On the Subject of Go

In the middle of last year, the world of Pokémon shook up with the instant success of the mobile game Pokémon Go, developed in partnership with Niantic. The launch coincided with a special time, as 2016 was the 20th anniversary year for Pokémon. The mobile game was a hit in many places, including in Indonesia. While its popularity has waned considerably at this point, the game is still being updated for the loyal players that still take the time to play the game.

My experience with Pokémon Go has been spotty at best and impeded at worst. The primary reason for this is that I have an older smartphone that can't go beyond Android Jellybean (4.2) while Go requires Android KitKat (4.4) or above. I was aware that some enterprising users had modified Go to be able to run on Jellybean 4.2, and I did indeed try this on my phone. But what I found was that Go ran very slowly - slower than molasses - and at certain points appeared to have frozen, thus necessitating me to force-close the game. Also, in the beginning Go wasn't regularly updated, so I could use the modified package with no problems, but when Go started to update, the modified packages had to keep up as well, and at the point where I could no longer update the game manually, I stopped playing. Yet I still wanted to continue.

I was lucky to have participated in one of the local Pokémon Go contests, though this was mostly for fun. I was also lucky to have discovered the starter trick that allowed me to reject Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle as a starter in favor of Pikachu, one of my personal favorite Pokémon, which meant that I didn't have to hunt for one later. Interestingly, I never entered a Gym to try to battle, so I remained unaffiliated to one of the three teams (Instinct, Mystic, Valor), though I tended to favor Mystic since many of my friends chose Mystic for one reason or another.

Had I had a more capable and modern smartphone, I would still have played Go to this day, although necessarily with reduced frequency considering my other needs. Regardless, I'm glad that Pokémon surfaced to mainstream again thanks to this game, if only for a brief moment. It's one of the things that make me happy and proud to like this franchise.