Pokemon Go takes over Rockville Centre

Players flock to real-world locations to play mobile game

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The game Pokemon Go uses augmented reality to display creatures as if they are standing in real world environments.
The game Pokemon Go uses augmented reality to display creatures as if they are standing in real world environments.
Susan Grieco/Herald

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.

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.

Matthew Bamman, 17, caught pokemon outside the AMC Fantasy 5 movie theater last week. He started playing Pokemon Go the day it came out. “We were going to the movies and we have some time to kill,” he said. “Pokemon Go is really cool. I like it a lot.”

However, there are downsides to Pokemon Go. The servers crash often. 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 upset Chris Wieman, who lost his mother in the attacks. He has already notified the game’s developer, Niantic, to try 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.

“You see a lot of people running around playing it,” said Michael Barrett, 14, of Rockville Centre. “Like you’ll see groups of people looking at their phones and you can tell.”

Michael and his friends Angel Torres and Sam Lee were gathered around a table in Five Pennies Creamery on North Park Avenue, which is a pokestop. Someone had dropped a lure, which draws pokemon in on the game and players in real life. They did not know who turned on the lure, but it had been running for a while.

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.”