Niantic Reveals Buddy Pokémon!

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As we all know Niantic has been hard at work on making Pokémon GO better than ever, and now that the servers are stable they can start focusing on new features – Introducing Buddy Pokémon!

As revealed in a post on their official website, each trainer can pick one Pokémon to become their buddy, which gives you new in-game experiences and rewards – such as that specific ‘mons Candy. They will appear alongside you trainer in the profile screen (and technically in the overworld as well), and can be changed whenever and wherever. No official day on when this update will go live, but Niantic promises that it’ll be “just around the corner.”

So who are you going to choose as your buddy Pokémon? And what other features do you want to see in the app?

//ozymandis

 

Supporters

Nick F

Smearg

Foil Island

Conglome NERD

alcremie sundae

Radiant Blutle

Zachery

Dragoniteo

Austin John Plays

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734 thoughts on “Niantic Reveals Buddy Pokémon!”

  2. I’m so bored, so I’m going to make my own Sun/Moon story;
    ◆ The Ancients forewarned of a great catastrophe befalling the Alola region reminiscent to the Great War that took place during their time and consequently resulted in the Alola region becoming an arid desert where no life could thrive. However, thanks to the powers of Solgaleo and Lunala whom the Ancients worshipped as gods, the Alola region once again became bountiful in nature and abundant in life. However, because Solgaleo and Lunala drained themselves of their energy, they began going into a deep slumber, soon to be awoken when the next catastrophe hit. Thousands of years passed and truth became fantastical stories and these stories became legend and legend became myth until the Ancients were mysteriously wiped out and modern civilization took over. However, there are those who believe in the “myths” and have dedicated their lives to discovering and unearthing the secrets of the original Alolan people and where they went and how. Such is the leader of the soon to be created Team Eclipse. She has spent decades trying to understand the Ancients and what wiped them out in the blink of an eye and if she can stop the same thing that took the Ancients from taking the lives of the modern Alolan people. However, as she delved deeper into the mystery, mysterious forces soon began shrouding her mind until she was a mere puppet to the very thing she worked so hard to fight against.

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    • ◆ She’s working towards reviving this dark Pokemon by utilizing Solgaleo and Lunala. However, to awaken the weakened Pokemon, she needs Synergy or energy emitted by Pokemon and when Pokemon battle and such, they release more of this energy. Thus, she devised the Island Challenge to promote Pokemon battles and quicken the process of awakening Solgaleo and Lunala. To avoid suspicion, she’s puppeteered Team Skull to act as the, “bad guys” while she secretly does her duties.

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      • After B2/W2 where released i started making my own pokemon grey story, you where from nuvema town and juniper sent you on an errand to castelia city after giving you your starter, so you take a boat from the brand new nuvema seaport located west of route 1 (so technically it’s on route 17) and get to castelia. There you do the errand that juniper sent you to do and your friend/rival says that it would be fun to challenge the gyms on the way back to nuvema, so instead of riding the boat back you challenge burgh as the first gym, then lenora and then chili/cilan/cress and then finally you arrive in nuvema town where juniper thanks you for doing the errand, sees that you got yourselves three badges and suggest that you and your friend/rival keep getting badges. Thats all i had, i really didnt think of anything else for the story haha

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  4. I’m gonna play through SS again for the 5th time (It’s the best game)
    Any ideas? I’ve done a Nuzlocke twice and I’m fine doing one again, but are there any other interesting ways to play through?

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    • Maybe:
      Real villains are developers (as people have speculated) who want to destroy the wildlife in Alola for tourism. Team Skull then forms and causes havok in the region as a way to stop the destruction and deter investors and the developers from going through with their plans. This could include terrorizing cities and maybe even just sailing the seas in a pirate ship (like the one on the map). I’m not sure people would want to come vacation in this region if there are pirates running around and such. As for the legendaries, perhaps Team Skull/developers are in a race to use the power of the legendaries to destroy the other from messing with their plans, but really they’re both equally causing damage to the environment, which is where the protag comes in to stop both of them and show them the error of their ways. Sometimes people become blind when they’re after something.

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      • Or Team Skull tries to awaken Solgaleo/Lunala in an attempt to keep them safe from the destruction of the developers. But then when they awaken them, the legendaries become enraged and want to destroy the developers. So now we have to go defeat Solgaleo/Lunala before they hurt people, even though the devs aren’t innocent.

