Pikachu in Halloween 2019 form has marked a significant step both outside the realm of Pokemon and in programming support. The new costumes are not simply variants but full fledged forms, which seems odd considering that Pokemon has well defined forms. All of the various hats, costumes, and adornments were simply bits of code, hidden from view, but did not interfere with Pokemon’s pokedex structure. Now however, the new form is called Fall 2019 (ugh, sigh).

I can only guess that the new form was necessary for programming support, but straw hat Pikachu causes me to scratch my head. The new form seems to share the same traits as straw hat – time limited, cannot evolve – but straw hat did not require a form, just hidden bits of code. Now, the Fall 2019 form will forever be part of the pokedex, and the pokedex even displays pikachu incorrectly, which indicates that the new form is really just an ugly block of exception coding.

The serendipity part is that Pokelog has a better reason to improve support for Pokemon forms with a space character, such as with Shellos. Build 039 adds that along with minor code optimizations.