Pokémon Sword/Shield – is long cat getting royalties for this?

Update:

An official trailer has confirmed the earlier leaks and added Butterfree as another pokémon with a Giantamax form, although not all of the giant-sized pokémon are automatically available.

You can only get Pikachu and Eevee if you have saved data from their versions of Pokémon: Let’s Go, implying you won’t be able to get them any other way.

Meowth also isn’t a standard option and is only available to those who buy the game before 15 January 2020, which is fairly generous given the game comes out on 15 November.


That means that the only Giantamax you can get by normal means are the three annouced previously (Corviknight, Drednaw, and Alcremie), Butterfree, and Charizard.



Butterfree is such a random inclusion it implies there’s probably a lot more yet to be revealed, very probably including Blastoise and Venusaur.

As you can see from the trailer. the Giantamax versions get extra powerful versions of one of their signature moves, as well as upgraded stats. Although it’s odd that some, like Meowth, look radically different from their original forms while Pikachu and Eevee haven’t changed nearly as much.

Original story:

You might know about Dynamax in Pokémon Sword and Shield but some pokémon can go even bigger, as images leak of Giantamax Pikachu.

One of the big (literally) new features of Pokémon Sword and Shield is that, once per battle, you can expand any pokémon to giant size using a feature called Dynamax.

Although it’s not something that’s happened in any previous games it’s a pretty common part of Sword and Shield, from what we’ve seen so far, but Gigantamax is something different.

Not much has been said about it so far, but it’s known that only certain pokémon can Gigantamax and not even all the pokémon in an evolutionary family, but thanks to the magazine leak below we now know about a lot more of them.

Previously, the only pokémon confirmed to be able to Gigantamax are new to Sword and Shield, namely Corviknight, Drednaw, and Alcremie.

But the images above clearly show Pikachu, Meowth, Eevee, and Charizard. Which in turn makes it very likely that Blastoise and Venusaur, or one of their previous evolutions, will also be able to Gigantamax.

Gigantamax-ready pokémon are rare can be caught in the new four-player Max Raid Battles in Sword and Shield’s open world areas.

As well as the physical transformation and improvement in stats, Gigantamax pokémon are the only ones that get to use a G-Max Move, which is specific to each pokémon and a powered-up version of one of their existing moves.

Pokémon Sword and Shield is due for release on Nintendo Switch on 15 November and we’ll have an exclusive hands-on preview tomorrow.



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