokémon Presents livesetream was announced just a couple days ago, fans assumed their might be news about future DLC for Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Instead we got much, much more.
Here’s a quick rundown of everything that was announced and one thing that wasn’t:
Pokémon Go will get Alolan Pokémon on March 1.
The mobile game will see its Pokédex expanded to include Gen 7 additions from Sun and Moon. Those include starters like Rowlet, Litten, and Popplio, and nearly 80 others.
Pokémon Masters EX adds Victory Road.
The gacha game will get a new boss-rush mode where you can battle Victory Road trainers back-to-back. It’s also adding a bunch of new sync pairs over the next month including May and Latias and Skyla and Tornadus.
Pokémon Café Remix gets delivery feature.
The puzzle game will now let Pelipper deliver your drinks and dishes to far away Pokémon including the mythical Pokémon Victini. It’ll also be a way to collect new outfits and unlock hidden abilties to help with challenges.
Pokémon Unite gets mayham mode.
A new type of quick battle will let let players battle without cooldowns, making the MOBA even more chaotic. Mythical Pokémon Hoopa is also coming to the game, which can be earned by playing, along with Duraludon at a future date.
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl finally get Shaymin,
The mythical grass-type resides on a special island you can only reach after getting a special letter from Professor Oak. That event is now officially in the game. Of course, a bunch of players glitched their way in early shortly after the game came out last November.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus Daybreak update is now live.
The “free” 1.1 version patch focuses on investigating mass outbreaks and sounds like it will add new trainer battles. Players can also get 30 free Ultra, Gigaton, and Jet balls when they use the “ARCEUSADVENTURE” Mystery Code by March 31.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is getting an anime adaptation.
It doesn’t have a name yet, but the Pokémon Company teased a new online series focused on the Hisui region with a piece of concept art showing a trainer trudging through a snowy forest.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are the next games in the series.
The Pokémon Presents wrapped up by giving us our first look at Gen 9, including starters Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxly. The new games will be open world and are due out on Nintendo Switch before the end of the year.
We still haven’t heard anything about Pokémon Sleep.
Teased back in 2019, the Pokémon Sleep app was supposed to monitor your sleep and connect it to Pokémon Go. It sounded extremely creepy, and nearly three years later we still don’t know anything about how it works. Maybe the Pokémon Company doesn’t either rand that’s why it’s quietly moved on.
And that’s everything we heard about in today’s Pokémon Presents. A busy time for Pokémon indeed. Even with all of the news we did get, fans are still waiting on bigger content updates for Arceus and BDSP. Players glitched into a hidden area in the former and players of the latter are still waiting for the Global Wonder Station to finish construction. In the meantime, I’m sure Pokémon fans can find plenty to fixate on in the Scarlet and Violet trailer.
