The Sage Informer

On July 6th 2016, the landscape of mobile video games would change forever as Niantic, in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokemon Company, released Pokemon Go. At its peak, Pokemon Go would have 380,000,000 playing its game: catching a plethora of pokemon and battling other players with the pokemon they caught.

Even Hillary Clinton tried to use it as a catalyst to create more voter turnout for her election campaign against Donald Trump in 2016. Business Insider noted that Hillary said, “I don’t know who created Pokemon Go, but I’m trying to figure out how we get them to have ‘Pokemon-Go-to the polls.” Her quote exhibits how culturally relevant Pokemon Go was at the time.

But after the election, the hype of Pokemon Go died down. 

However, recently at MHS, we have seen a resurgence of popularity of the game with Monticello High School students. MHS players have even created a group chat where they can discuss current events in Pokemon Go or even flaunt screenshots of their best pokemon. 

Senior Ashton Wassom explained, “I’ve been a fan of Pokemon since I was little, so I thought it was a cool concept. My favorite thing about Pokemon Go is the culture of it, like how all of my friends get into it, and it gives us a reason to hangout, but I don’t like how overpowered some of the raids are.”

Raids are a very important thing in Pokemon Go. They give the player the chance to catch a rare pokemon, but before you get the chance to catch the rare pokemon, you have to defeat it first: battling your pokemon against the rare pokemon and teaming up with other players to defeat the pokemon.

Some players think there are some issues with the game, like overpowered raids that you can’t defeat. Sophomore Trey Welter described another issue, “You can’t always play the game, and you can’t really do anything to determine what pokemon you’re going to catch.”

Describing another problem with Pokemon Go, Senior Lucas Courson commented, “There used to be a problem with people trespassing and getting arrested, so they could catch a pokemon, but I think people have smarted up since then.” 

Even though Pokemon Go has a lot of problems, MHS players still play and love the game. Sophomore Raiden Colbert said, “Pokemon Go is the best game I have ever played in my whole life.” 

Courson added, “Pokemon Go allows for people to make new friends, and it gives everyone a chance to actually go outside and experience a great game with friends.”

Welter stated, “It’s fun to catch and evolve pokemon and compete against people you know to get better pokemon.”

Dylan Ginalick, Staff Writer
gindy22@sages.us