With Pokemon X and Y - the first in the series on the 3DS - hitting stores this October, it seems the Pokemon hype train is getting into gear. We knew something big was due to be revealed this weekend on the Japanese show Pokemon Smash, with most expecting either a new Pokemon, or details on the evolutions of the three starters, but we weren't really expecting it to look so... familiar.
Currently unnamed, this new 'mon looks suspiciously like Pokemon Red/Blue legendary Mewtwo - and while a connection hasn't been outright confirmed yet, the official site itself has been quick to point out the similarities, just in case anyone misses it - "This new Pokémon shares many traits with Mewtwo, including a light-purple body and piercing, powerful eyes"
Guess we should call him Newtwo
Mewtwo is a seriously rare (or 'Legendary', in Pokemon parlance) Pokemon from the original Red/Blue games, having been created after years of painstaking genetic engineering, in an experiment designed to create the world's strongest Pokemon by cloning cute pink kitten-alike Mew. Seemingly, the tinkering went well, as Mewtwo was a true powerhouse of legendary Pokemon - but only one was known to have survived the cloning process before the lab was destroyed.
But what is the latest addition to the Pokemon X and Y roster? Could it be a long-lost product of the same experiment that created Mewtwo,banished to the wilderness only to be discovered in X and Y? Or have the cloning experiments been continuing under wraps for years, with this being the next stage of Mew cloning - a Mewthree, if you will?
The other possibility is that this could actually be a natural evolution of Mew - or the way Mew would evolve without any scientific tampering. The whole point of the cloning experiments was to end up with an evolved, more powerful Mew - something which they didn't believe existed naturally. But what if it did, and it was just really, really hard to get it to evolve? Perhaps it'd look like the new Pokemon - a kind of variant on a Mewtwo, with the tail coming out of its head instead.
But whatever Newtwo's origins, it leads to some interesting possibilities for the game. Ever since Red and Blue, the Pokemon games have usually had a single uber-powerful legendary Pokemon, plus three 'lesser' legendaries - Red/Blue had legendary birds, Gold/Silver had legendary beasts, while Black/White had angry blokes on clouds to name but a few. What if Mew, Mewtwo and this Newtwo formed a new Legendary trio for the new game, perhaps known as the 'genetics' trio or something?
First a new Eevee evolution known as Sylveon, and now Mewtwo's long lost brother - with Pokemon X and Y due out In around six months, we're expecting the drip feed of new Pokemon to continue for a while yet. And we still don't know which to choose from the new starters. For those of you who want to see the new critter in action, check out the trailer below:
