Augmented reality Pokemon game coming to phones

Life

Pokemon's Mewtwo

11 September 2015

After years of hemming and hawing and will they/won’t they and “If Nintendo wanted to print money, they’d…” it’s finally happened: Nintendo is putting a game out on phones.

Pokémon Go is coming from a surprising source – Niantic, the developer behind alternate-reality game Ingress and explore-your-surroundings app Field Trip.

This game will be similar to Ingress though in that players will find and capture Pokémon as they wander around the real world. Go to the Eiffel tower, maybe you find Pikachu. Head to Los Angeles, maybe you find Weezing. It’s possible Pokemon will spawn randomly too, so the game should have something to offer ot non-globetrotters.

You can even purchase an optional Bluetooth-powered pin (Pokemon Go Plus) that vibrates and lights up if something’s happening in-game, freeing you from being “that person who walks around while staring at their phone screen”.

Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto compared Pokemon Go to the Nintendo 64 classic Pokemon Snap, but this seems much more in line with the open world collectathons the series is known for than Snap’s languid photography tour. The trailer not only shows off capturing Pokémon but also battling against other users and – again, like Ingress – banding together to face a larger threat. In this case, that takes the form of hundreds of people fighting Mewtwo in Times Square.

Bottom line: It seems pretty much like what you’d expect from a Pokémon mobile game – surprising only in that Nintendo finally gave in and allowed it to happen, after years of people asking. Pokémon Go is slated for a 2016 launch on both the iPhone and Android.