Pokémon is turning Augmented-Reality

Teenagers’ and young adults’ dreams to own an actual living Charizard (one of the first gen. Pokémon) could virtually come true.

Nintendo announced that it will release a new smartphone-based game called Pokémon GO in 2016.

The peculiar naming compared to the other versions of the Pokémon series was what first called attention of the gaming community. Unlike previous versions which used colours, gems or letters as names, the title of Pokémon GO manifests a lively and active feeling, implicating that the game would be constantly updated using the malleability of smartphone applications.

Different players will be able to find, catch, and battle with different Pokémon according to the geographical information. Rare Pokémon will be found in only a handful of places while common ones could be spotted virtually anywhere in the world.

Nintendo will plant or arrange the Pokémon in different places around urban and suburban areas. According to John Hanke, Chief Executive of Niantic Labs, “[their] goal is to make it so that you can walk out of the house and within five minutes, you can find Pokémon”. The availability of Pokémon outdoors will attract light-users while the increased scarcity of rare Pokémon could satisfy the hard-core players.

Pokémon gyms, which are another common feature of the entire series could also be found, but they will be rare. Pokémon gyms are places where you can find other trainers and battle with them to train your own Pokémon, so they would be worth searching for.

Augmented-reality games are those which expand further from typical virtual reality games which have the conventional sources that make games unreal. A virtual reality game would be a game like Minecraft by Mojang. Although Minecraft allows almost everything inside the game, it does not look real. In Pokémon GO, Pokémon will look more real than ever before.

Although it seems hard for three-dimensional Pokémon to jump around freely just as in the promotional video, the enthusiasm of the Pokémon trainers may be shown in real life. Especially, interactive functions between trainers such as trading and battling is drawing attention because Nintendo is famous for its own connection system called Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (NWC).

More specific information of this game has not yet been released.