It’s hard to not get excited about Pokémon Go’s anniversary artwork, that usually teases a bunch of upcoming features and incoming Pokémon for the year ahead, but as a person who has been playing the game since day one, I wanted to give a word of caution to those who believe that Paradox Pokémon, among other things, are now destined to appear soon.
In the artwork, we can see a bunch of teases to already announced upcoming things, like Aegislash, Yamper, and other missing Pokémon in-game like Mega Metagross and what appears to be some form of remote raid tease, but its the appearance of Iron Treads and Great Tusk on the right that has the internet convinced that Paradox Pokémon are coming soon.
But don’t let that fool you into thinking the tease is a guarantee; there have been multiple instances of anniversary art teasing an upcoming Pokémon or feature that never came. Even though Paradox Pokémon feel like a given at this point.
For example, 2021 revealed Mega Mewtwo in its anniversary art, and that Pokémon has still not appeared. Mega Lucario also appeared in the 2020 anniversary art, and it would take several years for it to finally appear in-game. 2023’s anniversary art showed off Hisuian Goodra, another Pokémon that is still missing. And the list goes on.
So what I’m trying to get at is. The anniversary artwork, while fantastic, is not Scopely teasing at its upcoming plans or future releases. They might have originally planned to release these things at one point, but things happen in game development that force companies to make changes. So while it’s fine to be excited, I wanted to preface some calm as I’ve seen social media explode, saying that Paradox Pokémon are 100% coming soon when they might not appear at all.
So for now, let’s wait to see if they are real or not. As the best time to announce Paradox Pokémon, if they exist, would be July 22 during the big Pokémon Presents stream that is planned to show off new information about all the mainline games.
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