Pokémon GO Leak Hints At Gen 3 For Upcoming Halloween Event

Are they going to roll out generation III piece-by-piece like they did with the babies in generation II? I hated that.

Just noticed, I believe that trainer is wearing a Mimikyu hat.

@wiggleronacid looks that way!

Nice. But I hope they make them spawn in the wild instead of exclusively from eggs like they did with the Gen2 babies launch.

@Damo That's Dusclops, not Dusknoir. Dusknoir is a 4th Gen Pokemon.

If they're going to maintain the game long-term, they're going to need to take the addition of gen 3 slow... otherwise interest will quickly drop again.
A handful at a time with increased spawns as part of an event would be perfect... it'll keep pulling people back to the game while giving Niantic time to properly balance everything.

I think the problem with the babies was that eggs are too restricting (the same was true for the Ash-hat Pichu)... you had no way of seeking out the Pokemon you were after and hatch speed was limited by how many incubators you had, with the need to buy extras being off-putting... wild spawns should avoid that problem (although I'm still worried about witch-hat Pichu).

@FriedSquid I got confused when I read Dusknoir! If they dropped two gens on the same day I'd be way more tempted into redownloading...

There would have been only 4 ghost-type Pokémon with Gen 1 and 2 combined so this is good news.

So they're finally putting good Pokemon in?

Where's Dusknoir?

This makes me realise I haven’t played Pokemon go in a full year since last Halloween where I got a gengar. That’s sad.

Witch hat Pikachu? Where's witch hat Gardevoir?

Sing along. You know you want to.
Looking at you, @ThanosReXXX.

Players all around this mad world,
don't you want to see this unfold?

Come with us and you will see,
trainers playing GO on Halloween!

This is Halloween, this is Halloween,
trainers logging on after a year!

This is Halloween, everybody make a scene,
fail to get Suicune and drown in tears!
It's our gym, everybody scream,
unless you're in our same team.

I am the update, I'm under your bed,
a message all written in red!

I am the one hiding under your stairs,
looking for a Ditto? It's not there.

This is Halloween, this is Halloween,
Halloween! Pokéstops! More EXP! And more ghosts!
It's good fun, but beware,
in November the fun won't be there!

In this game, don't we hate it now?
Everybody's waiting for the next gen, wow.

Round that corner, just beware not to trespass!
Something's waiting now to pounce, you dumb- [Mudbray cry]

Scream! This is Halloween,
red 'n' black, the warn is here!

Aren't you bored?
Well, that's just fine.
Play it once, play it twice,
spin the Stop and roll the dice,
get useless items in the dead of night!

Everybody scream, whatever's your team.
In our night of Halloween.

I'm the avatar without a face,
was in the model, gone without a trace.
I am the "what" when you ask, "Error?"
I am the vow not to play anymore.
I am the shadow on the moon at night,
more fun to stare at than the game? I might.

This is Halloween, this is Halloween.
Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!

Today Gen III everywhere,
tomorrow the good spawns won't be there.

That's Niantic's job, they're not mean.
At least not during Halloween.

In this town...

Don't we love it now?

Everyone's waiting for the next surprise.

Legendaries might catch you in the back,
snap out of balls, flee,
make you tear away your skin,
this is Halloween, everyone scream,
won't ya please make way for a very special guy...

Our man Hanke is king of the pumpkin patch,
everyone pay for more Poké Balls now,
this is Halloween, this is Halloween,
Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!

In this town, in this age,
everyone boo Hanke off the stage.

La la-la la, Halloween! Halloween!
La la-la la, Halloween! Halloween!
La la-la la, Halloween! Halloween!
La la-la la (La la la)...

@AlexSora89 (Tips hat in reference)
Well done, young padawan, well done...

Never thought I'd be dragged into a Pokemon article, though...

@ThanosReXXX
What can I say, (Nintendo) life is just weird that way!
... no wonder you have a literal, raging crush on death instead.

@AlexSora89 Nah, no crush, just trying to romance her into leaving me the heck alone, so I can become the oldest man ever known on this ugly little mud ball called Earth...

@ThanosReXXX
A Thanos with no one to love... is an even madder titan.
Forgive me while I shudder at the thought.

@AlexSora89 Yup. Unfortunately, he and I are a lot alike at the moment, so yeah, I'm angry sometimes as well.

Then again: it always beats the Hulk's "I'm always angry"...

@ThanosReXXX
But the Hulk is advantaged.
Speaking of which... I can't wait for Thor: Ragnarok to come out!

