Pokemon Go seems to be counting down to its next mythical creature’s arrival

We wouldn’t advise playing Pokemon Go on eight phones to prepare yourself, but Niantic’s been dropping some heavy hints that you’ll be able to add the mythical Jirachi to your Pokedex very soon. The developer’s tweets don’t name Jirachi specifically, but the language and imagery are pretty blatant, as Pokemon Go Hub highlighted.

So far, you’ve been able to catch mythical Pokemon Mew and Celebi after completing a series of in-game special research tasks. Those two came from the first and second generations of Pokemon, so the psychic-steel type Jirachi is next in line as the third generation’s mythical creature.

Its Wednesday tweet thanked players for completing more than 36 million in-game research tasks, saying they helped make “some new, some old, and some relatively unknown” discoveries, with a tease for its Ultra Bonus announcement and a liberal use of star emojis — likely a reference to the shape of Jirachi’s body.

Later that day, a follow-up tweet invited players to “make a wish” — Jirachi is known as the Wish Pokemon — and it might be granted during the announcement.

On Thursday, it just tweeted a shot of a starry sky with five star emojis, followed by increasingly Jirachi-shaped ones with four emojis on Friday, three on Saturday and two on Sunday. We’ll presumably see an even more filled-in image with a single star on Monday, with Jirachi arriving or an announcement of his arrival date Tuesday (please make it the former Niantic, don’t wanna wait any longer!).

So far, Jirachi’s only been available to players who attended the 2019 Pokemon Go Fest in Chicago; Dortmund, Germany; or Yokohama, Japan, and players who couldn’t make those events have been waiting for it to appear more widely. It first appeared in Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire — the series’ third generation — on Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance in 2003.

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Niantic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but we’ll update this article as it posts more teases.

First published Aug. 16, 8:01 a.m. PT.
Update, Aug. 19, 3:00 a.m. PT: Adds more details about Niantic’s apparent Twitter countdown.