Pokemon GO: How an AR Game Ruled The World

It was the advent of virtual reality in the year 2015. The rise in the popular demand for augment reality, as well. At first, I was convinced that VR would have a bigger, more global impact than of AR. However, Pokemon GO changed all of that. Especially, to the point that I found myself wandering around in a rich neighborhood in the middle of the night with my sibling to capture an incredibly rare Pokemon.)

Was it out of nostaglia, or was it how quickly the craze spawned across the four corners of the earth just for the sake of finding that one Pokemon? I found myself downloading the app to understand of what the craze was all about amongst my friends and family, (and granted, it always took an incredibly long time to open up the mobile application for three minutes or two). Soon, I was exploring parts of my neighborhood and the hometown I lived in, not for the sake of burning calories but for the sake of being the Pokemon trainer as one of my childhood dreams. I remember playing one of the first Pokemon games on the GameBoy, borrowed from my older brothers without them finding out, and tried to see if I can understand of what was all the Pokemon craze in the 2000s was all about. Jumping forward to 2016, Pokemon seemed like a bygone era or existed as a game on the Nintendo DS( or etc.). But it seemed to me now is why Pokemon was so revolutionary was the console it existed on for the game to happen in the first place, whether it be a GameBoy or augmented graphics displayed by Snapchat filters.

When playing the game, I set up my avatar to play as a Pokemon trainer and found myself a map dispalying geographically of where the nearest types of Pokemon. Loaded into the retro Nissan from the 70s, it felt like an episode of Supernatural with my brother and I checking our phones of where Bulbasaur could be hidden in the night. Granted we don't always do this during the night but sometimes during the day as well. I remember fondly of running through my park's open fields out of sweat and exhaustion, just for the sake of obtaining a Snorlax ironically. Even from that time, I was unable to capture the Pokemon, due to the time limits placed on each spawning of all the different types of Pokemon in the area. Interestingly, depending on the area, you can find yourself a wide variety of Pokemon as it differs by geographic area or even landmarks.

Furthermore, if I wanted to restock on PokeBalls, berries, or any other items to help me out when capturing these augmented reality creatures. When stretching the PokeBall slingshot to capture the desired Pokemon in front of you, it felt precisely like the catapult mechanic from Angry Birds. When searching for Pokemon in real life, to running against time to capture them, to throwing PokeBalls to hopefully it obtains the Pokemon without running away, it all makes worth a Pokemon game from all the years of the game's development history in every console passed down.

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