What is Pokemon GO?

Pokemon GO has quickly taken over many people’s lives since it launched a few days ago, so what is this new app all about?

Since its release 20 years ago, Nintendo’s Pokemon franchise has had fans dreaming about becoming the best Pokemon trainer that ever lived, trying to catch ’em all just like Ash Ketchum.

Thanks to modern technology, this dream has kind of turned into reality with Pokemon GO, Nintendo’s first mobile Pokemon game. It uses the smartphone’s camera and GPS to make it appear as if Pokemon were right in front of the player as they walked around. Pokemon GO is a free-to-play game, so it costs nothing to download, but players can use real money in the game to buy things that could help them with various aspects of the game

The game was announced last year with no specific release date ever assigned to Pokemon GO. At E3 this year, Nintendo announced that it would be out sometime before the end of July 2016. After the news of the game’s launch in Australia and New Zealand on Tuesday, American fans were waiting on news for when the augmented reality game would be available in the U.S. The wait was not long has Pokemon GO was released just before 9 ET on Wednesday night

Soon, the internet was flooded with pictures of the odd places Pokemon were appearing in people’s lives, and players were running around cities looking for Pokemon.

On top of just trying to catch Pokemon, the game also turns various landmarks in a city into important locations within the game like Pokestops, where players can pick up valuable items to help them, and gyms where they can battle other trainers to gain experience and control the location. So, if you happen across a group of people on their phones in a park, they are most likely playing Pokemon GO.

While the game is massively popular and skyrocketed to the top of the Apple App Store chart within hours of its launch in the U.S., the game is not without its fair share of issues. It drains the battery life of your phone very quickly and eats up a ton of data. But that is only an issue if you can even log into the game as it has been plagued with server issues.

Niantic Labs, the company who worked with Nintendo to bring Pokemon Go, is promising that they are working hard to find a solution to the server issues. But in the meantime, the release of the game in other international markets have been put on hold until the issues are fixed. Currently, the game is only available in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.

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