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Team Rocket and Shadow Pokemon invade Pokemon GO

Prepare for trouble! Team Rocket and their army of Shadow Pokemon have invaded Pokemon GO!

Ozzie Mejia

July 22, 2019 5:05 PM

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Prepare for trouble!
And make it double!
To protect the world from devastation
To unite all peoples within our nation!
To denounced the evils of truth and love!
To extend our reach to the stars above!
Jessie!
James!
Team Rocket blasts off at the speed of light!
Surrender now or prepare to fight!

Meowth, that's right! Pokemon GO is about to get a little more evil, as some players are already beginning to discover. The Pokemon mobile game is now officially under siege, thanks to the forces of Team GO Rocket.

Trainers, we have an incoming message from Professor Willow: “I’ve noticed an alarming number of reports from Trainers who have found PokéStops that look...discolored?” Trainers, please report any PokéStops that look different with #PokemonGO. pic.twitter.com/oxpXR7ZlSm

— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) July 22, 2019

This cryptic tweet was soon followed by an FAQ post from the Pokemon GO website that officially names the mobile menace Team GO Rocket. These scoundrels can be found in select PokeStops. However, those PokeStops will look quite different than the standard ones. These will be colored black and feature the Team GO Rocket logo over them.

It'll be up to players around the world to recover these PokeStops from these fiends. However, they won't be alone. They'll have Shadow Pokemon under their control. Long-time series veterans will remember Shadow Pokemon from the Pokemon Colosseum games on the GameCube, where poor creatures were corrupted and under evil influence. Players had to defeat them in order to purify them and ultimately capture them to the side of good. The idea will work similarly in Pokemon GO.

The first thing to do upon finding a Team GO Rocket PokeStop is to battle the Grunt controlling it. Defeat their Shadow Pokemon and use Premier Balls to capture them. You'll only get one crack at these corrupted Pokemon, so make it count. Once Shadow Pokemon are captured, they'll remain corrupted with Frustration as their Charged Move. Use Stardust and Candy to purify these Pokemon and turn them back to normal.

Keep an eye on your copy of Pokemon GO, as the arrival of Team GO Rocket is imminent.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?