The 24 hour livestream promoting Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield has revealed a new Pokemon: Galarian form Ponyta.
The livestream had the premise that Sonia (a character from the game and assistant to Professor Magnolia) had set up a live-feed camera in the Galar region’s Glimwood Tangle forest.
The footage revealed several Pokemon from past games, along with Impidimp (previously confirmed from the demo shown at E3 2019 and other conventions). At various points, a hint of a new Pokemon could be seen. This included obscured glimpses, multicolored lights from out of shot, and the sound of galloping.
Eventually the Pokemon was revealed, sharing Ponyta’s cry and some of its physical traits. The creature’s firey mane seems to have been replaced with long pastel-colored hair, along with a small horn (something the usual species does not gain until it evolves into Rapidash). Its legs also seem shorter, and its ears larger than those of its regular counterpart.
This Pokemon may be based on miniature horses such as Shetland Ponies, a breed from the Shetland Islands north of Scotland that is around a mere 70 cm in height (28 inches).
Later we see two of them playing, revealing the mane and horn can glow bright cycling colors. One of them also did not posses a tail. This may indicate a gender difference (where some Pokemon can have minor or even appearance changes based on their gender).
Horses are typically born with a tail, and attempts to remove the tail are usually done for medical reasons. Some nations have banned “docking” (removing the tail), when it was originally used to prevent the tail getting caught in a harness. Some places merely practice cutting the hair on the tail to the desired length.
The bright pastel colors may indicate that Galarian Ponyta is a Fairy-Type Pokemon. No doubt we will gain more information on it later, along with Galarian Rapidash’s appearance.
In other recent articles, new information about the games was revealed- though the claim of there being 18 Gyms was later corrected.
In case you missed it, you can find our thorough hands-on preview for Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield from this year’s E3 here.
Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield are both launching on November 15th, for Nintendo Switch.
