Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is all the rage right now, and if you’re sitting there reading about it instead of playing it, you probably wonder what all the excitement is about. Well consider yourself lucky then, because I am about to educate you. I have been waiting my whole life to catch these Pokémon, and if you’re not in on the craze, then you have nothing but my pity. My pity, and my disappointment. But don’t worry, and prepare to be educated.

If you don’t know about Pokémon to begin with, the concept is simple: You are a young and energetic individual who has been given the important task of going around the world and collecting information on all of the incredible animals that inhabit it – except they’re not called animals – they’re called Pokémon. It’s a Japanese thing. You are a trainer – which we’ll go into later.

The key concepts in the game are as follows:

Collect all of them

Your job is to collect information on all of the Pokémon. You do this in two stages: encountering them, and catching them. All of them. Not just some.

When two trainers meet, they have to battle

I can’t stress this enough. When two trainers meet, they have to battle. It’s not optional. And it’s both parties job to enforce it. That means you. I walk around seeing these weak fools with their eyes on the ground. “Hey kid! You! Eyes up! You a trainer? Then we gotta battle, fool. Get it out.”

The bond between a trainer and their Pokémon is something

You’re not just collecting these creatures in order to put them in a zoo. They are your protection as you travel ever deeper into more dangerous areas of the world in search of rarer and more dangerous Pokémon. You form a bond with them, and that bond makes both of you stronger. A lot of people have a lesson to learn there.

There’s a Pokémon TV show, more than a dozen games, a few movies, lunch boxes, flame throwers, the whole deal. Pokémon Go is the latest incarnation, and it’s available for any mobile phone that a sensible person would purchase. It uses GPS and augmented reality in order to create some interesting social interactions.

Your job, as always, is to catch all of the Pokémon. All of them. You do this with Pokéballs. You look at your phone, and it acts as a type of radar proximity sensor to help you locate Pokémon, physically, in the real world. So you walk. Down the street, or into your back yard, or around the block during lunch, or whatever. You walk, and you encounter and catch Pokémon. If you’re asking yourself, “That sounds like it would take a lot of time and effort. Why would I do that?”, then you are a poor student. You have to catch them. All of them. Of course it’s going to take time and effort.

You will also encounter, in the virtual/real world, Pokéstops, and Gyms, which serve as points of congregation. Pokéstops give you Pokéballs and other items to help you, and Poke Gyms are points which, when controlled, give you other bonuses. It’s fantastic. You’ve never seen anything like it before in your life, I promise you that.

The crazy thing is that this game is actually getting people to go outside and meet each other and interact. Parks are full of people. Yeah they’re all staring at their cell phones but at least they’re standing up. That’s pretty good progress from where we’ve been.

The game had a rocky launch, with some people flipping out over security concerns, and problems with their servers being unable to handle the thick load of users, eager to relive some of their childhood memories, but it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

There are still some significant features missing from the game, such as the ability to trade Pokémon, and the ability to battle other trainers. As stated earlier, this is an important, and a missing game mechanic right now. Without these features, I believe the novelty will die down, but it’s rude of me to speculate. They’ve also only released the first generation Pokémon, meaning there are literally hundreds more that could potentially be made available in the future.

Go download it and try it out. It’s free, it’s fun, and it’ll get you up and doing something! Remember when you were young and alive and not just waiting for the quiet embrace of death? Wouldn’t it be nice to feel like that again? Try it! But don’t do it while you’re driving. That’s illegal, and very dangerous. Especially if I see you doing it.

Stay safe out there. Catch all of them.