Pokemon GO Shiny Pikachu: How to Catch

Shiny Pikachu had a chance to appear during its Spotlight Hour in Pokemon GO.

Niantic Labs announced on the morning of Feb. 22 that the next Pokemon selected for its weekly Spotlight Hour event would be Pikachu—the franchise's mascot and all-around popular electric mouse. Obviously, this piqued the interest of several trainers, especially shiny hunters, as these features typically come with a chance to encounter that Pokemon's shiny variant.

We've broken down how to catch a shiny Pikachu—during a special feature or not.

How to Catch a Shiny Pikachu in Pokemon GO

Let's start with a quick refresher on probability. There is a 450:1 chance that the Pokemon a trainer encounters will be shiny. Now, this doesn't mean that one out of every 450 encounters is destined to be shiny, so trainers should definitely do away with those click counters. The rule is actually that each individual encounter carries those odds every time. In other words: every encounter trainers have with a Pokemon comes with a 0.22% chance of it being shiny.

This means that the only way to artificially increase the amount of shiny Pokemon a trainer could potentially find is to increase the number of encounters they go into. That is specifically why trainers tend to catch more shiny variants of a Pokemon with an increased spawn rate.

Shiny Pikachu can be a bit difficult to spot from its typical counterpart. The only difference between the two is that shiny Pikachu is ever so slightly tinted orange rather than maintaining a sunny yellow. In fact, its untouched cheek color may even look desaturated with the shiny palette.

Pikachu isn't particularly a strong fighter in Pokemon GO. It has a CP ceiling of 1060 and a hit point maximum of 105. Its stats just barely break 100 at 112, 96, and 111 for attack, defense, and stamina, respectively. Its best moveset contains the quick moves Quick Attack or Thundershock and the charged move Thunder.

While Pikachu, itself, was released with the base build of the game, its shiny form didn't debut until August 2017, during the Pokemon GO Park event. It has a PokeDex number of 25.

Also known as the "Mouse" Pokemon, Pikachu is best known for zapping anything and everything with its electricity. It can evolve into Raichu with the use of 50 candies.