Pikachu, I search for you!

If you want to be a true Pokémon Master and catch ‘em all, you have to stay diligent. Especially when you’re getting close to filling up your Pokédex, you need to be ready to spring into action when one of your last missing species appears, and so you’ll want to always be mentally prepared to start tossing Poké Balls as you wander through the mountains, forests, and yes, even the Internet.

The official Pokémon Twitter account recently put out a tweet with the message “Do a search for ‘Pikachu’ on your smartphone, and then…?” along with a quick video clip of a Poké Ball rolling onto the Google logo. Curious to see what surprises were in store, fans whipped out their phones and started Googling “Pikachu.”

At first, nothing seems to happen other than Google showing the search results for the most famous Pokémon of all. But if you wait a few seconds and scroll down just a bit, you’ll notice something appear at the bottom right corner of the screen…

…a Poké Ball?!?

Give the Poké Ball a tap, and the next thing to appear will be…

…Pikachu!

Obviously, you’re going to want to catch him, and an animated sequence will automatically start in which the Poké Ball is tossed…

…netting you your Pikachu!

It’s not just Pikachu who’s waiting to be found and caught in the Google search results, either. Currently the entire Gen-1 Pokédex, all 151 Kanto species, are part of the free mini game. You can find them by searching for them by name, and both the Japanese and English Pokémon names work. If you’re searching for them by their Japanese names, though, you’ll have to input them in Japanese text (i.e. searching for “Magikarp” will let you catch the lovable weak Water-type, but if you want to find it under its Japanese-language name, Koiking, you’ll need to do the search with the corresponding katakana text, コイキング).

What makes the mini game especially cool is that it remembers which Pokémon you’ve caught, filling in their silhouettes so you can track your progress towards the complete set. If you’re doing your searches while signed in to your Google account, it’ll even keep your progress saved between Internet browsing sessions.

This gives you essentially two different ways to play the game. If you’ve got ultimate confidence in your grasp of Pokémon lore, you could simply try to see how many Kanto Pokémon you can name from memory, searching for them off the top of your head until you draw a blank.

Alternatively, each time you catch a Pokémon you can ask for a hint about one of the species you haven’t found yet. Not only do you get a memory-jogging fact about the hinted-at species, you also get to see their silhouette, reminiscent of the “Who’s that Pokémon?” segments from the anime TV series.

There’s currently no firm word as to how long the mini game will be playable, but with 151 species to look for, one would expect that Google/The Pokémon Company are going to give us at least a week or two, and with the franchise having grown far beyond its original 151 Pocket Monsters, hopefully the rest of the Poké-pantheon will get this mini game treatment too in the future.

Source: Google via Famitsu
Screenshots taken from Google by SoraNews24
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