Pokémon Unveils New Raichu Evolution, and We're in Love

During yesterday’s Nintendo Direct, the Japanese developer and publisher unveiled plenty of new Pokémon games, including updates for the next game in the franchise.

It turns out that DLC is already on the way, despite Pokémon Legends: Z-A not launching until 16 October, and as part of that DLC campaign, we’ll get to recruit and use a new Raichu evolution that nobody saw coming.

With a teasing trailer starting with the letters ‘X’ and ‘Y’ you could have been fooled into thinking we were getting a remaster of the classic games, but no, it was a bombastic introduction to the new Raichu mega evolution.

Fans of Pikachu’s final form will get to further evolve this electric dynamo by using mega evolution, choosing between the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ forms.

The design is wonderful, with Raichu having larger, spiky ears, and an elongated tail to make the shape of the letter ‘Y.’

Of course, his ‘X’ form still features larger ears to make up the top part of the letter, but this form has two large tails swinging downwards.

It’s a canny design choice to differentiate the options, and it already has fans talking about the potential differences between the evolution options.

Over on Reddit, one fan theorises, “I'm guessing one is going to be a physical attacker while the other one will be a special attacker.”

This is backed up in the reply from another fan, who continued, “yup, X uses punches in the video, while Y uses electric attacks.”

We can’t wait to get our hands on the newest mega evolution, and one that came as a huge surprise, as it wasn’t previously noted in the big Pokémon leak of last year.

This will only be available in the paid DLC, which will emerge sometime after release of the full game, and could hint to more mega evolutions on the way.