Pictured, Carolyn McManus poses with Horsea while she and her boyfriend, Cole Blechle, play Pokémon Go at Forest Park in St. Louis. 

By DANIELLE POEPPER and ANDREA SAATHOFF
For the Republic-Times

It’s not unusual to see pedestrians walking Monroe County streets with their noses buried in their smartphones. But a recent uptick in that behavior has people talking, and the topic is the 1990s video game Pokémon.

Now, thanks to an “augmented reality” game called Pokémon Go, players can do things such as find their favorite characters just about anyplace — a Pikachu in the park, a Jigglypuff in the store, or a Charmander sitting happily next to the family dog — using their smartphone’s GPS, clock, camera and Pokémon Go app.

Released July 6 for iOS and Android systems by Niantic Inc., Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm in the few short days it has been up and running.

Once confined to the small screen of a video gaming system, Pokémon Go now combines the real world with the virtual one, creating a whole new experience for its players by using nothing more than a smartphone.

While traditional video games use joysticks and buttons to navigate, players of Pokémon Go must physically walk around to explore the real  world to locate virtual hidden Pokémon characters. When the characters are located with the help of GPS and the clock, the phone’s camera will launch and the character will appear on the screen to be photographed against the background of where it was located, as if it were physically there. Once the photo is taken, that Pokémon is considered “captured.”

In addition to finding characters, players also look for “Pokéstops,” which are real-life locations where they can receive items beneficial to gameplay such as PokéBalls and Pokémon eggs, and gain experience points each time they travel to a Pokéstop.

Pokéstops can include busy public places like city halls and train stations, or small landmarks and works of art that may otherwise go unnoticed. Higher traffic areas like major landmarks and malls have several checkpoints, and Pokéstops can typically be found less than a mile apart from one another.

The game, which can include battles with other players, focuses more on individual goals. Unlike the traditional Pokémon games made popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, the main focus of the game is not placed on battling Pokémon against one another.

The object of the game, rather, is simply to “catch ‘em all.” By having players travel to different locations to find all 150 Pokémon, the game developers have done something few others have accomplished — getting their consumers to enjoy their surroundings in the midst of their gaming experience. Instead of sitting in front of a gaming system at home, players must walk around and explore, traveling to locations they may not have known existed in their town.

While a majority of the Pokémon can be found within normal city limits, others are a little more difficult to find; for example, if a particular type lives in the water, a player may have to travel to a lake or river, while others only appear at night.

While the game has been lauded for getting youth and adolescents out of the house and exploring the world, that same benefit has drawbacks.

Over the weekend, the O’Fallon, Mo., police department released a message to the public about young people being lured into dangerous situations through the game. In one case, the department arrested four suspects for armed robbery after using a beacon to lure players to a Pokéstop, where they subsequently robbed them.

Police everywhere are urging players to remain aware of their surroundings at all times.

The app itself has been a hit so far, reaching loyal Pokémon fans as well as welcoming newcomers into the franchise. The simplicity of the game format mixed with the interactive elements has drawn in people across the globe.

Pokémon Go has held the number one spot in both the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store since its release, and with the possibility of seeing Squirtle playing on the beach or a Bulbasaur trotting through the park, it’s unlikely to be dethroned anytime soon.