Most of us 90s kids inevitably grew up with Pokémon – whether it’s the Game Boy games, the anime series that aired on Saturday mornings or even the animated movies, I’m sure that most of us have been exposed even a little bit to the world where young people travel across the land searching far and wide for creatures to capture, train and befriend! The first Pokémon games, “Pokémon Blue” and “Pokémon Red”, were released in 1998 in the US and 1999 in the EU, quickly selling almost 24 million copies between them worldwide. Ever since then, Nintendo hasn’t stopped producing these games, with five more generations released since 1998 and a sixth one set to come out late this year. It seems like every new generation of children has their own Pokémon game to call their own… Except this year, things took a turn for the weird.

Nintendo’s latest attempt at releasing a home console, the Wii U, did not pan out at all – the platform only sold around 13 million units (which might seem a lot, but is really nothing when compared to its competitor the PS4’s 40+ million) and suffered from a severe lack of games due to its unique requirements and lack of processing power. Despite all the good fortune they accumulated with the Wii U’s predecessor, the Wii, the company found themselves in a bit of a bind, quickly losing money and not recuperating their losses quickly enough. In a desperate bid to save themselves, Nintendo did what they had once flat-out denied they’d ever do – they began bringing their games to mobile devices instead of their own proprietary hardware.

That marriage of Nintendo and mobile already produced one app – Miitomo, which, honestly, didn’t really blow any minds. But when the original trailer for “Pokémon GO” hit, suffice to say, minds were exploded harder than a collision of a diet cola truck into a Mentos factory! The premise is simple – you can use your phone’s GPS device to discover Pokémon in the real world. You can capture whoever you discover, completing your collection and training your Pokémon to help them evolve. The types of Pokémon that you encounter vary depending on your location, which gives you an incentive to travel and explore places that you wouldn’t even look at before. It’s literally the dream of every kid who grew up with Pokémon, whether it was in 1998 or 2008.

So, now that the game is out, does it pass the reality check? Surprisingly, yes – while many of the features that fans associate with Pokémon haven’t been implemented yet (such as battles), and there have been a few issues along the way (like a quickly drained battery and some privacy concerns), the game works exactly as advertised! Millions of people have downloaded the app already, and thus far the impressions are solid. I personally am a member of the communities of several mobile games, and I’ve encountered several people who actually quit those games and made “Pokémon GO” their main mobile experience! While the game is only out in a few countries (namely, the US, New Zealand and Australia), international hackers have already found a way to play by downloading the apk file and installing it on their rooted phones. Still, Niantic, the developers of the game, have promised a worldwide release in only a few short days. Here’s hoping that very soon us European fans will also be able to experience what it’s like to catch’em all!