@AlexSora89 Yeah, that could be fun. The trailers sure looked good. But right now, I'm way too busy enjoying my hacked and stacked SNES Classic Mini...

@ThanosReXXX
Not gonna lie.

That thing, when hacked, coupled with the NES Mini would be the ultimate retro console...

...

... that is, unless Nintendo offers a less-prone-to-piracy alternative on Switch, but I'm still fearing the "Mini" line of consoles is shaping up to be the Virtual Console from here on out.

@AlexSora89 Well, depends on your definition of ultimate retro console. I've seen multiple videos of people putting all kinds of stuff on it, with varying degrees of success, but for me personally, putting anything else than SNES/Super Famicom games on there, just doesn't feel right, so that's what I did. I simply made it my ultimate SNES collection in a tiny box.

I also bought some extension cords, to be able to sit on my couch comfortably, and with the in the hack included controller patch, I'm able to reset it with a button combo, so no more walking over to the console for resetting...

Yeah, I'm perfectly satisfied with how it turned out.

@ThanosReXXX
Hint: if you want to do the same with handhelds, just get yourself a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. You can get all kinds of crazy emulators on that thing, and that's where I'm - slowly - playing Mother 3.

@AlexSora89 Thanks for the tip, but if you have followed me somewhat closely these past few years, you could have known that I'm not really a Sony fan, or rather: REALLY not.

And it would again also break the illusion of playing SNES games on anything other than the SNES Mini, which although small, still gives you the impression of playing on a "real" SNES.

And besides that: I've always dabbled a bit here and there with emulators on my smart phones, but after the initial rounds of play, interest faded very quickly: I just don't like it. I want a dedicated device, so either a console or a real handheld, there's simply no alternative for me.

@ThanosReXXX
My Xperia Play pretty much became the very concept of dedicated device you described, the moment I got a new phone. That thing might well be a Sony device, but trust me, for GBA emulation it's an absolute beast.

And I mean it.

@AlexSora89 Well, I'll definitely give you credit for trying, but NO ONE is EVER going to convince me to buy anything that has a Sony label on it again. They've burned me three times in the past, and like all good Americans, I apply the well known baseball rule "three strikes, you're out" for every company (or person) that screws me over.

And in my case, that's final, so no replays or second chances. Well, actually: that second chance is before the second strike...

And being a seasoned sales & marketing professional myself, you'd have to be pretty damn good (actually, MORE than pretty damn good) to be able to sell ME something...

@ThanosReXXX
They've crossed me as well by completely removing PS Store support on PSPs, which forced me to mod a refurbished PSP 2000 I gave my girlfriend, because there would be no way of actually buying the PS1 games I wanted to include as my gift to her otherwise (this dates back to last St. Valentine's Day).
So yeah, they stopped caring about their userbase ever since figuring out they were leading the current console competition.
"This is for the players" my donkey.
(For the record, Nintendo and Microsoft are playing catch-up and this is doing nothing but making their consoles user-friendly as they've never been.)

@AlexSora89 Their slogan should be: "this is for the payers"...
Funny coincidence: I've been reading up today on several articles (and watched a YouTube video on the subject as well) about how gaming is actually more and more being ruled (and ruined) by micro-transactions and pay-to-win initiatives.

Gone forever are the days when we just got a complete game day one, albeit with some bugs sometimes. Some of these bugs actually being either quite useful or funny.

I truly am glad that I lived to see those times, but I'm also quite sad that I'm here to witness the definite decline of the gaming industry as we used to know and love it. I've seen and witnessed it all live, from playing Pong on a black & white portable TV to the current generation, and although I truly LOVE the scope of modern games and how they look and how they CAN be of great quality, I also loathe in equal amounts what the industry, led by EA and Activision/Blizzard, is becoming.

It is definitely giving me more and more reasons to become a true retro gamer instead of going along with the current flow. Probably the main reason (besides finances) why I haven't jumped into this generation yet.

I truly hope that more gamers worldwide will speak out against practices like these, so we can once again have a gaming environment that is truly there "for the players", instead of for the lazy a*holes that just open their wallets to win.

Unlocking stuff with your own skills was just so much more rewarding, back in the day... (sighs)

@ThanosReXXX
I'll return your puntastic service by saying this - back in the day we got complete games day one, but by now what we get is so incomplete that we get to complete games day one.

See what I did there?

But sure, DLC opened the floodgates and the possibility of making us pay for the smallest of things was way too tempting to resist.

