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Pokemon Go takes over

Players of all ages flock to real-world mobile game

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Long Islanders have gotta catch ’em all.

People across the region have spent the past two weeks on the hunt, playing the new mobile game Pokemon Go.

Based on the popular franchise, the game encourages people to explore neighborhoods to find items, fight battles and, of course, catch the varied creatures known as Pokemon.

For the teenagers and young adults roaming the landscape, the game is a childhood dream come true: The children who played the first Pokemon games 20 years ago in elementary school are now adults.

“You join a team to battle in gyms,” Island Park resident Eric Prisco explained. “I’m on Team Instinct — the yellow team. If you have co-workers or friends that play, you might want to find out what team they play on if you plan to play with them. Me and my friends really liked one of the original Pokemon games, which was a special yellow edition that featured a Pikachu as your starter Pokemon, which was also the first Pokemon that the main character from the TV show gets.”

Pokemon Go’s popularity is not limited to young people, though. In its first week of availability, it was downloaded more times than Candy Crush and boosted the value of parent company Nintendo by $7.5 billion.

The Oceanside Library is a Pokestop — a place where players gather to collect items. “There’s been a little bit of buzz in the building,” said library Director Karen Porcella. “And people coming in and looking at their phones. We have the sign outside, and every teen program, everybody is told that we’re a Pokestop — although they do know it. And it’s just brought a lot of younger people into the building. And it’s always good to have younger people talking about the library.”

However, there are downsides to Pokemon Go. The servers often crash. A woman in Wyoming and a man in New Hampshire discovered dead bodies. There are Pokestops at the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

The memorial for 9/11 victims in Rockville Centre is also a Pokestop, which upsets Chris Wieman, who lost his mother in the attacks. He has already notified the game’s developer, Niantic, to have it removed. “For a person that lost someone that day, kids are just going there to disrespect it,” he said. “You should respect the area for people who lost people that day, and of course they don’t care.”

Robbers have used the game to find victims, including a case in Lake Ronkonkoma, where three men with a handgun took a 19-year-old player’s iPhone. A man upstate crashed his car while playing Pokemon Go. Players are warned to stay alert before they open the app.

There are benefits. Players get more exercise, because the game forces them to get out of the house, walk around and explore — which is especially helpful for people with conditions like depression or social anxiety. It brings people to local parks. Businesses have used the game to boost sales. Animal shelters have lured players to walk shelter dogs. Perhaps best of all, it uses gaming — a singular, solitary hobby — to brings people together.

Oceanside resident James Grzybowski said that a crowd of more than 50 fellow players sang “Happy Birthday to You” to him as he turned 20 last week. “I was at the [Long Beach] boardwalk and it was midnight, so technically it was my birthday,” he said. “I was with a few of my friends … and we met so many people playing Pokemon Go. So we’re all just walking for the lures, and they all start singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me, but none of [the strangers] knew my name, so when my friends said my name it just kind of echoed around … So I thought that was really fun.”

Barbra Rubin-Perry contributed to this story.