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    • I do believe that it was stated that solgaleo and lunala tie into the story in a different way from other cover legendaries in the past, im taking that as a way of saying that the whole evil team using the legendary’s power cliche is not part of the sun and moon story which in my opinion is awesome

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  6. I wish that all of the post fighting Red stuff happened after the 16th gym instead. It is such a satisfying end to the game. I don’t wanna go back at catch legendaries and battle silver again and all that

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  7. Ooo now that pokemon exclusive z moves have been revealed i think its pretty safe to assume that there will be a solgalium z and a lunalium z that unlock their respective z moves (which could be stronger versions of sunsteel strike and moongeist beam) also i think that the starters final evos will get exclusive z moves aswell based on their special abilities (quills, fire hairballs, bubbles) also i want an exclusive z move for mudsdale that is just him running towards the opponent and then kicking it which would launch the opponent into the distance while mudsdale just does that thing horses do where they get on their hind legs and neigh while flailing their front legs :3

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  9. I’m so conflicted on what game to play. Dx I want to finish my platinum nuzlocke, because I’m at the eighth gym, but one of my pokemon just died and I hate grinding, so I have to get past that. I also want to play white 2, because I’ve only played that once and I really liked it, but all this soul silver talk is starting to make me want to play that. xD Of course what I should be doing is finishing my tournament team.

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    • I had the same problem and then created a story where I was a young trainer starting out in Johto and then progress through other regions until I conquered them all. It’s pretty fun so far. I’ve gone through SS, Pt, B, X, OR and currently doing B2. It’s made the games less stale having a story

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    • Hey ithsme, I’m sorry but I won’t be joining the tournament 🙁 I just don’t have the time to make a team and prepare for the tournament. Good luck though, I will be following it!

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      • You could gen if you’re that time constrained, but if you really need to drop, then that’s okay. I probably couldn’t make it in time either if I needed to make a full team lol.

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  12. alright guys we got three days until we get some more sun and moon info from the land of Pokemon,I’m going to continue watching some long-plays to pass the time along.:)

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    • How so? I mean, I don’t have a problem with it if Nintendo is no longer making any money selling it and it is only being resold, but if you can still go on the eshop or to a store and buy the game, then it is piracy. If you could explain what you mean that’d be appriciated.

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      • Basically, you buy the game, pop it in your homebrewed 3DS and get an unencrypted ROM.

        Emulation is about how you play the game, not how you get it. In this case, emulation gets used because it provides additional benefits beyond being able to play games on your computer. It allows better graphics, different controller option, texture packs, and lot more.

        I’m an emulation freak and I still find not buying games unacceptable, but I hate when people accuse me of pirating games, my bookshelf is practically full of Nintendo games.

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        • I can agree with that. I find it fine when you actually buy the game first, I’ve done it once myself. I bought white 2 from my brother before downloading blaze black. It is piracy though when you don’t actually own the game, most of my school a few years ago downloaded fire red on their phones and started playing that, that bugged me a lot, because I actually owned a copy.

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          • Yes, I agree with that, but that’s why I also believe piracy and emulation not to be the same.
            It’s also better to just combat the spread of illegal ROMs and provide good legal alternatives instead of hampering the development of emulators.
            You should also know that programming an emulator takes usually so long that when it finally gets easy to play a game without glitches, the system is off the shelves already. It was only until 2015 that the Wii emulator could be called feature rich and the Wii U emulator is in working stages but it is far from user friendly.

          • Yeah, if the company that made the game is no longer making any money from the game than there’s a reason to emulate.

    • Yup because all of the models in the current games are actually pretty high res on their own. It’s the 3DS that’s dragging them down. What we’re actually playing is a super compressed version of what GF is making…..which is a shame………Oh well hopefully with the NX tings will change lol

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      • Yup, because it’s actually more resource intensive to create the models matching the resolution the 3DS outputs, so the underlying data is of high quality. What the 3DS actually does is taking a high res mathematical model, take some points from it which results in a low res and jagged image. But if you tell the software to take more points in between, you’ll get the smooth image that the emulator provides.

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        • Yup yup lol This is partially why when people get angry at developers for not wanting to make games for Nintendo consoles I get annoyed….It takes WAY more effort to develop a game for a lower res system when their main project is going to be much higher res.

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  16. O_O I just had a shocking revelation. When they said that “they were going back to the simplistic designs of gen 1”, they weren’t talking about the new designs, but Alola forms. They were quite literally going back to the designs of gen 1.

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  19. “Nidorina had a crush on Scrafty, so it changed her look to fit in with them and it said to be living along side Scrafty in Alola now.”

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