http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/08...o_pax_west

The video game convention PAX West 2019 kicks off next week on 30th August and runs until 2nd September. As usual, there'll be a lot of major developers and publishers in attendance. Of course, one of the companies present will be Nintendo.

At its own booth, Nintendo will be showing off the following unreleased titles: Luigi’s Mansion 3, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition, Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition, Pokémon Sword and Shield, DAEMON X MACHINA and Minecraft Dungeons. All three colours of the Switch Lite will be on display as well.

For Dragon Quest fans, there'll be a panel (viewable on Twitch) and signing opportunity featuring the developers who worked on the upcoming Switch release.

On Saturday, Aug. 31, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. PT in the Raven Theatre at the Hyatt Regency (located near the Washington State Convention Center at 808 Howell St.), the developers of DRAGON QUEST XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition from SQUARE ENIX will host a panel called DRAGON QUEST® Then & Now – Echoes Through the Ages. The panel will give a behind-the-scenes look at how developers from SQUARE ENIX, both established and newer, maintain series roots while catering to present-day RPG enthusiasts in creating modern-day classics like DRAGON QUEST XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition for Nintendo Switch. The panel will be livestreamed on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/PAX3 starting at 10:30 a.m. PT. There will also be a first-come, first-served opportunity later in the day for guests to meet the developers and have a custom art card, favorite Slime toy or other memorabilia signed.

A Pokémon tourism booth promoting the Galar region will also be present:

Leading up to the launch of the Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield games on Nov. 15, a Galar region tourism center will be popping up at locations across the country, including its kick off at PAX West. The “Galar Visitors Center” will be located at Booth No. 1921, adjacent to the main Nintendo booth in the Washington State Convention Center, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2. At the center, fans can learn about the Galar region, take their Galar region passport photo and receive one-of-a-kind items, like Galar travel brochures and postcards, while supplies last.

Fans of the Zelda series can participate in an on-site scavenger hunt and receive a one-of-a-kind pin:

Gamers interested in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening will be able to take part in an on-site scavenger hunt based on the upcoming game. More details will be revealed on the Nintendo of America Twitter account during PAX West, so participants need to make sure they follow along to receive further instruction. Finishing the scavenger hunt (and completing all of its challenges) will earn participants a one-of-a-kind pin collection inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, while supplies last.

Last of all is an opportunity to receive a special Luigi's Mansion 3 collectible lapel pin if you check into the Nintendo booth with a MyNintendo QR Code. Visit the MyNintendo website to get more information about this.

Director of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield Shigeru Ohmori takes us on a tour through a previously unseen town in the Galar region.

Think you can handle more updates on Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield?

Additional effects have been added to this game footage.

The Pokémon Trading Card Game continues to eVolve with Pokémon V! Get ready for this exciting new mechanic, Trainers.

Pokémon fans, get ready to catch them all.

In June 2020, there will be a two-day Pokémon-inspired pop-up bar in Montreal, according to a press release. Fans will be able to indulge in Pokémon-inspired burgers and cocktails as they participate in various live-action games and activities.

As well as a stop in Montreal, the PokéBar will also be taking place in various locations around the United States and the United Kingdom. The pop-up is advertised to be the first of its kind and will take place in Montreal June 20 and 21.

Fans can expect to take part in trivia, card battles, action stations and giant interactive games. The goal of the activities will be to win points and evolve your Pokémon. The team with the most evolved Pokémon will be crowned champs and receive various prizes.

Other smaller prizes will also be available throughout the two-day event, such as for “best dressed.”

Tickets are listed at $45, with a Pokémon-themed burger and drink included in the price of admission. A location has yet to be announced.

Limited tickets are available, but haven’t yet been listed for the Montreal event. Instead, people are asked to provide their email address to be notified for pre-sale tickets at https://www.thepokebarpopup.com.