@AlexSora89 Well, to be fair: as I already said, and as we all know, there were plenty of bugs in games back then, but somehow they weren't as invasive (well, most of the time) or so ever present as they are now, and huge day one patches are apparently to be seen as something completely normal, which I find absurd, to put it lightly, but it is the (gaming) world we're in now, whether we like it or not...

@ThanosReXXX
Not everyone can be Yacht Club Games these days...

@AlexSora89 True. Luckily, we still have Nintendo, showing the world how it's supposed to be done. Really looking forward to Mario Odyssey. Hopefully, I'll have enough reserves left in a few months to get a Switch...

@ThanosReXXX
So I'm not alone in my current inability to get one! I shouldn't be happy to hear it, but it helps me... how could I say it, cope?

@AlexSora89 Yeah, I can relate to that. For me personally, it's mostly just a matter of sometimes having to give myself a reality check and making myself realize that I just can't always get what I want, or at least not all at once.

Real life often takes precedence over gaming life at my age, and being my own boss definitely has its challenges: business hasn't been that good lately, so money is tight right now.

And besides that, I've had to assist my father with several things after my mother's passing a couple of months ago.

And right now, I've got a nasty flue, so I guess my body has finally caught up with me/given up, probably due to all the stress of the last couple of months...

All of that isn't exactly doing anything for my monthly income, which is why I said earlier that I'm hoping to have enough reserves left to treat myself to a Switch for the end of year holidays, but it definitely isn't certain that I will be able to, and then there's of course the Christmas presents for the family, so whatever is left might not be all that much.

And of course the monthly bills, that keep on coming and don't give a flying f*** if you're business is going well or not.

Oh well, other than the flue, I'm alive, living in a first world country, and I've got a hacked SNES Mini to comfort me...

@ThanosReXXX
Really saddened by the crap you're going through. No jokes here. But your last sentence really gave me a needed reality check as well.

Yep. Living in the first world in general is a benefit we often - if not flat-out always - take for granted when we shouldn't, and don't feel grateful for when we should.

This is not rhetoric meant to, you know, descend into the usual "you call it piracy, we call it freedom" devil's advocate kind of thing. It's just that, outside of the screen reading "PAUSE", you realize that, all of a sudden, there's like, a world there. Out there there's a breathing, living world that either can't wait to show us what's great about life, or wants us to reach for a gun. Sometimes both, because existence is just weird that way.

Real life dictates the rules and the circumstances gaming has to adapt to in order to fit in, not the other way around.

Which - creepily enough - brings us to the whole point of this very article: Niantic taking for granted we can get out of our home whenever Pokémon GO wants us to, and enforcing their ban-fest just to make a point. Methinks the shrinking userbase is making even more of a point, so Niantic should stop playing their - metaphorical - game, or whatever they feel like calling it.

@AlexSora89 Thanks for the moral support. And as it so happens, such is life, I'm about to be called by a guy from NetApp, who contacted me via LinkedIn yesterday, with a VERY interesting proposition, so life might get a bit better, if I can strike a deal with him...

As for Pokémon: ever since I played the Game Boy Color games, my interest has slowly decreased with each outing. I had some fun with the spin-offs on N64, GameCube and the Wii, but other than that, they're really not my thing anymore, which was also why I wondered, in my original comment here, why I was dragged into the topic.

But that was before I realized it was probably just because of your re-purposed song lyrics, not so much because of Pokemon...

@ThanosReXXX
Glad to have helped! In that I hope to have gotten a laugh out of you.

@AlexSora89 Well, big laughs come sparingly these days, but rest assured that every time I read one of your re-imagined lyrics, it will put a genuine smile on my face. Being one myself, I very much like and appreciate creative and inventive people.

@ThanosReXXX
I'm going to relaunch my (Italian-speaking, sadly for you guys) Facebook webcomic soon, so yeah, creativity is still there.

@AlexSora89 Aha, interesting. Might be good to brush up on my Italian...

On a more serious note: I don't know what your goal is with the webcomic, but suffice to say that if you want a big(ger) audience, then you would be smart to consider doing it in English, since that will get you FAR more likes/reposts.

@ThanosReXXX
I know, but the downside to that is that I have some great competition to face in the worldwide market. Questionable Content, for starters, is a behemoth of great storytelling and character juggling.
On the other hand, I could also simply make my webcomic bilingual. But for the time being, it's just a measly Facebook page.
I'll let you know further developments on it in due time.