For a long time, the Pokémon VGC (Competitive Pokemon Video Game Battling) has been restricted to buying the most recent Pokémon game to actually play the game and the DLCs (Downloadable Content) to be able to use some of the newer and better Pokémon for your battling. Fortunately, the newest Pokémon game, Pokémon Champions, helps to address this steep price barrier for Pokémon VGC, by letting players enjoy competitive battling for free on the Nintendo Switch, with some paid add-ons for quality of life.
On April 8th, 2026, Pokémon Champions released around the world for the Nintendo Switch systems after it was announced on the annual Pokemon Day direct on February 27th, 2025. This game was shown to be Nintendo’s first official battle simulator after their first battle simulator Pokémon Stadium (February 29th, 2000), lost relevance due to the hardware it was played on and it only includes a small pool of Pokémon. Since its release, Pokémon Champions has gained lots of mixed results from the community, with some people praising its ease of play and some casting a bad light on the game due to the multiple bugs found at launch that heavily impact the gameplay experience.
There has been a lot of controversy around the game before the last overview trailer, which was the last trailer before the game’s release. Many people got scared of the inclusion of a battle pass system, a mechanic where players gain rewards for playing the game and can get a better pass with a purchase, because they noticed some items like mega stones being locked behind the pass. Mega stones are a mechanic only recently brought back that let the player unlock a new form of their pokemon and has become a staple in this current format of Pokemon Champions.
The thing that stoked this fear about the battle pass was an image from one of the trailers of a mega stone in the battle pass, which made people think that some may be permanently locked behind this paid pass. Many people started to get scared about the game possibly becoming pay-to-win and make it harder for casual players to improve at the game. Luckily, people found out when the game released that all the mega stones and items are in the in-game shop and the battle pass only gave free and non-exclusive items.
We got our first look at Pokémon Champions in the annual Pokémon Day direct on February 27th. Pokémon Day is always a highly anticipated event, with them introducing lots of new games and news about the company going forward. One of the other spectacles of this direct was the announcement of the newest mainline Pokémon game, Pokémon Winds and Waves. This new announcement of generation 10 was a massive announcement to drop because of it being nearly four years since we got our last mainline game in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, where there is normally a 3 year gap between the mainline games.
Because of both these new games being announced on the same day, and Pokémon Winds and Waves having more grandeur with it closing the event, Pokémon Champions went decently unnoticed, leading to many not trying the game. “I’ve seen a lot of advertising around Winds and Waves other than advertising for Champions because it is the bigger game,” said Sherry Yang, a student teacher at Central High School.
Pokémon Champions has borrowed some of their ideas from one of its predecessors, Pokémon Stadium, which also had its focus on Pokémon battling. In both games, you are able to recruit the Pokémon for a week at no cost, but can be recruited permanently by using in-game currency if you would like to commit to that pokemon. “I think the recruitment period is valid because it lets people try out new Pokémon they may not have thought of before, and you get so much VP (the game’s currency) from missions that the cost of permanently renting the Pokémon isn’t too bad,” said Lendell Hargrove, a math teacher and player of champions.
Competitive Pokémon normally goes through many different regulations of play across the years, with each one allowing different varieties of Pokémon for play. Pokémon Champions also plans to follow this cycle with the game being in regulation M-A, where they ban all legendaries, some of the strongest pokemon that are the and have a level cap of 50. This regulation will rotate away and change to a new format on June 17th.
With every new Pokémon generation, there will always be a new central mechanic that sets it apart from the other games. Some of the most recent examples of these mechanics can be things like Dynamaxing/Gigantimaxing, a chosen Pokémon will become gigantic and gain new moves, stats, and for some appearance for a few turns, in generation 8 and terastilization, a chosen Pokémon’s type would be changed to the chosen terastilization and gain a crown based on that type, in generation 9.
Many people were wondering if they would also add these past mechanics to the game, because of how they change the game around them. The Pokémon Company has shown terastilizaation in the announcement trailer, but the other mechanics are currently under speculation on if they will be added. Many People think there is a high chance these mechanics would be added to the game because of the game’s replacement of the mega ring, an item that lets someone use mega stones, the Omni Ring, which has the symbol of Z-moves and terastallization.
Screenshot of the Z-move Hydro Vortex taken from a trailer of Pokemon Sun and Moon on the Official Pokemon Youtube Channel. used under fair use.
On April 13th, the Pokémon company patches some of the issues in the game that many players noticed on launch. One of the biggest issues was a problem with Pokémon Home (an app that can transfer Pokémon from game to game) where people would not find their Pokémon anywhere after they try to transfer them to Champions.
“I think it’s really unfortunate that people are getting their Pokémon from past games brought to a void,” said Hargrove. “I also think that people shouldn’t be so surprised by the bugs because even though it is from Nintendo, free-to-play games always have a lot of bugs on launch and that isn’t that surprising.”
The Pokémon Company aren’t strangers to the player vs. player game style. One of the biggest examples of a game like this is Pokémon Unite, a multiplayer online battle arena style game with 2 teams of 5, where each team must try to score as many points as possible. Pokémon Unite has had more of an impact on the competitive scene, with it being out for longer and still getting major updates today. “Through some of the ads I saw, it looked more like Pokémon Unite because of how they both incorporated controlling Pokémon and fighting each other,” said Yang.
Pokémon Champions is one of the biggest impacts on the competitive Pokémon scene in a long time and would almost certainly make a permanent change to how the game is played If you are able, I will recommend at least try out Champions, because of how it has many comprehensive tutorials to help new players learn the game and there is no massive amount of grinding you need to do to get some of your teammates.