Pokémon GO’s Water Festival Makes a Splash with Rare Pokémon, the Crabhammer Attack, and More
Dive into this year’s celebration of Water-type Pokémon in Pokémon GO.

It's time for the return of an event that makes waves each year! The long-awaited Water Festival is back from Friday, August 23, 2019, at 1 p.m. PDT until Friday, August 30, 2019, at 1 p.m. PDT, so you can look forward to finding Water-type Pokémon in Eggs, raids, Field Research, and the wild.

Out in the wild, Water-type Pokémon like Magikarp, Wooper, and Wailmer will appear more frequently. It's also a great time to head to the beach, because rarer Water-type Pokémon—including Wartortle, Poliwhirl, Lapras, Mantine, Feebas, Piplup, Finneon—will appear more often around water. If you're really lucky, you might even encounter a Shiny Carvanha or Shiny Barboach! You'll get double the usual Candy from hatching Eggs, too, and Water-type Pokémon will be more likely to hatch than normal.

Pokémon like Blastoise, Lapras, and Vaporeon will appear in Raid Battles during this event. The three Legendary Pokémon associated with the lakes of Sinnoh—Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf—will also be making a return to five-star raids in their respective regions for one hour on Wednesday, August 28, 2019, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. local time. Plus, Kingler and Crawdaunt will be more fun to use in battle than ever because they'll be able to learn Crabhammer, a Water-type Charged Attack that hasn't been available in Pokémon GO till now.

Enjoy a week of adventures during the Water Festival, Trainers. And don't forget to set a Water-type Pokémon as your buddy throughout the event—you'll only have to walk half the usual distance to earn Candy if you do!

https://www.polygon.com/pokemon/2019/8/1...st-suicune

Last week, Pokémon Go players were challenged to complete as many Field Research Tasks as possible to try to unlock bonuses. With all four of the missions completed, a bunch of sweet Stardust-based perks have activated now until Aug. 20 at 4 p.m. ET.

The bonuses include:

- one-hour Star Pieces
- tripled hatch Stardust
- tripled raid Stardust
- tripled catch Stardust

These rewards are great if you need dust to power up your Pokémon. To make the best of it, consider popping a Star Piece and walking around your local Pokémon Go spot. Do some raids, catch some Pokémon, and hatch some eggs to get some serious dust.

The completion of these missions also means that the Legendary water-type Suicune will return to raids on Aug. 17 at 4 p.m. in your local time. The water dog will also be able to be caught Shiny, if you’re lucky.

With that ends all the challenges and the Pokémon Go Fests for now, but that means that new Special Research Tasks with Jirachi are likely just around the corner.

Mark your calendars, Trainers. The seeds are being planted for an amazing Pokémon GO Community Day featuring Turtwig!

Boost your deck’s strength with powerful new TAG TEAM Pokémon-GX, including the Psychic-type duo Mewtwo & Mew-GX!

Starting July 31, the Legendary Rayquaza returns to Pokémon GO Raid Battles for a limited time.

Get ready for the Pokémon GO Community Day in August, featuring Ralts! And watch out—maybe one’s already behind you!

Big trouble is arriving in the world of Pokémon GO in the form of a mysterious organization…

A new update to Pokémon Go has Team Rocket grunts popping up at Pokéstops to battle trainers.

Team Rocket grunts will battle you at a Pokéstop, similarly to how you can battle team leaders. If you win, they’ll run off and leave their Shadow Pokémon behind. From there, you can catch the Pokémon with Premier Balls, as you do in a raid. These Shadow Pokémon need to be purified on their information screens using their respective candy and dust. The button to purify sits right above the button to power them up.

Shadow Pokémon have a dark aura around them. Their CP is heavily reduced when shadowed. Shadow Pokémon also learn Return, a normal-type attack, when purified, which makes them well worth the trouble. Some players are reporting right now that purified Pokémon also appear to require less candy to evolve and less dust to power up.

