July 2016 took me to strange places. Like the park right next to my house that I have NEVER stepped into. Till, then the amaltas-lined pathways of the South Delhi park was as alien as the Upside Down from Stranger Things. Actually, I was more familiar with Upside Down.
That summer, I spent most of my waking hours at the park. Making friends with the likes of Bulbasaur , Charmander, Wartotle and Charizard, Vulpix
And If I were very, very, very lucky, I could have bumped into Larvitar or Squirtle. Which I didn’t, of course.
Yes, I am a re-formed Pokemon Go addict, except that in this case, there was no reforming needed.
Exactly two years ago, India witnessed the entry of one of the most awaited games in the history of mobile gaming named Pokémon Go.
Today, I can’t help but feel nostalgic about the time when my friends and I used to roam around our locality hunting for rare breeds of Pokémon and at the same time ensuring that I was the one who got the best creature of the lot.
After its release on July 6th 2016, the game just flooded our lives. The location-based AR (augmented reality) mobile game was easy to play. Using your phone’s camera and GPS, it allows you to explore your area, catching Pokémon in your immediate surroundings and eventually training them and battling other users’ of Pokemon.
There were times when the servers of the game used to crash because of the heavy number of user traffic that it used to garner and as a result it tended to crash every now and then much to the disappointment of the players who considered the game as part of their everyday life.
Various Pokémons ranging from Bulbasaur , Charmander, Wartotle to Charizard, Vulpix and even the rare Pikachu were up for grabs for the players who wished to capture all the creatures that are present in the Pokédex.
I was also a part of the major fanbase that the game attracted due to its real-world and spectacular in-game effects and I recall the day when I requested my mother to use her phone to play the game as mine didn’t support a feature called gyroscope required for accessing all the features inside the game.
How thrilling and exciting it was to flick your Pokéball after hunting down the most sought-after creature in the Pokémon universe and finally exercising authority over it.
Every player got to play the role of Ash Ketchum (owner of Pikachu) and undertake a Pokémon hunting expedition every day.
Players could also earn experience points (XP) for various in-game activities and as the players rise in level, various features get unlocked. Most notably, at level five, the player can battle at a Pokémon Gym and join one of three color-coded teams (red for Team Valor, blue for Team Mystic, or yellow for Team Instinct), which act as blocs battling for control of Gyms within the Pokémon Go world.
But, over the course of these two years since its creation, in spite of going through various updates and modification in terms of enhancing one’s gaming experience, the game has somewhat lost its appeal probably because of decreasing level of players and an uninterested gaming population.
Or maybe, an entire generation just grew up. One never knows.
PS: Harry Potter Go, a game on the wizarding world developed by Niantic based on the same concept is on works.
(Written by Arnabjit Sur)
