With its first anniversary online getting close, the near-addictive mobile app “Pokémon GO” from Nintendo and niantic labs is getting ready for a series of worldwide celebrations in both the game environment and the real world. This has also been marked as high time to realize one of the features that was shown off in the original 2015 teaser from “Pokémon Go” but never implemented in the actual product at launch.

Now that promise is being kept in a sense, with the ability for app players to cooperate and take on powerful Pokémon as a group. And that’s just part of a package upgrade bundle eagerly anticipated by gamers who still play to this day.

Big summer update

Gone may be the insanity of July to September 2016 when the world went crazy over the sequential regional release of Nintendo and Niantic’s “Pokémon Go” app. But even though the excitement over the app has long faded from the public eye, it still caters to a dedicated player base.

Developer Niantic does claim that as of June 2017 “Pokémon Go” is still played by around 65 million regular gamers in a month. It’s for these fans that never dropped the game even though it seemed incomplete, that the anniversary summer update of the app is being geared for.

Soon “Pokémon Go” will be able to host so-called “Multiplayer Raid Battles” in the Pokémon Gyms of the game world, where players would band together against a solo overpowered Pocket Monster.

But unlike the massive crowd fighting MewTwo in the old Nintendo teaser, these raid battles are limited to only 20 participants max. On certain intervals, a Gym in the area will generate a Pokémon egg visible to players. Over a particular time, the egg will hatch into a boss-level Pokémon that must be beaten in five minutes.

Rewards include rare candies and items, tech machines to teach certain moves to your Pokémon, or even a chance to catch the Pokémon you just fought.

Tweaks to old systems

Speaking of Pokémon Gyms, Niantic’s summer update of “Pokémon Go” will also include a few changes as to how these focal locations of the app’s game world works.

The biggest godsend here is that Gyms now also work as Poke-stops, in addition to the dedicated Poke-stop locations. When visiting a Gym after the update, players now get a chance to spin a roulette to stock up on Pokémon-catching stuff. The rules on leaving Pokémon to guard Gyms will also be revamped. Each of the six “guardians” must be of unique species. That way, players can avoid a lineup of enemy Charizards, for example.

These updates to the “Pokémon Go” experience really step up the game in more ways than one. Seeing as Nintendo has been releasing more Pokémon-themed mobile apps recently like “Magikarp Jump”, Niantic Labs needs to bring their A-game to keep the pioneering “Pokémon Go” still relevant after one year.