The mechanics for Shadow Pokémon seem to be inspired by Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness for the GameCube. Both the games focused on taking Shadow Pokémon away from trainers who received them from a suspicious organization. In those games, you would purify the Pokémon through battling with them or using a special chamber. We’ll keep tabs on the update to see if any more new features or mechanics are hidden inside.

Enjoy even the rainiest of holidays with Pokémon GO!

https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/07/21/...-to-catch/

Pokemon Go is hosting its monthly Community Day event, complete with a new Shiny Pokemon. The popular mobile game is hosting its monthly Community Day, a three hour mini-event in which players have the opportunity to encounter a specific species of Pokemon at a boosted rate. This month's featured Pokemon is Mudkip, the Water-type Starter from the Hoenn region. As expected, players who have already participated in today's event have confirmed that the Shiny variant of Mudkip is also appearing as part of today's festivities.

Shiny Pokemon have variant coloration than their normal counterparts and are usually quite rare. Community Day is a unique opportunity to catch one of these rare Pokemon as their appearance rate is boosted during the event. As the chosen Community Day Pokemon spawns frequently during the event, it's not uncommon to encounter multiple Shiny Pokemon during the event.

- 3-on-3 co-op play
- Real-time battling system
- Powerful sync moves
- Watch the trailer to see what else awaits you in Pokémon Masters!

The Pokémon Company and Niantic continue to tease the emergence of Team Rocket in Pokémon Go, and now there's a lot more evidence that the evil team is coming to the popular mobile game. And it seems they'll be coming sooner rather than later.

A few screenshots featuring Team Rocket Grunts are now uploaded in the iOS page for Pokémon Go. There's a shot of a female Team Rocket Grunt in front of a PokeStop saying it's fun to steal items from it. There's a second screenshot with a trainer taking on the Grunt in a trainer battle.

The official Pokémon Go iOS description even has this line mentioning Team Rocket's inclusion.

NEW! Team GO Rocket has invaded the world of Pokémon GO! Battle with Team GO Rocket Grunts as you restore PokéStops and rescue Pokémon.

The next piece of evidence comes from a recent data mine from renownedPokémon Go data miner Chrales who found the quest dialogue for Team Rocket and the Shadow Pokémon that was found in the game's code in late June.

The quest line reveals that you'll have to find and defeat the Team Rocket Grunts in PokeStops and take care of the Shadow Pokémon they use.

By purifying these Shadow Pokémon, Frustration will be replaced by the move Return. Both attacks will be included in Pokémon Go for the first time. Chrales also found a list of Shadow Pokémon that can be found in this quest line. Here's a list of Shadow Pokémon found in the game's code:

-- Bulbasaur line
-- Charmander line
-- Squirtle line
-- Weedle line
-- Rattata line (Alola Rattata line)
-- Zubat line
-- Oddish line
-- Venonat line
-- Psyduck line
-- Growlithe line
-- Poliwag line
-- Abra line
-- Grimer line (Alola Grimer line)
-- Drowzee line
-- Cubone line (Alola Marowak)
-- Hitmonchan
-- Scyther line
-- Electabuzz line
-- Magmar line
-- Magikarp line
-- Lapras
-- Snorlax
-- Dratini line
-- Mareep line
-- Houndour line
-- Larvitar line
-- Mudkip line
-- Seedot line
-- Ralts line
-- Cacnea line

This list includes more Pokémon than the one found in the June datamine, but the interesting part of this is the inclusion of Mudkip. This Sunday, Mudkip will be the spotlight Pokémon for the next Community Day so Team Rocket may arrive a few days before.

We'll be sure to update when the Team Rocket quest goes live.

Pokemon Go's dull trainer battles were all about tapping the screen to power up your Charged Attacks, but developer Niantic has spiced things up with its latest update. Now you'll have to do some Fruit Ninja-style swiping to charge them, which sounds much more engaging.

