Pokemon GO’s hardest medal takes 12 years to earn

Pokemon GO’s hardest medal takes 12 years to earn
Images via Niantic

Written by 

Joseph Kime

Published 

8th Jan 2024 14:45

Niantic's Pokemon GO has been standing tall for some time now, and though it doesn't have the same player base it used to, there's still a lot to dig up, thanks to events that give players more than enough to latch onto.

The AR game has been going strong even in the face of complaints by fans that Niantic is trying to make the most of players via in-game purchases, and there are some players who simply can’t detach.

Pokemon GO players might want to rethink their completionist status, though, as it turns out that there's one medal that will take you some time to complete. If you've got a spare 12 years, you might want to give it a go. 

Pokemon GO fans spot the game's toughest medal

Fans have discovered what may just be the most difficult badge that Pokemon GO has to offer, asking players to wait an absurd amount of time for a particular boss to roll around.

Taking to the Pokemon GO subreddit, players are sharing that they've found a badge that's bound to take some grinding - the Ultra Hero badge.

If you want to bag the badge for yourself, you're going to have to defeat the Team GO Rocket boss a whopping 50 times. Disgruntled gamers have pointed out that this boss only appears once every three months. That'd put the time-to-complete at around twelve years. Goodness.

It's a pretty hefty price to pay for completionists, and it's an achievement that's likely to keep players from getting involved in collecting badges in the first place. Pokemon GO is still around seven years after it was released, but can you really see it being around 12 years after the Rocket boss was introduced in November 2019? 

Fans think the Team GO Rocket boss was intended for more

A trainer prepares to take on Team GO boss Giovanni in Pokemon GO.
Click to enlarge
Image via Niantic

Taking to the comments, some users have pointed out that the absurd difficulty of this achievement is likely down to hopes from Niantic that the Team GO Rocket boss would be used more freely. "Yeah I think originally they had planned to use him more in events as there was a Go Rocket portion of a Global Go Fest one year," says one comment.

"I think they just decided to change focus and direction without changing the medal as no one is close to it I think the highest is still below 25." It's a fair theory, what with the number of defeats being… pretty absurd. We love Pokemon GO, but hanging around 12 years for a medal means most probably aren't going to bother.

Joseph Kime
About the author
Joseph Kime
Joseph Kime is the Senior Trending News Journalist for GGRecon from Devon, UK. Before graduating from MarJon University with a degree in Journalism, he started writing music reviews for his own website before writing for the likes of FANDOM, Zavvi and The Digital Fix. He is host of the Big Screen Book Club podcast, and author of Building A Universe, a book that chronicles the history of superhero movies. His favourite games include DOOM (2016), Celeste and Pokemon Emerald.
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