Welcome to the PokéCommunity Daily News Roundup for the week of March 20^th, 2017! Read this every Monday to catch up on what is hip and happening in the Pokémon world, faster than forgetting HM05!

This week: New Battle Spot Season!

Main Series

Battle Spot Season 3: Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-POWER

Battle Spot Season 3 starts tomorrow (meaning Season 2 ends today). Season 3’s “special battle” rules force all Pokémon to hold Z-Crystals!

The Mad Hatter Pikachu

Japan is finally getting Ash-Pikachu as a reward for pre-booking movie tickets. Anyone who gets me a Sinnoh hat one will be handsomely rewarded.

Mega Mewtwo’s Descent

The world can now download Mewtwo’s two Mega Stones, the Mewtwonite X and Mewtwonite Y, to their 7th Gen games. You must go to Mystery Gift and input the Serial Code M2DESCENT to claim your lovely party gift. This distribution has no stated end time. They currently can’t be used on Battle Spot, but that will be fixed soon.

Competition Rewards: Making Mawile (and Beedrill) Great Again

For those who joined the International Challenge February, your lovely participation prize of a Mawilite and a Beedrillite is now ready. Because it is SO HARD TO FIND (I spent a good 6ish hours looking for it), click this link to find your code (if you were in the competition).

Those who didn’t participate get the privilege of patiently suffering for yet another month without the cutest Mega Evolution, but you will get it sometime in April. For now, these Mega Stones can only be used in unranked Battle Spot battles, but that will change the next time the Ranked season turns over on March 21st.

Cocoa-colored Koko

A Shiny black Tapu Koko is coming to a bunch of stores that aren’t near you unless you live in Japan! Japanese players can start to collect a Lv60 Shiny Koko from March 12th to April 9th from a bunch of different places, including but not limited to Seven Eleven and the Pokémon Center stores.

Rare Candy!

If you completed five GTS trades during the 3rd Global Mission, you can download five Rare Candies and a Friend Ball via serial code obtained from the Global Link (click on that to find your code if logged in) at any point between now and March 30th. Codes for the 4th mission will likely be distributed later this week.

Banknium Z

Pokémon Bank customers can download a Mewnium Z to their 7th Gen games. This distribution runs until October 17th.

Spin-offs and Other Stuff

Shuffle Events

Special stages! Giratina Origin Forme, Dialga, and two different Pikachu wearing costumes based on Ho-Oh and Lugia have stages running until March 28th. There is an Amoongus stage, a Chesnaught stage, a Palkia stage, and a safari featuring a winking Manaphy until the 21st.

Dragon Gym Cup

Pokémon Duel’s next Gym Cup began last week, featuring the Dragon type. The premier reward is a Dragonite figure. This runs until March 23rd

Anime

New Episode(s)

In Japan, Episode 962 – “Intense Electric Shock Training! A Rematch with Tapu Koko!! ” is expected to air on Thursday. There is sadly still no sign of the western Sun and Moon localization. Kostas, as usual, has also meticulously analyzed another Japanese episode.

Around PokéCommunity

Dubtrack Weekends: The Reincarnation

Dubtrack weekends are back! Starting this upcoming weekend, you can join the PokéCommunity Dubtrack group to listen to music with other fun people from 4 AM to 4 PM GMT on Saturdays and Sundays. You can even select music for the group to play! There are a few hours with themes, and a few hours of free-for-all. You can find out more, including this week’s themes, by clicking on this link!

Pokémon Gaming Central Post-Off

PGC is hosting it’s somewhat annual post-off. The quote below explains what it is:

“Until March 31st, making new posts and threads in [PGC] will earn you points, and participation can net you some cool emblems and even a supporter tier if you’re one of the top three participants. Whether you’re set on becoming the PGC League Champion, or you just want to check out some fun discussions, click this link to check it out!“

Great Character Clash

Rabinov’s Great Character Clash, a series of discussions comparing characters from different video games, will be entering its 10th week today. Look for the thread in the Video Games section of PokéCommunity!

Get Your Move On

The voting for PokéCommunity’s favorite Pokémon move is still underway. The current discussions (which run until tomorrow) cover Water-type and Fire-type moves. Click one of those types to get your move on to the appropriate thread!

And that’s what’s going on in Pokémon this week! Questions, comments, complaints, updates, and anything we forgot should be placed in the comments so we can do something about them. See you same time next week!

Update (3/20/17 14:27 GMT-4): Dubtrack weekend added.