Pokemon Go's Community Day Has a Shiny Surprise for Trainers

Pokemon Go players are discovering a fun surprise during today's Community Day festivities.

Today marks Pokemon Go's first ever "Community Day," a special event designed to get Pokemon Go players to meet up at local parks while catching a special Pokemon and enjoying some other temporary perks. Today's Community Day gives players a chance to catch a Pikachu that knows Surf, a callback to a popular Pikachu variant from Pokemon Yellow.

However, players are discovering that Community Day has another surprise. It seems that it's a lot more Shiny Pikachu are appearing during the event, giving players their best chance to catch this otherwise rare Pokemon.

Shiny Pokemon have alternate colorations than their non-Shiny counterparts and are typically extremely rare. A Shiny Pikachu's fur is a bit darker than a non-Shiny Pikachu, although you might have trouble noticing if you weren't paying attention. Luckily, Shiny Pokemon also have a special icon in the Pokemon collection screen and have sparkles that appear around it in the individual Pokemon screen. Shiny Pokemon also can't be transferred via mass transfers.

Pokemon Go has had Shiny Pikachu available since last summer, although they were usually hard to find outside of certain live events. Niantic notably turned up the odds of finding a Shiny Pikachu significantly during Japan's Pikachu Outbreak Festival last year.

While it might be easier to find a Shiny Pikachu during today's event, keep in mind that this could be your only chance to grab a Shiny Pikachu that knows surf. Once today's Community Day event ends, a Shiny Surfing Pikachu will likely be unobtainable via normal means. That means that if you want a Shiny Surfing Pikachu, you need to catch one within today's three hour window...or hope that Pokemon Go adds trading soon.

Other perks for today's Community Day event includes double XP and lures that last for an extended period of time...although reports claim that lures will spawn mainly Pikachu during the event.

Pokemon Go's Community Day will run from 11 AM PT to 2 PM PT in North and South America and 10 AM UTC to 1 PM UTC in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.