Pokémon Go’s best new gen two monsters to keep an eye on

After easing its way into the second generation of monsters late last year, Pokémon Go is finally heading to Johto. Eighty new Pokémon will be found in the wild starting later this week, but those who never got around to Pokémon Gold and Silver may be completely unfamiliar with the new finds. That’s a shame, because gen two has some of the coolest Pokémon in the series.

We won’t run through all 80 of the new monsters, but here’s a sampling of what Pokémon Go players can expect to see crop up starting this week.

The starters

Every Pokémon generation has its trio of monsters that new trainers must choose from at the start of their journeys. In gen two, those are the grass-type Chikorita, fire-type Cyndaquil and water-type Totodile.

Players will have to find these guys roaming around the wild in Pokémon Go, however. Hopefully they’ll be a bit easier to find than the first generation of starters.

The Eeveelutions

Eevee is one of the most popular first-gen Pokémon. Part of what makes it so beloved is that it has so many different evolutions — everyone can pick their personal favorite. Players discovered neat tricks to ensure they got their evolution of choice out of the original three from gen one, but getting the pair of Eeveelutions introduced in gen two should come with a new set of challenges.

The Pokémon Company

That pair is the dark-type Umbreon and psychic-type Espeon. In Gold and Silver, getting an Eevee to evolve into one of these involved having a strong relationship with the Pokémon and making sure it evolved at either nighttime (for Umbreon) or daytime (Espeon). It’s possible that Pokémon Go will introduce special items to replace this method, or that players will find their own crafty method to ensure they get their faves.

New forms of old favorites

Several other new Pokémon introduced in the second generation of games evolve from OG monsters. That should make them highly coveted by big fans of Pokémon Go, and they’re also a big reason the game’s getting a ton of new evolutionary items.

These Pokémon are Scizor, a steel-type that evolves from the popular bug-type Scyther; Crobat, who comes from Golbat; Politoed, a new evolution for Poliwhirl; and Slowking, who requires a King’s Rock item and a trade in the original games in order to evolve from Slowpoke. Players of Gold and Silver who wanted fellow newcomer Kingdra needed to trade Seadra while it held a Dragon Scale.

There’s also Steelix, Blissey and Bellossom, who evolve from Onix, Chansey and Gloom, respectively. Last but not least is Hitmontop, who evolves from fellow second-gen newbie Tyrogue.

Speaking of Tyrogue ...

Tyrogue was one of the only so-called baby Pokémon we didn’t receive in Pokémon Go’s first new Pokémon update. The fighting-type can evolve into one of three different Pokémon, depending on its attack and defense stats. These include Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan, whom are well-known among original Pokémon players. Hitmontop is the third option, and we’d expect to see both it and its pre-evolution in the game going forward.

What about the legendaries?

We still haven’t even seen most of Pokémon Go’s first-gen legendary Pokémon, give or take an Articuno. We’re not sure that the 80 new monsters coming to the game this week will include Johto’s rare Pokémon, but we sure hope they’ll be in the mix soon enough.

The Pokémon Company

Pokémon Gold and Silver’s most hard-to-find monsters include respective cover stars Ho-Oh and Lugia, but more exciting are the legendary dogs. Raikou, Entei and Suicune were notoriously hard to track down in the original Game Boy games, as they literally roamed the entire region until players managed to force them into a Poké Ball. These dogs would somehow manage to run from one corner of the map to the other in record time, making them nearly impossible to catch without some serious effort.

We’d love to see that mechanic replicated in Pokémon Go, although considering the game is dependent on real-world geography, that ... may be extremely difficult.

There’s at least 225, and more to see

Roughly 225 Pokémon are now in Pokémon Go as of the new update. The first and second generations of games had a total of 251 Pokémon between them, meaning not everyone will be represented. Still, this is a major jump in collectibles that may get players excited to start catching ‘em all again.

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