Dratini Classic Community Day

Classic Community Days are odd. They bring back an old Pokemon from a previous Community Day and basically do it all again. For November, our classic Pokemon was Dratini, the cute little snakey dragon Pokemon. I happen to really like Dratini and Dragonair, so a chance to stock up on fresh shinies is nice. But this classic day was slightly odd.

Cute shiny, mediocre move

Dratini has one of the cutest shinies in Pokemon, especially in Gen 1. It goes a wonderful bright pink, matching its pink eyes. Dragonair is just as beautiful, and is one of my favourite Pokemon, funnily enough.

The move on the other hand isn’t great. Draco Meteor does do big damage, but it charges up very slowly. By the time you manage to charge it up, you could have already used Outrage. Draco Meteor is a really good nuke but it just pails in comparison to Dragonite’s other moves. Apparently, the only place where Draco Meteor is good is while fighting Team Rocket grunts. But even then, Outrage charges faster, and you want fast charge times against enemies that have double the combat points you have.

A Dragonite rant

Don’t mind me for a moment, I just need to talk about how I hate Dragonite. I mean, how can something so elegant and beautiful, like a Dragonair, evolve into a fat bastard Charizard who decided to eat a nest of wasps and get anaphylactic shock? The beauty, elegance and from the previous forms is just… gone…

I’ve heard theories that Magikarp and Dratini got their evolutions wrong, that the elegant snake-like fish dragon would evolve into a much larger, much more deadly Pokemon, and that Dragonite has the same little tendrils Magikarp has, but there’s no proof of this.

And to make matters worse, shiny Dragonite is puke green. Not pink like its previous forms. It’s like Garchomp’s shinies, except it happened way before Garchomp was even a concept.

Anyway, back to Dratini Day.

Funnily enough, Dratini day had something new up its sleeve.

Something completely new.

If any of you remember, back on Chikorita Community Day, after the event, strange Pokemon spawned and, when caught, they turned into Dittos. Turned out, those strange Pokemon were Meltan, a brand new mythical Pokemon, exclusive to the Pokemon Let’s GO games. Over time, Professor Willow did research and we ended up with Melmetal, a genuinely great Pokemon.

For this classic Community Day, something similar happened. Random Pokestops turned from blue to a golden yellow. Spinning one for the first time would make Professor Willow and some guy called Jacq start having a conversation, and you’d be given a gold coin. You could get more gold coins for spinning other gold Pokestops (assuming you have any nearby, which I don’t really). But the weirdest thing of all, getting a gold coin would cause a TINY Pokemon to appear and run around.

What this new Pokemon is, I don’t know. But my brother described it as “Reddit the Pokemon” and I can’t unsee that. The gold Pokestops are also great, and give out a LOT of Pokeballs. From one spin, I got 10 great balls, 2 Pokeballs and 2 ultra balls. This meant that I easily regained my spent Pokeballs while catching Dratinis.

Still, this is all very interesting, especially as Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are coming out soon…

Editor’s Note: Turns out this Pokemon is called Gimmeghoul. There’s a whole video which came about an hour ago explaining the new critter, and also suggesting a Pokemon Scarlet/Violet and Pokemon GO crossover too.