Until now Nintendo’s dabbles in the phone market have been a couple of cheap freemium titles that haven’t attracted much attention. This is the first effort that’s making people’s heads turn: Pokemon Go, an augmented reality game that lets you catch them all — in your own neighborhood.
Produced by Niantic, a company that’ previously made augmented reality phone games (most notably a similar title called Ingress), the game literally brings the hunt for Pokemon into the real world. When you look through the phone screen into the camera view, you’ll be notified how far away a Pokemon is and in what direction you should head to catch it. When you reach the destination, you will actually see a CGI Pokemon superimposed over a real-world object, and when you throw your arm, the game conjures a Pokeball to catch the monster. How cool is that?
The game also works with a peripheral that is intended to be worn on the wrist and looks like a cross between a Pokeball and a Google Maps arrow. The device alerts you to the presence of a Pokemon wherever you are. When it rumbles, you pull out your phone and boot up the app, and there it is, a Pokemon bouncing on the neighbor’s yard, or a couple blocks down the street, or on the sofa. You can also battle and trade with the Pokemon you’ve collected, just like in the regular game. It’s the scenario children everywhere have dreamed about since 1998.
Miyamoto considers Pokemon Go the evolution of Pokemon Snap, and I’d have to agree with him there. There are plans for Pokemon Go to connect with the next games in the regular Pokemon series, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a version of the Pokemon Go app doesn’t make its way to 3DS. But for the time being, it’s for iOS and Android, and slated for a 2016 release.
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