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Christmas Pikachu and second-gen babies show up in ‘Pokémon Go’

The much desired, hotly anticipated and regularly rumored new Pokémon for the mobile app Pokémon Go are finally here. Players around the world can now get their tapping fingers on the likes of Pichu, Togepi, Igglybuff, Elekid, and Cleffa, among others, as well as a special Christmas version of Pikachu.

To date, Pokémon Go has been limited to first-generation Pokémon — the pocket monsters found in the original Pokémon Red and Blue/Green. However, with many more generations of Pokémon to potentially add, fans began eagerly awaiting some of their favorites from later game releases and now they’re finally here.

This isn’t a full generational release, however, and most of the newly available Pokémon do only seem to be appearing from random egg hatches, but they are there. Announced Pokémon include Pichu, Togepi, Cleffa, Magby, Igglybuff, Tyrogue, Elekid, and Smoochum. These are all classed as “baby” Pokémon from the second-generation games: pre-evolutionary forms of other Pokémon.

A number of these have been confirmed in-game by fans over at the Pokémon Go subreddit, though some are still proving elusive.

One Pokémon that many are hoping to find is the special Christmas Pikachu. Only available until December 29, the little electric rat comes complete with a Christmas hat. There are even some claiming that the hat carries over to its evolved form, Raichu, making it a real limited edition Pokémon that long-time fans of the game will want to find before it’s gone for good.

As nice as these additions to the game are though, there are some who are a little disappointed. There have been rumors and speculation about the second-generation Pokémon release in Pokémon Go for the past few weeks, with many suggesting we could see the entire additional 100-plus Pokémon from the original Silver and Gold games.

That still hasn’t happened as of yet, but considering this initial release is starting to introduce Pokémon from that generation, the rest may well follow in short order.

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Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
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