'Pokemon GO' Adding Alolan Forms Is the Best Way to Celebrate Summer

Niantic’s Pokémon GO is going tropical just in time for summer because the augmented reality game has plans to add Pokémon from the Hawaii-inspired Alola Region to the game.

Niantic announced Monday via the Pokémon GO Blog that “Alolan Forms of Pokémon Originally Discovered in the Kanto Region Are Coming to Pokémon GO!” However convoluted that announcement sounds, it’s actually pretty cool. The Kanto Region is the setting for the very first generation of Pokémon — all of which are already in Pokémon GO — but the special Alolan Forms were introduced with Pokémon Sun and Moon in 2016. Alolan Forms are regional variants that resemble the original Pokémon, but they have physical variations and also pick up alternate types and statistics, which essentially makes them entirely different Pokémon. The “Who’s That Pokémon?”-inspired image from the Pokémon GO Blog shows the silhouettes for what seems like almost every Alolan variant from Sun and Moon, which include a long-necked Exeggutor and an Ice-type Vulpix.

If we apply logic to try and explain the existence of Alolan variants, then you could explain it away as the same Pokémon genus evolving (in the Darwinian sense) differently based on the climate. In Alola, the Fire-typed Vulpix turns blue and picks up that Ice-type instead, probably because it’s already way too hot there. Dugtrio gets glorious blonde hair and looks chill-AF, like a beautiful surfer. Exeggutor becomes Grass-Dragon and gets a long-ass neck to hide among the palm trees. So it goes.

In all seriousness, the Alolan Forms from Sun and Moon were a welcome addition to an already refreshing Pokémon experience. Several Pokémon that weren’t really viable previously because of bad stats or poor typing suddenly became an option for players. And many of the Alolan forms just look really cool.

There’s no real telling exactly when the Alolan forms of Pokémon will hit Pokémon GO, but the Pokémon GO Blog promises sometime “in the coming weeks.”