Team Rocket Comes To Pokemon Go, Along With New Types Of Pokemon

The never-bumbling, always-competent members of Team Rocket are now live inside Pokemon Go, courtesy of the game's latest update. And they brought a few friends, too.

IGN writes that select PokeStops in the world of Pokemon Go are now blocked off by a lone Team Rocket "grunt," with their markers colored black to signal the change (as you see in this Twitter user's photo). It'll be your job, fearless Pokemon Trainer, to run them out of town by defeating them in battle. Do so, and these grunts will take off, leaving what are called "Shadow" Pokemon in their place. From there, you can capture these Shadow Pokemon with a Premier Ball and either dispel their darkness using stardust or candy — thus turning them into "Purified" Pokemon — or leave them in their Shadow forms.

By all accounts, it seems more advantageous to transform your Shadow Pokemon into their Purified versions. And that's a real shame; we would've loved to command a dark, brooding collective of soulless Pokemon. They'd be far more intimidating than having a Pikachu jump out of a Pokeball looking all cute.

We're not quite sure if Team Rocket's presence inside Pokemon Go is a limited-time thing or if the group will be sticking around for a while. The official Pokemon Go Twitter account has been playing dumb about the "discolored PokeStops," so we suspect Niantic wants the news to propagate organically for a bit before the studio eventually confirms what's going on and offers up more details.

As soon as we come across more info about Team Rocket's time inside the game and how long players have to nab these new Pokemon types, we'll let you know. In the meantime, there's also a Pokemon Go/One Piece crossover event happening right now, featuring a Straw Hat Pikachu that can be captured. So while you're hunting for Team Rocket PokeStops, keep an eye out for a certain little critter in a hat. He's out there somewhere.