Thursday, July 6th marked the one year anniversary of Pokemon GO, and Niantic aimed to celebrate the occasion by adding a new Ash Hat Pikachu to the popular mobile game. Unfortunately, Ash Hat Pikachu didn't go live in the game when expected, with the Pikachu variant delayed by a few hours due to an unspecified error.

Niantic took to Twitter to acknowledge the Ash Hat Pikachu delay, though the issues have since been resolved. Pokemon GO players the world over are now able to find Ash Hat Pikachu hiding out in the wild, and the iconic pocket monster will be available until July 24th, when the game's anniversary event comes to an end.

Even though Ash Hat Pikachu was only delayed by a couple of hours, the error still upset many fans of the game. Besides those simply annoyed that they were finding regular Pikachu in the wild, it seems as though some fans were irritated that the anniversary event's paid content seemed to work without a hitch, whereas the free content wasn't functional.

While Ash Hat Pikachu's delay may have left some Pokemon GO fans disappointed at the one year anniversary event, the error is actually somewhat fitting. As some may recall, Pokemon GO was a mess at launch, with a wide range of technical problems and other issues that kept potential Pokemon trainers from enjoying the game. If anything, Ash Hat Pikachu's delay is consistent with the regular technical issues the game has suffered from since launch.

But while some problems in Pokemon GO have taken quite awhile for Niantic to fix, the problems with Ash Hat Pikachu have been resolved fairly quickly. This is good news for those looking to add Ash Hat Pikachu to their collection of other special Pikachu variants, like the Santa Hat Pikachu that was available this past holiday season.

Of course, it would be preferable if Niantic was able to launch a special event in Pokemon GO without fans having to deal with any problems, but at least it was fixed early on. In the future, hopefully Niantic can launch special events in Pokemon GO with no major technical difficulties.

Pokemon GO is available now for iOS and Android mobile devices.