Pokemon Go player discovers surviving Gen 7 PokeStop
Game Freak / The Pokemon CompanyA Pokemon Go player found a PokeStop still advertising entries from Gen 7, which have somehow survived for five years without being deleted.
Pokemon Go manages to transcend Pokemon generations, releasing shortly before Pokemon Sun & Moon, yet is still played by millions of people daily worldwide. This is helped by Pokemon Home, allowing creatures from Pokemon Go to be transferred to the new mainline games.
The influence of Pokemon Go can best be felt in Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! These Pokemon Yellow remakes integrated the Wild Pokemon encounters & catching system from Pokemon Go, creating a hybrid gameplay format.
As the Let’s Go games were the first Pokemon titles on the Nintendo Switch, The Pokemon Company and Niantic heavily promoted them, which included commercials in PokeStops. It turns out that one of these adverts has somehow survived for years.
Pokemon CompanyA Pokemon Go player found a PokeStop still advertising the Pokemon Let’s Go games
A user on the Pokemon Go Reddit named Adrinotfound has discovered a PokeStop that has a commercial advertising the Let’s Go games for the holiday season. This means the PokeStop likely dates back to 2018, as the Let’s Go games launched in November of that year.
It turns out that a few of these old PokeStops have managed to survive being removed by Niantic, as users in the thread have seen similar old commercials near them. Usually, they’re linked to abandoned locations.
“All of the special event gyms from the Euro international championship in April are still at the London Excel, so they do keep some older featured gyms and stops around,” one user writes, while another says, “There’s a bunch in my area that are for businesses, sites, and attractions that just aren’t there anymore.”
PokeStops have been known to go through changes over time, especially in response to player feedback. The Let’s Go one (and others like it) seem to be a low priority when switching them out, especially ones selling products that are still on the market.
It’s strange to think that Pokemon Go has been active for so long and will likely continue for years. There could come a time when more of these gravelike PokeStops will appear, advertising games from old consoles or appearing at landmarks that have long since been abandoned.