The 2016 Pokémon World Championships, hosted in San Francisco, California, are well underway and GAME FREAK co-founder Junichi Masuda has taken the opportunity to introduce the world to yet another lineup of brand new Pokémon from the upcoming 3DS titles, Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon.
Meet Crabrawler, Sandygast, Palossand, and Stufful and watch the reveal trailer below:
Crabrawler is classified a boxing Pokémon that really hates to lose and is driven by a constant desire to best its opponents. The fighting type Pokémon also enjoys climbing walls and scaling tall buildings, if you attempt to remove Crabrawler from its’ position, you’ll be met with a swift punch from its Iron Fist
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, this Pokémon uses its oversized claw’s to protect its face and belly while moving in on an opponent to throw punches. Though Crabrawler’s punches are allegedly strong enough to split trees, its pincers are occasionally torn off during battle, fortunately, however, they are said to be delicious!
CATEGORY: Boxing Pokémon
TYPE: Fighting
HEIGHT: 2’00”
WEIGHT: 15.4 lbs.
ABILITY: Hyper Cutter / Iron Fist
Rather odd in appearance, Sandygast is categorised as a sand heap Pokémon and emerges when the grudges of Pokémon soak into the sand after they fall in battle, simply speaking, Sandygast is a possessed lump of sand. Is anybody else thinking of Ju-On: The Grudge?
If you thoughtlessly grab onto the shovel atop Sandygast’s head, you’ll fall under the Pokémon’s complete control and in fact, Sandygast uses this ability to manipulate children into gathering sand to increase the size of its body. If the Pokémon loses its shovel, it may replace it with a twig or flag instead but the Pokémon will always remain in search of its original token.
Sandygast has a tunnel-like mouth that can suck the vitality from both Pokémon and people and according to local lore, it’s a test of courage in the Alola region to put your hand in a Sandygast’s mouth.
Additionally, Sandygast has the new Water Compaction Ability, an Ability previously unseen in the Pokémon world, meaning that its Defense stat will go up by 2 if it’s hit by a Water-type move.
CATEGORY: Sand Heap Pokémon
TYPE: Ghost/Ground
HEIGHT: 1’08”
WEIGHT: 154.3 lbs.
ABILITY: Water Compaction
Palossand looks like a slightly more refined version of Sandygast and is classified rather appropriately as a Sand Castle Pokémon. Like Sandygast, Palossand has the ability to control people, employing human adults to build sand castles that serve as both camouflage and defensive bolstering for the Ghost/Ground type Pokémon.
When moving about in search of prey, the shovel atop Palossand’s head rotates and it is rumoured to function as some sort of radar device.
CATEGORY: Sand Castle Pokémon
TYPE: Ghost/Ground
HEIGHT: 4’03”
WEIGHT: 551.2 lbs.
ABILITIES: Water Compaction
We don’t know much about Stufful yet, other than the fact that it is unbearably adorable and very popular in the Alola region. This Pokémon is curiously classified as a Flailing Pokémon and though it is small in size, the normal/fighting type has extraordinary strength.
CATEGORY: Flailing Pokémon
TYPE: Normal/Fighting
HEIGHT: 1’08”
WEIGHT: 15.0 lbs.
ABILITIES: Fluffy/Klutz
More and more Alola region Pokémon are being revealed in the lead up to Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon’s highly anticipated launch on November 18th, 2016, alongside the limited release Pokémon Z-Ring. With months left before the game is released, I’m sure we’ll be introduced to several other weird and wacky Pokémon of the tropical Alola island region.