Pikachu – Rosepoint Publishing

Pikachu Melanie cocked her head just to the left and snatched a quick glance at me. “You know you are the oldest one here,” she whispered, “and I’m the next.”

As I gazed around at the jostling crowd pushing the traffic around Crown Point Square, I didn’t need to guess their ages. Of course, she was right. These were largely teenagers, sprinkled with pre-teens and an occasional millennial. “Yeah, I know.”

Later there was a man possibly in his 50’s walking with his son, his own smart phone in his hand beckoning us across the street. “We have the light, you know,” he called as he waved his arm at us. Traffic was heavy with vehicles making lefts in front of us, pedestrian crossing or no, in their hurry to get to the next PokéStop. It was pushing 10 pm on a fairly temperate Wednesday evening and Mel sighed, “I really didn’t expect this much traffic.” Continue reading “Pokémon GO Is Serious Exercise”

What is all this hullabaloo about Pokémon GO? Are you one of those “10 years and older” willing to see what the uproar is about? This is not the first time I’ve tried to catch up to the latest craze. Pokémon GO has now hit more than “21 million active daily users.” You’d think there would have to be something really captivating about it. Turns out, it’s Augmented Reality. (That’s AR to anyone older than 10 years.) A few days ago, I wrote about AI (Artificial Intelligence). This game appears to be a long way from intelligence of any kind. T Pokemon Go Ball he whole point seems to be that of throwing a virtual ball at a virtual creature.

Being such a progressive older person, however, I do have a smart phone. And this game is free. (They always start out that way.) But then, here is the catch–there are no instructions. What little print is included must be at 6 pt–WAY too small to read. I assume that’s because Pokémon is totally familiar to our younger generations who still have good eyes (the original Nintendo game is 20 years old), and they are well acquainted with the annoying little yellow creature and need no instructions.

Pokemon turtle But Pokémon GO was only released July 6th and this version is specifically designed for mobile application, Apple iOS and Google Android devices. The game was developed in San Francisco by Niantic and uses the phone’s own GPS to appear in gamers physical locations. WHOA! (That’s the “augmented reality”!) Using the device’s camera, different monsters pop-up, who can range from dragons to crabs (I “caught” one yesterday). They all have these amazingly unique names; don’t ask me what the crab was called. Continue reading “Pokémon GO May Not Be Senior Friendly”