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Niantic has just announced the net Community Day event for Pokemon GO. For April of 2024, the creature of interest is one of the first Poison and Grass-type critters, Bellsprout. With the focus of the month once again being on a Pocket Monster from the first generation, many players are reflecting on iterations of the event that have come and gone.
While many of these Community Days have been saving graces for the featured creatures, some others have fallen flat in the eyes of the playerbase.
With this in mind, it can be fun to take a look back on Pokemon GO's history and reflect on some of the best Community Days to come to the game’s servers, featuring some of the most iconic creatures from the Kanto region.
Note: This list is subjective and solely reflects the opinions of the writer
Pokemon GO's 7 best Kanto Community Days
1) Chansey (February 2024)
Just a couple months ago, Niantic released the Chansey Community Day. While Chansey was no longer the base form of this family of Pocket Monsters from the fourth generation with the introduction of Happiny, Niantic still felt that the original normal-type HP tank deserved a celebration of its own.
While it serves much better in the main series, Blissey, Chansey's evolution, is still a popular critter in Pokemon GO as its high stamina stat allows it to sit in gyms for much longer compared to other Pocket Monsters. The recent Community Day, which made it easier for players to find the critter's shiny variant, made it even more popular.
2) Porygon (January 2024, September 2020)
Porygon and its family are often overlooked by the average Pokemon GO player. While their performance in competitive play is nowhere close to what it is in the main series, these Pocket Monsters are still beloved due to their interesting design, competitive history, and unfortunate past with other forms of Pokemon media.
With the release of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Indigo Disk DLC, Porygon and its family have returned to the main series. Since Porygon is notoriously tedious to evolve in the main series, many players used the recent Community Day Classic featuring the creature to transfer each stage of the evolution to their save files, greatly assisting their quest to complete the Pokedex.
3) Poliwag (July 2023)
Poliwag's Community Day greatly assisted the competitive viability of its evolutions. Politoed and Poliwrath were decent choices for Pokemon GO's Battle League before, but the introduction of new moves for both of these Pocket Monsters provided them with more damage and coverage, creating a bevy of new scenarios in which they can be used.
Additionally, these creatures also make an appearance in the main series titles. While Poliwrath is relatively straightforward to evolve, Politoed is one of the many critters that normally require a trade to do so. Thankfully, players can evolve them without another trainer's assistance before sending them to their console's save file.
4) Sandshrew (March 2022)
The Sandshrew Community Day was an interesting one for many players. While it is fairly common nowadays, Sandshrew's event featured both its standard form and its Alolan form. This was the first time Niantic featured regional forms in a Community Day. It was followed over a year later with Slowpoke's Community Day, which featured its regional variant as well.
Alolan Sandshrew, in particular, benefitted greatly from this event, with the evolution of its Shadow variant becoming one of the most popular Pocket monsters to be used in the Pokemon GO tournament at the Pokemon European International Championships 2024. However, the standard Sandslash also still has its fair share of fans.
5) Dratini (February 2018, November 2022)
Dratini's Community Day took place in 2018. The creature received a Community Day Classic in 2022.
Dratini might not be the rarest Pocket Monster in the game anymore, but original players will remember the excitement of running across one while out on their standard patrols.
This event also gave Dratini's evolution, Dragonite, access to Draco Meteor, one of the strongest Dragon-type moves in the game. With Dragonite being a very popular choice for players who partake in Pokemon GO's Master League, this event only solidified its place as one of the best creatures in the game.
6) Charmander (May 2018, October 2020, September 2023)
Charmander is so special that Niantic opted to give it two entirely seperate Community Days and a Community Day Classic. This was done because one of its Mega Evolutions is underpowered due to the line's initial lack of Dragon-type moves. Thankfully, this was fixed during the October 2020 rendition of its Community Day.
Now, Charizard is typically seen as being one of the best Fire-type creatures in all of Pokemon GO, thanks to its versitility and damage-dealing capacity. While Mega Charizard Y still remains the option most players stick to, it is nice of Niantic to give Mega Charizard X a fighting chance with the addition of Dragonbreath to its kit.
7) Magmar (November 2020)
November 2020's Community Day was split into two parts: one part for Magmar, and the other for Electabuzz. Where Electabuzz received Flamethrower to match its counterpart's typing, Magmar arguably got something much better with Thunderbolt, a move that covers its Water-type weakness.
While these new moves ultimately did very little to help Magmortar's viability, the event still gave players a way to get this normally hard-to-evolve creature and transfer it to their Nintendo Switch.
With Magmortar returning in The Indigo Disk, trainers who saved the creature can transfer it now to progress their Pokedex.
