Pokémon Go hands out first guaranteed hundo at in-person 10th anniversary celebration

The Pokémon Go 10th Anniversary Celebration event concluded last night (9th July) with a huge takeover of Times Square in New York City, recreating the game's reveal trailer from over a decade ago.

As reported this week, the event was officially kept under wraps until the night itself, with attendance being invite only for press, content creators, select Community Ambassadors and members of their communities.

The evening, which highlighted Pokémon from across the game's history in spawns and raids, culminated with encounters with Mega Mewtwo in Unity Raids.

One of these Mewtwo, which was caught with a Master Ball at the end of the battle, was a guaranteed hundo (a Pokémon with 100% stats). While getting a hundo has been made easier in the past year with the release of the Gold Bottle Cap item, this is the first time a Pokémon with guaranteed 100% stats has been offered in Pokémon Go.

Furthermore, these Mewtwo came with an exclusive Times Square background and were fully Max Mega Level, meaning no need to gather Mewtwo Mega Energy to upgrade them to max strength.

While there was some wider community involvement - with non-background, non-hundo Mega Mewtwo raids going live in the New York City area for a limited time that evening, and the chance to earn Twitch drops by tuning into the livestream showing the Celebration - the invite-only nature of the event, and handing out of an exclusive hundo Mewtwo to a small number of players, has sparked complaints that it's excluded the wider community, as seen in response to the official X account.

One reddit post (with 750 upvotes and 300 responses at the time of writing) called it "a massive slap in the face", while another said it would been better as a longer, wider event as a "global lead up to the tenth anniversary".

I've reached out to developer Niantic / Scopely Explore to see if there are plans to offer something similar to those not in attendance, or whether it'll remain exclusive for those on the night; though 10th anniversary events throughout the month means there could be some unannounced giveaways planned, based on the nature of background Pokémon at previous in-person events, this seems unlikely.

If you want to catch up on the stream showing the Celebration event, though there is no replay on Twitch, a live blog of announcements can be seen on IGN, while a press conference ahead of the event - as reported by Pokémon Go Hub - hinted at the next decade of the game, with three areas of focus: Community, Core Memories, and Multi-Generational Play. There also appeared to have been press interviews with game directors taking place at the event - so expect more possible teases on the game's direction in the coming days.