So, for anyone who was around a year or two ago when the Pokemon Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby demo was hellishly datamined and stripped of all its content--by all, I mean literally every mega evolution, every sprite (Pokemon and trainer), every move, trainer team, item name, even the music and contest stat UI, everything--I’m sure it’s no surprise that a toned-down version of the same thing has happened to the Pokemon Sun/Moon demo. Nintendo and the Pokemon Company were horrified when it last happened (did they not remember why video game companies stopped putting out demos in the first place?) and did put some precautions in place for this round, but obviously not enough, as they are about equally aggressive about threatening websites like Serebii who would promote the leaks on their newsfeeds. Luckily, discussion forums are still fair game for leaks, and the datamines are out and about. And I’m here to talk about them.

HEAVY, HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD.

If you want to read everything yourself, here’s the link for the datamined spoilers thread on Serebii’s forums. I’m not going to discuss every detail, but the thread does. I’m here to give you the run-by sneak peek on the most influential information revealed. Warning: no spoiler tags.

For everyone who wants to see the datamine videos, which include all of the same info in narrated video-form, here’s those:

Datamine Video - Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_KfjwyVaoY

Datamine Video - Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwpIhRkAlRw

Datamine Video - Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJnB7EHQ2XU

Datamine Video - Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh7RNb_PK1c

First, we’re going to congratulate The Pokemon Company for scrubbing its movelist! Good job, guys, we don’t know every move in the game, but some basic information was revealed:

There are 98 new moves, for a total of 719. 29 are Z-Moves (one for each type plus 11 special ones), and the rest are assumably brand new, including: 1) Psychic Terrain - Pokémon on the ground will not be hit by priority moves - boosts power of Psychic moves; 2) Throat chop - Pokémon cannot use any move that produces sound for two turns; 3) Aurora Veil - halves the power of special and physical attacks for five turns; 4) Laser Focus - the move on the turn after the Pokémon uses Laser Focus always results in a critical hit. HMs no longer exist! (Praise!) A few of them will now exist as TMs, whereas my theory is the rest will be covered by riding Pokemon and their special abilities, or will simply not be employed in these games.

We’re also congratulating The Pokemon Company on scrubbing the met location data, so we don’t know every town, area, and patch of grass in the game this time, only the ones that were in the demo.

But, unfortunately for them, we do have nearly the entire Pokedex, plus shiny forms. As a quick fly-by, there will be 81 new Gen 7 Pokemon, including eight legendaries, eight Ultra Beasts, and two mythical Pokemon; 18 Alolan Pokemon, exclusive to Gen 1; Ash-Greninja and Ash-Pikachu both make an appearance, but no new Mega Evolutions. There are around 300 Pokemon in the Alolan Dex, and 800 in total. For all the Dex sprites (non-shiny), click here. No evolution tables were retained, so there’s no telling how the new Pokemon evolve, only that they do based on visual similarities.

Now, what everyone really wanted to know: were the final-evo leaks for the starters real?

YES.

These are 100% accurate. (@everyone who made fun of Popplio when he was first released: hands off. @everyone who doesn’t like Litten now that he’s shredded: he’s my buff and tough cat-man now. You all lost your chance. Rad Legend of Zelda-esque grass types for all of you.)

Some item stuff:

920 total items, with 145 new items including: 58 related to Z-Moves, seven new held items with effects, a new Lava Cookie-type item, 17 related to Silvally, a new evolution stone, and a new ball. There is an image of the new Pokeball, and the running hypothesis is that it will be used to house Ultra Beasts exclusively. There are no bikes in this game (presumably because of ride Pokemon).

Ready for November 28th?