Pokémon Go marked its 10th anniversary by recreating the original trailer’s Times Square Mewtwo raid, complete with billboards, Mega Mewtwo, and an event-only catch.
Image: IGDB
Times Square finally became the 2015 Pokémon Go fantasy
The Pokémon Company used Pokémon Go’s 10th Anniversary Celebrations in New York City to stage a giant Mewtwo raid in Times Square, recreating the closing image from the mobile game’s original announcement trailer. VGC reports that several of the landmark’s billboards were taken over for the event, with the original trailer playing across almost all of Times Square’s famous screens before players in attendance battled Mewtwo in-game.
That is the concrete news at the center of the stunt: a 2015 marketing image, hundreds of players gathered in Times Square to fight Mewtwo, was turned into a live Pokémon Go event a decade later. Nintendo Life notes that the original trailer was released on September 10, 2015 and ended with the ambitious scene of players descending on Times Square to take on the Generation 1 legendary. Pokémon Go itself launched in 2016, which is the anniversary year being celebrated here.
The tension is that Pokémon Go has changed enormously since the first trailer sold the fantasy of Pokémon bleeding into public space. The trailer’s Times Square finale was aspirational. The 2026 recreation was built around systems that now define the live game: raids, Mega Evolution, location-limited rewards, communal spectacle, and a crowd large enough to make the phone screen feel secondary to the shared ritual around it.
What the Times Square Mewtwo raid actually recreated
The recreated sequence centered on the same ingredients that made the original trailer memorable: New York, mass participation, and Mewtwo as the boss at the end of the communal hunt. VGC says the event began with the trailer playing across Times Square’s screens, after which attendees could take on Mewtwo in-game and receive a special version of the Pokémon that was only available at the Times Square event.
Eurogamer’s on-site report adds a few details from the ground. According to the outlet, Times Square went dark before Mewtwo appeared on the surrounding screens in its container, and over 1,000 players joined the community raid. VGC describes a Unity Raid as a format in which thousands of players take on one Pokémon, while Nintendo Life, citing VGC’s coverage, describes hundreds of players being invited to capture the special Mewtwo. Taken together, the sources agree on the large-scale public raid, though they frame the crowd size differently.
Eurogamer also reports that the battle included a twist: when the countdown reached zero, Mewtwo Mega Evolved into Mega Mewtwo Y. During the fight, players’ Pokémon and avatars appeared on the screens around Times Square. The report says attendees fought Mega Mewtwo Y twice, raising and lowering their phones to make their Pokémon deliver the final attack both times. In a piece of staging aimed directly at long-term Pokémon memory, Eurogamer says the catch used a Master Ball rather than the usual Premier Ball, and that the second Mewtwo was a guaranteed “hundo,” meaning perfect stats.
Mega Mewtwo turns the anniversary into an endgame systems check
The Times Square spectacle also served as the introduction of Mega Mewtwo X and Mega Mewtwo Y into Pokémon Go, according to VGC. Those bosses can be encountered through new Super Mega Raids, which VGC says require high-level Pokémon and eight or more trainers to participate.
The mechanical wrinkle is important. VGC reports that the new raid bosses can shield themselves, and that those shields can only be taken down by Mega Evolved Pokémon. In practical terms, this is not a casual nostalgia tap-in for every account. It asks players to bring powered-up teams, access to Mega Evolution, and enough other trainers to meet the participation threshold.
That makes Mewtwo a useful anniversary pick from a progression standpoint. For a lapsed player, Mewtwo is instantly legible: the Kanto-era laboratory legendary, the old endgame prize, the Pokémon that still reads as powerful even to someone who has not tracked every modern release. For active players, Mega Mewtwo X and Mega Mewtwo Y create a higher ceiling. The event can pull in memory-driven players with a familiar face, then hand invested raiders a new optimization problem.
Mewtwo is the safest nostalgia play for returning players
Pokémon Go’s 2016 launch is described by VGC as a cultural juggernaut, and one of the most successful mobile games of all time. The difficult part for any 10th anniversary event is that the 2016 audience was far broader than the current, systems-literate player base. Many people remember walking through parks, chasing silhouettes, or hearing about rare spawns from friends. Fewer remember the layered raid and Mega systems that arrived later.
Mewtwo bridges that gap better than almost any other Pokémon. It comes from the earliest era of the franchise, it was the climactic image of the original Pokémon Go trailer, and it has enough competitive and collector weight to matter inside the current game. Eurogamer’s attendee report captures that dual pull: the writer describes the event as feeling like a return to the “magical Pokémon Go summer of 2016,” while also celebrating the guaranteed perfect-stat Mewtwo as a valuable addition to a player’s team.
That is the event’s strongest design choice. Pikachu is the mascot, but Mewtwo is the cleanest raid boss for anniversary mythmaking. It gives lapsed players a single, recognizable reason to look up from the app-store icon again, while giving dedicated players a stat-perfect trophy, Mega forms, and a new raid tier to solve.
The stewardship around Pokémon Go is less simple than the billboard image
The sources describe the people and companies around the event in slightly different ways, which is worth keeping clear. VGC attributes the Times Square takeover to The Pokémon Company and says Pokémon Go was originally developed by Niantic, based on a Google Maps prank that placed Pokémon around the world. Eurogamer describes the current developer and publisher of Pokémon Go as Scopely Explore, “formally called Niantic Labs.”
For readers searching for a Niantic Pokémon Go event, the reporting therefore points to an anniversary celebration for a game historically associated with Niantic, staged publicly under The Pokémon Company’s brand, while Eurogamer identifies the current operator in different corporate terms. The provided sources do not include a formal statement from Niantic, Scopely, or The Pokémon Company clarifying event operations, so the safest wording is to attribute the Times Square takeover to The Pokémon Company, while describing Pokémon Go’s original development as Niantic’s role per VGC.
That distinction matters because the stunt is doing brand maintenance as much as live-game content. Pokémon Go’s identity has always depended on the feeling that the real world can briefly become a Pokémon space. Times Square, already built from screens and crowd movement, is an unusually clean stage for that illusion. The recreation works because it collapses the distance between the old trailer, the current raid economy, and the public memory of 2016.
What players can and cannot still get from the event
The clearest availability detail is also the most restrictive one. VGC reports that attendees at the Times Square event could receive a special version of Mewtwo only available at that event. Eurogamer reports that players there battled Mega Mewtwo Y twice, used a Master Ball-style catch sequence, and received a guaranteed perfect-stat Mewtwo on the second encounter.
For players who were not in Times Square, the source material does not establish another way to obtain that specific event-only Mewtwo. It also does not provide pricing, a global schedule, remote raid details, or a full rollout plan for Super Mega Raids beyond VGC’s statement that Mega Mewtwo X and Mega Mewtwo Y have been added and can be taken on as part of the new raid format.
What is confirmed is enough to guide expectations. If you are returning for Mewtwo, expect a raid environment built for coordinated groups rather than solo play. VGC says Super Mega Raids require eight or more trainers, high-level Pokémon, and Mega Evolved Pokémon to break boss shields. If you are a lapsed player with an old account and underdeveloped Mega options, the practical path is to rejoin through local communities or organized raid groups rather than assuming nostalgia alone will carry the battle.
That is the lasting read on the Pokémon Go 10th anniversary moment. The Times Square Mewtwo raid was engineered to look like a promise fulfilled, and by the accounts from VGC, Eurogamer, and Nintendo Life, it did recreate the original trailer’s final fantasy. But the game waiting behind that fantasy is the modern Pokémon Go: event-limited rewards, Mega requirements, high-player-count raids, and a decade of systems layered over the simple act of finding Pokémon in the world.