Pikachu is Available as a Starter
Pokemon GO veterans are probably already well aware of this, but it’s worth mentioning here anyway. When you first start up the game, the tutorial will allow you to catch your first starter Pokemon. When you look at your mobile phone screen, you’ll see three available Pokemon: Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur.
However, you don’t actually have to pick any of these three Pokemon if you don’t want to. If you walk away from the three Pokemon (yes, literally walk away from them) a certain number of times, Pikachu will eventually show up on the screen, along with the other three starters. Once Pikachu shows up, you’ll be able to catch it and have it as your starter Pokemon. How neat!
You Can Choose Your Eevee Evolution
Before this Easter egg was discovered, many Pokemon GO players were under the impression that your Eevee evolution was completely random. This meant that evolving your Eevee with candy would give you one of the three evolutions randomly: Flareon, Vaporeon, and Jolteon. Unfortunately for those who wanted to complete their Pokedex, this was a bit of a headache because of the amount of luck and hard work involved in the process.
However, there’s actually a cool Easter egg that allows players to control the evolution. By naming your Eevee Sparky, Rainer, or Pyro, it will evolve into Jolteon, Vaporeon, and Flareon respectively. This is a pretty cool nod to the original anime episode with the three Eevee brothers, and it’s a nice trick for players to get the evolution they want.
Chansey Can Show Up at Pharmacies
We all know that Chansey shows up at the Pokemon Centers in the games, and is often seen with Nurse Joy when attempting to take care of injured Pokemon in the anime. Being a Normal-type Pokemon, encountering a Chansey in Pokemon GO can be a bit tricky because it’s considered pretty rare, especially when compared to other Normal-type creatures. In fact, your best chance of getting a Chansey is probably through hatching a 10km egg.
As it turns out, there is another way to increase your chances of encountering Chansey. Aside from collecting 10km eggs and hatching them, Chansey does have a higher spawn rate if you visit pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals. Given Chansey’s motherly and caring nature, it’s a nice nod to the games and the anime series to have this Pokemon show up at places related to health and recovery.
The Menu Screen Hides an Unknown Secret
This last discovered secret is still very much a mystery, and no one know what the purpose of it is just yet. If you press the Poke Ball icon on your screen and hold it down, clicking on the other icons (Pokemon, Pokedex, Items, Shop) will give off a different colored glow, and won’t take you to the corresponding menu screens.
In fact, the glows from each icon actually correspond to the colors of the different Poke Balls. Right now, players are still trying to figure out if there’s any meaning to this Easter egg, and are speculating that there has to be some color combination involved in order to reveal the through Easter egg/secret.
Try Renaming Your Charmander Before Evolving It
Do note that this particular theory/Easter egg still needs more testing before we can say it’s 100% accurate. Quite a few Reddit users have reported that renaming your Charmander ‘Zippo’ will allow it to evolve into a Charmeleon with the moves Ember and Flamethrower – another neat throwback to the anime series. If it’s 100% accurate, that is.
Right now, most of the players who have reported success with the Zippo trick have only had one Charmander to test this theory with, so it’s still highly possible that getting those two moves was simply a fluke.
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