I really hate mobile games.  I stay as far away as I can from games like Mobile Strike, Clash of Clans, and that one game with the commercials starring Kate Upton’s cleavage.  It’s not that they are bad games, its just that I stay away from them.  To be fair I have played a total of 3 mobile games in my life.  They include a version of Tetris for my first cell phone, Angry Birds, and the game Trivia Crack.  All three of these games (save for Tetris since I play that on my DS still) I have stopped playing and really stopped caring.  Until the fateful day when I heard about Pokemon Go.  I flipped out, my entire childhood, nay a HUGE portion of my gaming life was built on the foundation of the original Pokemon games.  My brother and I were at the forefront of the craze when it hit in the late 90’s and it ate us up.  We watched the show, played the game, spent all our money Pokemon cards, bought toys, you name it we wanted it.  Hell we even thought Pokemon existed in the real world and wanted to go out and catch them.  We were obsessed and then we got older.  We stopped watching the show, we stopped playing and buying the games, and eventually the craze ended.  I stopped really playing Pokemon in middle school when Ruby and Sapphire came out and didn’t pick up Diamond until high school.  I still liked the games but Pokemon wasn’t a huge thing for me anymore, until last week when I downloaded Pokemon GO for my phone.

Now like I said earlier I hate mobile games but Pokemon is the exception.  For the one person who has yet to play the game yet Pokemon GO is a game where you can travel to real places and “catch” Pokemon in the real world thanks to your cell phone camera.  They call it Augmented Reality and its pretty cool.  Why is Pokemon GO the exception for me loving a mobile game while Clash of Clans isn’t?  Easy, Pokemon GO not only gets me out of the house but I get to live out my childhood dream of catching Pokemon.  Not only that, as I am writing this I am waiting for my girlfriend of 2 years to get ready so we can go meet up with my best friend and go out on a Poke-date.  No, I am not joking, this is real, and I have been reading so many stories on how Pokemon GO is bringing people together and helping each other out.  Yesterday I was out with friends and we were playing the game and a good 75 other people in our general area were playing the game as well!  They even helped us out and I was able to catch a Magmar!  A freaking Magmar!  I’ve been playing the games for years and I have never caught a Magmar in my life (to be fair I had Red version and you couldn’t catch a Magmar in that game).  Seeing people who grew up with the franchise geek out, come together, and just enjoy life and even get some exercise while playing is one of the greatest feelings ever.

Now with all the great news that has been going on with the game, there are quite a bit of bad stories too.  People getting mugged and robbed for their phones, the different teams shaming and bullying members of the other teams, and of course, people going online and saying,”OMG these adults playing Pokemon need to get a life!”  First I would say if you’re playing the game after dark, play in a group and stay safe.  For the teams, I am team Valor but dear lord, yelling and berating the other teams just because they wanted to be on that team is truly stupid, childish, and makes us all look bad.  Seriously, Lugia Alliance, look it up and/or watch Pokemon 2000.  Decent movie as much as I can recall.  As for the adults looking down on us for enjoying the game I just want to respond with this beauty of a meme.

Seriously have you SEEN the news recently?  The world freaking sucks right now.  Our election for President of the US is a total farce, horrible things are happening to good people left and right and it completely sucks.  Okay, mini rant over.  The whole point I’m trying to make is that this game has made an otherwise horrible world into an awesome one.  Yes, some people take the game way too seriously, but I have encountered nothing but awesome people, playing an awesome game.  I get to meet people, I can connect even more with the friends I already have, and I get some exercise with it too.  Seriously in a few months I’m betting childhood obesity, hell obesity in GENERAL, will be on a historic downturn.  Every kid in the 90’s who played this game, our dreams have come true, now go out there and catch ’em all!

Oh and on a side note, I would highly recommend those who didn’t grow up with Pokemon in the 90’s play the original games BEFORE playing GO.  Seriously, I heard a twelve year old mispronounce Gyarados yesterday and it nearly destroyed my soul.  Keep playing GO, just know the roots and how to pronounce the names (he pronounced it ji-rie-A-DOS).