As becomes tradition in the saga, Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Purple have suffered a mass leak during the weeks leading up to the launch —which, of course, we at 3DJuegos were neither authorized nor willing to share— bringing an encyclopedic knowledge of names, statistics and other details equally treasured by the developers to all corners of the internet. But interestingly, although the data miners found information on all aspects of the game, there were two species that outsmarted the “in-advance” ones: finished and its hilarious evolution, palafin.

Now that the game is available to everyone, we can tell you that this is a new water-type Pokémon with dolphin look and a fairly mediocre power (315 BST) with an absurdly strong evolution: a monstrous hero whose characteristic ability gives you a whopping 650 combined points. There are only two new species that exceed that sum, and you have them on the covers of the games. In other words, it’s a brown beast that many will want on their team… even though it wasn’t easy to come by.

Over the past few generations, Game Freak has gone far beyond the classic “evolve to level X” with its creatures; so some of them had demands such as using a specific move a certain number of times, turning the console upside down, or spinning in a different clockwise direction for a certain amount of time at different times of the day (yes). In the case of Finizen and Palafin, the evolutionary methods they have eluded basically everyone who somehow managed to play the game before release.

The community Pastebin listed evidence for a real evolution—that is, not a Phione/Manaphy case—with certain requirements in mind. The fans tried to do everything: study the objects, the movements and even follow the fantasy of their skill “Heroic Change” in different ways. “Things we’ve tried: Taking a picture with the Palafin cardboard” says Leaks Center On twitter. The list continues with much crazier tests.

“Avenge or save a Pokémon, including both genders of Finizen; level up after removing the trainer’s glasses, activate airplane mode and sleep mode, strike the heroic pose (in front of the cardboard and Finizen), leave it alone in the team, die anyway.” Many ideas came from the responses of his followers: level up with the heart mark placed from a box (@ awc919_adam) or with the “bold” nature (brave in English)” (@TheMattOshea) —here the delirium begins— play the song Zero to Hero of the movie Hercules near the console (@DerekNeves77), or import a Pokémon from the GameCube console, codenamed Dolphin (@Quartzer10).

Finally, someone—it’s almost impossible to credit this case—discovered over 48 hours later that to evolve Finizen into Palafin you have to go with a friend into a cooperative game Just like the ones debuting in Scarlet and Purple, defeating any monster with the “send Pokémon” function, and then leveling your partner up above 38. The animation will leave you with a creature identical to the one you already had, except that it will have a heart drawn on the chest. This is related to the heroic change ability that we talked about before, which is also what makes this nice swimmer so valuable.

The pokedex says this about Palafin: “this Pokémon changes its appearance if it hears its allies calling for help […] he will not show anyone the moment he transforms” in a clear reference to superheroes like Superman or Spider-Man, which explains how his alternate form wears a super suit. Obeying that same description, the shape change occurs when he changes it into another team member during a fight, so to compensate for his sheer strength (160 base attack, among other buffs) it is necessary to create the right conditions.