The Pokémon World Championships Have Come To An End With New Project Details Revealed During The Closing Ceremonies

Video Games

Aug 22

Pokemon Championshps winners — Image source: The Pokémon Company

This year’s Pokémon World Championships have come to an end. Champions have been crowned, and excitement is coming down from very high. 4 AM Eastern start times meant losing out on seeing half the play day as sleep schedules went unadjusted. It was challenging to track individuals’ stories, but what was seen was intense. Only the main VGC and the trading card game championship have Junior divisions, so the spinoff games only have Seniors and Masters divisions. With competitors in Sword and Shield, the trading card game, Unite, Go, and Pokken Tournament, there are dozens of players coming home with trophies for coming in the top 3, but who was the best of the best in the respective games and divisions?

This year marked the unfortunate final year of the Pokken Tournament at Worlds, and from what’s been said by spectators, the vast reactions during matches mean the event is losing something special by leaving it behind. The 2022 Seniors World Champion is Fruitprime, and the Masters World Champion is Shadowcat. While this was the final event for Pokken Tournament, this was the first Worlds for Pokémon Go, which despite its 2016 debut did not introduce the Go Battle League for player-versus-player battles until January 2020. Its inaugural Seniors World Champion is MEWeedle from the United Kingdom, and its first Masters Champion is DancingRob from Germany. Pokémon Unite launched around this time last year, and it only has one champion, a team of five: BLVKHVND, consisting of Slashcan, Overlord98, Junglebook, Kyriaos, and Elo, four Americans and a Canadian. For the Trading Card Game, Rikuto O. from Japan won Juniors, Liam H. from the US won Seniors, and Ondrej Škubal is the Masters division World Champion.

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Pokemon World Championships art — Image source: Pokemon.com

In the highest-profile realm, the Video Game Championships, Sword and Shield have their only competitive year. With its November 2019 launch, the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out two of the years the eighth generation games would be used for the event. It was Dynamax and Gigantamax’s time to shine. The next and ninth generation games, Scarlet and Violet are on the horizon and release this November. The winners here were Japan’s Kosaku Miyamoto in Juniors and Yasuharu S in Seniors, and Portugal’s Eduardo Cunha as Masters Division VGC Champion! Congrats to everyone!

The closing ceremony not only gave the winners a bigger moment as winners but promised news for the Trading Card Game and Scarlet and Violet. And it was delivered! First, they announced that ex would be returning and be the standard format for the 2023 competitive Trading Card Game season. Then, we got our second Scarlet and Violet trailer this month, this one more battle-focused, which is appropriate for the occasion. It first reveals a new Pokémon, Cyclizar, a Dragon- and Normal-type highly suspected to be related to Miraidon and Kuraidon, the cover legendaries. Cyclizar was showcased with a new move, Shed Tail, which creates a substitute before switching out with a Pokémon in the party, essentially U-turn with Substitute instead of a damaging attack. Next, the new item Mirror Herb took effect as held by a Cetitan, which copies an opponent’s stat increase when consumed. Two further battles are shown utilizing Terastalization, first, a Tera Coalossal uses its Water Tera Orb to make a Water-type move ineffective and activate its ability. In another, a Tera Tyranitar becomes Ghost-type to gain immunity to a normally super-effective Fighting move. It also uses Tera Blast, a move whose type depends on the user’s Tera Type. A Grass-type Tera Breloom used Bullet Seed to showcase another newly held item, Loaded Dice, which makes multi-hit moves more likely to hit additional times.

Finally, the location of the next World Championships was announced. Following a cute fake-out that it would be taking place in the Pokémon world’s own Vermilion City, it was revealed that it would be held in its inspiration city, Yokohama, Japan. It will be the first time the Championships would be held in the franchise’s home country. Pokémon Sword and Shield are set to be released on the Nintendo Switch on November 18, 2022.