The modern Pokémon trainer is no longer confined to catching them all within in-game regions that can only be reached through a screen; the summer debut of Pokémon GO has turned into an all out virtual reality fad as trainers take to their mobile devices to catch everything from Abras to Zubats. Released on July 6, GO was an instant hit as over 20 million users took to the streets daily to hunt for local Pokémon.

“I just enjoy the concept of being able to move around and find [Pokémon]. It encourages me to walk,” junior Aimee Laws said. “You’re able to walk around and become one of the characters from your childhood.”

While almost half of active GO players are in the age group of 18 to 29, as reported by a Forbes GO demographics survey, the game’s simplicity and widespread marketing have brought in trainers from all age groups, backgrounds, occupations and locations.

“My daughter downloaded it on my phone. I didn’t see my phone for days once she started playing it,” math teacher Gerry Wieczorek said. “It’s all about the Pokémon. Young adults used to play the game as kids, and now the Pokemon are back.” 

While the game features all 181 Generation I Pokémon, filling the in-game Pokédex can take anywhere from weeks to years based on how frequently the player can find time to play.

“I am about halfway in completing the Pokédex. It is not as easy as people think because you have to travel around a lot and look for the Pokémon [you need]. Most of the time, they aren’t anywhere,” freshman Haley Schulte said.

But other players have managed to feel completely successful in their Pokémon catching endeavors just by sticking to their regular schedules.

“It hasn’t really changed my school routine since I’ve been playing way less, but it definitely changed my summer. I went on long, daily walks for GO, which was really fun. Physically exhausting, but fun,” sophomore Natan Shpringman said.

As popular as the game immediately was, its release also came with plenty of bugs, issues and assorted errors. Common problems for regular users included broken GPS locations, erased game progress and audio distortion.

“Niantic is a very small company, and notorious for being slow on responses to reports, requests, etc,” Shpringman said. “I can’t imagine anyone playing casually to care about those things though.”

The most widespread error, however, was the frequent server crashes that immediately followed the game’s introduction, with GO servers going out for hours at a time worldwide during the affected weeks.

“It’s really buggy. I mean, there’s been a lot of server issues in the past,” Laws said. “I think a lot of these have been fixed.”

With GO’s recent release still taking a toll on the game’s features, time could bring much-needed fixes for the game as it quickly loses traction and popularity with the start of the school year.

“The game is actually not even close to done,” Shpringman said. “I know that sounds kind of bad at first, but I definitely see it as a big plus. Us players get to watch the game and its features develop and change while also getting to play something fully functional.”