I have never been a huge fan of Pokemon, though I do appreciate their appeal of course. What’s not to like? Small aggressive creatures waiting to be kidnapped from their homes and stuffed into a small ball. Awesome!
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pokemon, Nintendo and Nyantek have been field testing their latest addition to the Pokemon lexicon – Pokemon GO in Japan, USA and Australia so far and the fans seem to love it. The panel at E3 claimed that 30 Pokeballs are being thrown per second in testing, that’s a lot of balls!
Nintendo were pleased to announce their newly named genre: Real World Gaming (RWG). Seems to be exactly what it says on the tin too. You go out, find Pokemon in the real world and catchem!
You begin the game with the main Pokemon from the Red and Blue games; Bulbasaur, Pikachu, Squirtle and Charmander. Ultimately, Nintendo want to bring the game to the point where you are able to catch them all.
Now, as this is an RWG, the game needs location data to function correctly. Also, your actual location will affect what kind of Pokemon you can catch there, so, water for water Pokemon, grass for grass Pokemon etc.
Every time you collect a pokemon you get candy. If you collect up the candy you can use it to evolve pokemon and spend it on other things too. Trading has not been implemented yet but once people have collected up a good amount of Pokemon they will enable it. They will be continually adding new features to keep people interested, which can only be a good thing.
The rarer Pokemon do exist in the game but are harder to find. This will encourage players to wander further afield and maybe even group up in their efforts. Eventually people will be able to team up together to take down the more powerful Pokemon.
The game itself will be free but if you want the wrist attachment; Pokemon GO plus, which connects via Bluetooth to Android and iPhone, you will need to fork out £34.99.
As with the Wii, Nintendo are again giving people a game that could actually be quite healthy for them. Because Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game, the action takes place on your mobile device’s screen against the backdrop of the real world.
So, if the plan is to get people outdoors essentially, and, you can connect your plus to other friends/family smart phones and play together. I’m giving Nintendo a big thumbs up on this one!