The mobile megahit's appraisal system has been improved, too -- you'll be able to see bars showing your Pokemon pals' Individual Values. The previous system was a little unclear, much meant lots of people resorted to IV calculator apps.

"Trainers, two feature revamps are coming to Pokemon Go!" Niantic tweeted. "We are rolling out an updated appraisal system to give you more detailed information on your Pokemon's stats, and will soon be updating the Charged Attack mechanic in Trainer Battles."

The update notes revealed that you'll also be able to battle Team Go Rocket grunts. You then can catch and purify shadow Pokemon they abandon -- basically adding a whole new gameplay element.

Niantic noted via email that the update is rolling out for iOS and Android, and CNET confirmed that it's available on iOS in the US and UK.

If you're looking for more reason to jump back into Pokemon Go, there's a Mudkip Community Day on Sunday. The cute water-dweller first appeared as a starter in 2003's Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, and they'll spawn en-masse in Go from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. local time. You're more likely to run into a shiny Mudkip during this time, and evolving Marshtomp (its second form) up to an hour afterward the event will get you a Swampert with a special move.

Let’s Go Pokemon Mobile is not an official pocket monsters game, but you wouldn’t know that from the amount of attention it’s been receiving lately. The knockoff has been a huge conversation piece for the Pokémon community over the last week, largely due to a wider controversy involving Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield.

To make a long story short, Pokémon Sword and Shield won’t incorporate every monster in the wider compendium, and this bit of news has drawn ire from fans who take the “gotta catch ‘em all” motto to heart. Game Freak explained that it was cutting down the list of overall creatures because the developer wanted to give models higher-fidelity animations. It’s a sound development decision, except that some incensed players have taken that statement as a weak excuse. The result is that now every time some new Pokémon footage is released, players will highlight supposedly lackluster animations, or point out what seem to be “recycled” movements.

While much of this chatter lacks nuance and doesn’t consider the complicated realities of game development, it’s also a conversation that refuses to die. The latest flare-up in this unfortunate debacle is the surfacing of a knockoff that, at first glance, appears to have more lush animations than those in Sword and Shield.





Footage showing off battle animations from this unofficial game have gone viral on Twitter, with confused fans wondering how it is that a fan-developed game could possibly surpass the offerings of a real Pokémon game.

“Blastoise just shot out of its cannons,” one YouTube commenter noted. Pokémon games, by contrast, have Blastoise spurting water from his general head area, which makes no sense when you consider that the design has literal water cannons. “The animation is far above the qualifications of mainline Pokémon games,” the commenter continued.

What’s ironic about this conversation is that it ignores a large chunk of what actual Pokémon developers have to contend with. A knockoff game doesn’t have to design new monsters, moves, or models. Fans are also ignoring that the knockoff game doesn’t have the full compendium of monsters either, so of course it’s theoretically easier to devote more resources to all sorts flourishes. In short, people are praising the production of a game that was only possible using Game Freak’s new pared-down design philosophy.

But the kicker is this: the fancy animations that so many people are complimenting? Well, the bootleg game doesn’t seem to have entirely come up with them either, as noted by Twitter user Lewchube.

Pokkén Tournament is a fighting game, and that genre of video game necessitates in-depth animations that can clearly communicate the differences between dozens of moves. Pokkén also has a limited roster, which allows its developers to flesh out its characters in ways that Game Freak probably never could, at least not with nearly a thousand monsters to account for. The same is true of clips that purport to show “better” animations from old Nintendo 64 Pokémon games — these also had much smaller rosters than what’s in modern games. But regardless, the bootleg game isn’t definite evidence that Game Freak is pulling a fast one on fans.

All the same, the furore around Pokémon Sword and Shield continues a month later. Community members are growing weary of all the in-fighting. The Pokémon fandom isn’t in a great place right now, but if there’s one slight upside to all of this, it’s that we’re having more conversations about what game development actually entails. Now if fans could stop harassing the general @Pokemon social media feeds — those poor social media managers aren’t even a part of Game Freak!