Many people and fans like me play Pokémon games on a daily basis. Accordingly, many of the games also keep track of progress on a daily basis, which further means determining when one day ends and another begins - that is, when the day turns over. It would also be predictable and expected that different games would do so in different ways, and that becomes something fascinating to explore as well as take advantage of for certain gameplay purposes, at least within reasonable limits that they allow.
Contemporary games will use the time of the device - be it a phone or a Nintendo console - that it is set to, which ideally should be the local time of the player and shouldn't be changed unless there are very good reasons, one of which is when one is traveling (most phones of today will automatically do so anyway). That device time is taken as the time in the main series games on Nintendo consoles, which has been the case since the fourth generation thanks to timekeeping in Nintendo DS; previously, the games used a battery for keeping time. In any of these cases, the midnight of that time is when the day turns over. This is also the case for Pokémon Go on a phone, for which its location dependence also provides a check for the time and explains the necessity of keeping the time in line.
For other games, the "day" is different. Café Remix and its predecessor Shuffle turn over the day at 6 AM UTC, as in my case the day turns over at 1 PM local time. This will certainly mean different times of the real day for wherever one lives and whether or not that's also affected by certain seasonal time changes, but the gist is that the day turns over at the exact precise moment wherever one plays. The 6 AM UTC turnover also applies to TCG Pocket, where the game will demand that it restarts at that time. Meanwhile, Pokémon Unite has the day turning over at midnight UTC, thanks to my observations of it turning over daily mission tasks at 7 AM my local time.
Some leeway can be gotten when playing as the day turns over, certainly not so much for TCG Pocket as above that demands a restart when the moment occurs. A match can be started in Pokémon Unite just as the day is about to turn over, and the achievements from that match will count for the Daily Missions of the next day. Likewise, some stages in Café Remix can be played as the day is about to turn over and they'll transition the player to the next day. In any case, however, one should be careful that there are no events that end on a particular day and haven't been dealt with, for they'll surely disappear when the day turns over.
With the way people play Pokémon games daily, tracking the days and rewarding those daily plays become not only useful but also essential in some ways. And if done right, one can schedule plays as the moment(s) of the days transition from one to the next to take advantage of them to fulfill specific objectives usefully. The moment(s) are then useful to games as well as the people who play them.
One year ago: The Blood of Youth
Two years ago: Tournament: SWEEP JR vs. Foul Noctowls Elite (SA Factions)
Three years ago: Steering and Nearing with Tsunekazu Ishihara
Four years ago: Pokémon Go Community Day, 5/15/2021
Five years ago: Coming Full Circle
Six years ago: Everything Old Is New Again
Seven years ago: 15 Minutes of Fame
Eight years ago: Fallen Comrades
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