Returning to Pokémon Go After 9 Years (Sorta)

A few weeks ago I wrote a retrospective on Geometry Dash Meltdown exactly 9 years after I originally downloaded the game. In it I showed that I downloaded the original version of Geometry Dash on July 13, 2016, exactly 9 years ago from today.

Ultimately though, I didn't feel like that was interesting enough to write about, since it's a game that I have never really stopped playing and don't have that much I can specifically reflect on, due to how big of a thing it is for me.

However, by pure coincidence, I recently found another game which I actually started playing for myself that exact same day, exactly a week after it came out, and found myself playing again in the last 2-ish weeks.

One of the titans of mainstream video games… Pokémon Go.

And as it turned out a game I literally had not touched in over 6 years.

Returning to it was sort of a random impulse decision. On June 30 I was sitting around in a waiting room for something and I randomly went through the games folder on my phone, this time actually paying a bit more attention at the list of games I've accumulated for the past decade, and there I saw Pokémon Go. Starring at me. I had nothing better to do so I decided to download it again… and so the addiction restarted…

Or at least it would have if I lived in a more walkable city.

I love Santo Domingo (well, love might be a strong word) but it is absolutely not a walkable city, at least outside of the Zona Colonial, so unfortunately most of the time I've just been sitting around my apartment and occasionally open it just to see if there are any new Pokémon around, or just to resupply from the PokéStop which is conveniently in the building right next to mine.

For the record the last time I even touched the game was June 22, 2019, or at least that's when I caught my last Pokémon.

Apparently a lot of things have changed since the last time I played.

There are a lot more Pokémon now. When I started of course there were just the original 151 Gen 1 (Kanto) ones, and when I last played in 2019 there were 495 going up to Gen 4 (Sinnoh). Now there are ones from literally every single generation, with 876 in total, including some from the most recent generation (Gen 9, Paldea), though they still haven't added every single one yet.

Also it appears that the backpacks have been limited or something? In my items section it says I have 402 items but that I can only carry 350, and I have to pay 200 PokéCoins to be able to upgrade it and have more space, which I currently have 0 of. So either they added all this extra stuff in the time I haven't played, or I just wasn't very observant, or maybe I just sucked. I'm not sure, maybe it could be all of them.

Either way, I am enjoying this supersaturated backpack (well except for the fact that my items are perpetually full and I cannot get more standard PokéBalls so I've had to use Great Balls a lot instead, which is kind of a waste).

Regardless though, Pokémon Go has just been a lot of fun! During my recent cubing competition I played it and by pure coincidence it just so happened to be Community Day and so the map was filled with Eevees. I was finally able to catch one and even evolving a few! I got two Flareons, which are probably my favourite!

My sister has constantly played on-and-off and so she redownloaded it again and we were able to trade some stuff, and I was also able to admire her absolutely perplexing stats — I guess living in a walkable place for a few years will do that to you, huh?

And in general it's also been a joy to see the newer Pokémon added, lots of ones I used to think about when they would be added, and some that didn't even exist by the last time I played. The first Pokémon I got in this new run was a Scraggy which coincidentally is one of my friend's favourite Pokémon! And she got very excited when I showed it to her.

In general, I don't know if my interest in Pokémon Go will extend far from this or if it'll just be a small phase. This has definitely happened to me before with other games, I mean, the term "2-week Minecraft phase" has been extremely common nowadays. But regardless, I have really loved my time with it so far.

It has been one of the more recent games to seriously hit the mainstream, not just within the world of traditional "gamers" but outside of them as well! Entering the realm of other things like the Nintendo Wii, Rock Band, or Guitar Hero which transcended into a more casual audience as well.

And so it was nice revisiting this game simply due to its monumental status, and the reminder of all the great times I had with friends in it all those years ago!

Btw my friend code is 4502 4055 6989.

Oh also I'd like to point out, on the same day I started playing again Ben from LoadingReadyRun posted that he started playing as well, but he actually did 7 hours after I did lololol