Pokémon Go Fulfilled Its 2015 Trailer Promise. Fans Are

On 10th September 2015, Pokémon Go's reveal trailer ended with a scene that felt like pure fantasy: hundreds of players flooding Times Square to battle Mewtwo together, phones raised, the city's billboards consumed by a single raid. Last night, Scopely Explore (formerly Niantic Labs) made it real. Over 1,000 players gathered in the heart of New York, the screens went dark, and Mega Mewtwo Y appeared across every billboard in sight.

It took ten years, but the trailer's final promise has been fulfilled. And the reaction has been split right down the middle.

"That moment in the trailer has been a guiding light for us," said Ed Wu, President at Scopely Explore, in an interview covered by VGC. "It does feel a little bit like fulfilling our promise." The event counted down through each year of Pokémon Go's life, spawning legendary Pokémon from each era before culminating in two community raids against Mega Mewtwo Y. Players raised and lowered their phones to land the final blow, caught the Mewtwo with a Master Ball instead of the usual Premier Ball, and walked away with a guaranteed "hundo": a Mewtwo with perfect Individual Values, the best possible stat combination in the game.

I covered the hundo controversy in my previous piece, and the backlash has only intensified since the event itself played out. The problem isn't that Scopely threw a spectacular party. By all accounts, the spectacle was incredible. Eurogamer's on-the-ground reporter described it as being "transported back to the magical Pokémon Go summer of 2016." The problem is who got invited and what they took home.

1,000 Invites, Millions Left Out

The event wasn't publicly announced until the day it happened. Many of the roughly 1,000 attendees, including content creators and community ambassadors, had received invitations in advance. Everyone else found out via social media posts after the fact. The reward for showing up wasn't a cosmetic badge or an exclusive background. It was a perfect-stat Mewtwo, one of the most coveted catches in the entire game.

"I think this achieved the exact opposite of what Pokémon GO should be celebrating," one player wrote in response to the game's official X account. "An anniversary should bring the community together, not leave us out." On Reddit, another user put it more bluntly: "The decision by Scopely to do this has seemingly annoyed a lot of people because they've basically shown a few people are worth more than the majority of the playerbase."

What makes this sting is that Scopely already knew how to do this right. Just last month, Pokémon GO Fest 2026: Chicago gave attendees a Mega Mewtwo with an exclusive event background, a cosmetic distinction that didn't affect stats. Nobody complained about that. The difference between a unique visual flex and a guaranteed perfect Pokémon is enormous in a game where players spend years hunting hundos through random encounters. Handing one to a curated guest list, on the game's 10th birthday no less, turns a celebration into a reminder of who matters and who doesn't.

I keep coming back to the irony of it. The original trailer's entire pitch was that Pokémon Go would be for everyone, everywhere. You didn't need a ticket or an invitation. You just needed a phone and a reason to go outside. Recreating that trailer's climactic moment and then gating the best reward behind an invite list is a strange way to honour that vision. A perfect Mewtwo as a cosmetic-only trophy, or even a near-perfect one available through a global raid challenge, would have generated the same headlines without the resentment.

As reported by Destructoid, Scopely has been contacted for comment on why the event was invitation-only, how attendees were selected, and why a guaranteed hundo was chosen over a cosmetic reward. No response has been given yet. The game's 10th anniversary celebrations continue this weekend with Pokémon GO Fest 2026: Global, which will be free for all players for the first time and will feature the worldwide release of both Mega Mewtwo X and Mega Mewtwo Y through Super Mega Raids. If Scopely wants to reset the tone after this week, making that global event generous would be a good start.