Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Pokémon GO | Tagged: pokemon, pokemon go, Team GO Rocket

Remembering The Best Glitch In Pokémon GO History

Has anyone else played Pokémon GO so much for so long that they get nostalgic for the (somewhat) recent past? Niantic has changed the game quite a bit as a response to the pandemic, with much of the features that once required players to go out into the world tweaked so that they can be played from home. Let's look back to late 2019, when there was a glitch with Team GO Rocket leaders that could be exploited by dedicated checks at a real-life location. Let's look back… to the Team GO Rocket Shiny Shadow hack.

Here's what would happen. You would put on a Rocket Radar (and remember, this is pre-Rocket Balloon) and locate a Team GO Rocket Leader at a Pokéstop. You would battle and defeat the leader. When the encounter screen came up and revealed a Shadow Pokémon that wasn't Shiny… you'd run away.

The Team GO Rocket Leader would stay there the entire day. You'd be able to go back to the stop, click on the battle, and it would cut right to the encounter. Normally, this would be a fruitless task… but players began to notice that every time they went back to the encounter, the Shadow Pokémon would have a different CP.

What was happening was that every hour to an hour and a half (the time was debated, but I found an hour and a half to be the sweet spot personally), the encountered Pokémon would re-roll. Every hour and a half… you were getting a different Shadow Pokémon.

This meant that if you beat Sierra and her Absol early in the morning (Shiny Shadow Absol was my personal goal), you'd be able to revisit that encounter and get a reroll more than ten times in a day if you had the time. That turned one Shiny-capable encounter into many.

Soon after the glitch was discovered, Niantic released an update removing it from the game… but not before players all over the world, myself included, ground to get a tricky Shadow Pokémon.

Looking back to that glitch and how fun it was to experiment with reminds me how fun it was to get out in the world and play Pokémon GO. This summer, I think I'll take that memory with me and get out there and play in the world again.

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