If you've been at Ala Moana Center this weekend, wondering why so many of your fellow shoppers were running around staring at the world through their phones, the explanation is simple: The mall was one of the locations for a Pokémon GO event.
Pokémon GO (PoGo) is a mobile game that released globally in July 2016 and became an instant craze. Clusters of players — called "trainers" — were everywhere, trying to catch Pokémon monsters superimposed onto the real world by their phone-based game app.
Today, you don’t see many gamer clusters out in the wild but, the mobile game is still very much alive and ASD was there for the weekend hunt. This weekend, Nov. 15 and 16, PoGo’s “Wild Area: Global” event – one of the biggest events of the year – takes place.
What’s so special about it?
“In this next chapter of Pokémon GO Wild Area, get ready to test your skills once again as you encounter Dark- and Fairy-type Pokémon, including Grimmsnarl, the Bulk Up Pokémon!” PoGo’s official website notes. “Plus, exceptionally powerful Pokémon known as mighty Pokémon are appearing in the wild — use GO Wild Area–exclusive GO Safari Balls to improve your odds of catching these rare Pokémon.”
For the non-poké masters out there, this just means that PoGo is releasing new, super rare and powerful Pokémon, and are giving trainers resources to make them easier to catch — a special opportunity to catch ‘em all.
Obviously, this is a big deal for all my fellow Pokémon fans.
But where do trainers go to get the most out of the event?
As an avid PoGo player, I know that Ala Moana Center is the spot to be for these types of events. The mall is big enough for plenty of trainers to gather yet compact enough where they do not need to travel far for raids and battles.
It appears other trainers had the same thought since there was a massive crowd during the event – more than shoppers it seemed.
With my phone, power bank and some good shoes, I was ready to attempt to catch ‘em all.
Jaxon Low, a fellow trainer I met during my hunt, prepared for today’s event a little differently than I did. “I made sure I ate before, because it’s a lot of walking around and catching Pokémon.”
There were so many Pokémon to catch, it was almost overwhelming. Of course, trainers may have different preferences on which Pokémon is worth catching. Low was just getting back into the game so for him, exploring was good enough.
Though, for most trainers, catching the rarest of the rare was what they were after. “The main thing [I’m hoping to get] is probably the shiny Gigantamax Grimmsnarl and shadow Cresselia,” Bryson Flores told Aloha State Daily. The odds of getting both those Pokémon in its shiny form is pretty high so, we hope he got what he wanted!
For others, like Michael Johnson, the best catch of the day was not any of the featured event Pokémon. It was one that he traded with a trainer he had just met. “I was playing off and on so, when Dialga was out, I started playing again right after and missed that,” Johnson explained. “She just wanted the Pikachu with the scuba costume, and it was a good thing she could spare the stardust. I think out of all, that has been my best Pokémon of the day, from that trade.”
Perhaps moments like that is what keeps trainers playing PoGo — meeting new friends and making memories. “The community of PoGo is pretty amazing. To see all walks of life join together is pretty amazing, considering a game is doing this even though it is not a religion, politics or race,” said Glenn Cascasan when explaining to ASD what PoGo means to him.
We may not have caught every Pokémon on our hit list but we did make some good memories while trying. Even though PoGo is just a game, it has brought people of all ages together to join the hunt, to try and catch ‘em all.
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