PSA: How to sign up for an Online Pokemon Competition to get a free Shiny Mewtwo

Hello there, reader! Are you a Pokemon fan? Do you like having nice Pokemon things in your Pokemon games? Well then do I have good news for you!

You may not know it, but periodically The Pokemon Company gives away special prize Pokemon as rewards for participants in their online tournaments. In the past they've given away things like Whitney's Miltank, a special Pikachu that knows moves it normally can't learn (one of these Pikachus was just used to win the Taiwan National Championships the other day - isn't that the craziest thing?), and so on. It was recently announced that in the US, Pokemon players with a Trainer Club Account will be getting a special Shiny Mewtwo that has its Hidden Ability, provided you have at least one Play Point.

Now I just mentioned some things that you may have never heard of before, so let's go through them one at a time. I will say, though, that if you want the Shiny Mewtwo but do not have a copy of ORAS, stop now, because you unfortunately cannot get it in X or Y. That said, this is still good info to know if you don't have it, and it can benefit you otherwise if you want to keep reading!

A Pokemon Trainer Club account gets you access to the Trainer Club, which does... things... but really, the main reason you probably want it is to access the Global Link. In the fifth generation, this was how the now defunct Dream World was accessed, but now this is how you sign up for competitions, participate in ranked battles, and trade in your PokeMiles for fabulous prizes. I just got about 30 Heart Scales off of this site for just playing the game!

The Trainer Club Newsletter has also been a part of other giveaways in the past. You may actually already be signed up - a couple of months back, being a member and signed up for the newsletter got you codes for versions of Zapdos, Moltres, and Articuno with their hidden abilities. Right now, they're even redoing the Gamestop Mew event through codes as well. I'd definitely recommend signing up just to follow Pokemon news and also to get free stuff like that. If you do, just make sure to go into your settings and set your options so that you receive the newsletter!

Go to your Profile Overview from your settings, find that, and check it, like so.

... but that's just for signing up! What about interacting with your game, and more importantly, competing and getting this fabulous Mewtwo?

Well, once you sign up, go into your copy of Pokemon X, Y, Omega Ruby, or Alpha Sapphire and get the Pokemon Global Link website open. After that, follow this video's instructions up until it starts talking about Secret Bases (and when it does, it talks about a feature I had no idea existed-- gg for marketing that one, Nintendo!), since by that point everything you need to know will be taken care of:

By this point, you now should have an account on the Global Link and a game hooked up to it! Now comes the trickier bits.

First off, the Global Link site can be a little annoying to navigate. Despite the fact that there are banners all over for the current online competition, whenever the signup period is for one of said competitions, you actually do not want to click on these banners. They always just take you to a page describing it. If you know you want in (and you do if you're reading this), then here's where you want to go:

From there, you'll be taken to a page where you can sign up, provided there is still room. So you guys know, you'll need to sign up before it fills up and before the 23rd I believe, so if you're interested, get cracking! You can go in planning to lose, since participation will still get you a Mewtwo I'm pretty sure, but you don't get anything for doing nothing.

Now, at this point, you would pretty much be set. You would need to set up some things in your game here - download a message from the site that tells your game you're taking part, put your team in your Battle Box, which would be locked for the competition once you tell it you're ready, that kind of thing. If it was like previous giveaways, like the Miltank, then once it was over, you would be informed you got the participation prize and you could go on the site and get your code.

However, they're doing something different with this Mewtwo. That's where those Play Points I mentioned earlier come in. The Play Points are basically how they decide who gets to be invited to the championships and blah blah blah. All you need to know is that to get your Mewtwo, you need to fix up your profile a little more to make sure you're going to get the participation point and in turn your Mewtwo.

So go back to your profile via the global link, or just go to the main Pokemon website (take a guess at the URL), and do this:

Hit your settings, say you want to participate, make sure you're set to the video game (not the card game, which is shockingly the default and has better prizes), and you're all done!

Just remember to sign up for the competition and actually participate in it in some way or form, even if you don't intend to win, and that Mewtwo will be yours!

Happy training, Pokemon fans!

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