Poky-what?

What’s going on?

There I was, propped against a tree with a my geo-cache GPS in my hand. I just found the cache in the tree knot-hole above me and sat down to rest. Looking around, I thought of  Rip Van Winkle waking up after his long nap.( Believe that?)

Things have changed!

My hand-held GPS is getting old, but cache-finding is still popular. But now, there’s this “Poke-something". In the news, I heard this poky-thingy is causing anxiety due to certain convicted people using it as a lure to get youngsters to their location! Others are wandering out of the country using this thing! I must be the only one who has been sleeping. Time to check this out.

- - - - -

 Back in "The Day”, a great computer, Commodore came out, at that

Mario!

time a fun hand-game with the Atari name and our fingers were busy! Mario jumped from one wall to another, and soon every one one of us had to play Pong. Nothing dangerous about that, but loads of fun! Soon, rockets put satelites in the air and things got complicated. That’s when I must have gone to sleep.

Pong!

- - - - -
This poky-thing came up at the Super Bowl and current newspaper readers are concerned about this new video game.Time to see what’s happening.

It’s  called POKEMON!

( Sure not English!) As usual, it comes from overseas. POK-E-MON is not new coming from a Japanese combination of Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures!. The name comes from contractions of the Japanese “Poketto” and “Monsut”  or “Pocket Monsters”in English  around 1990, and now the second-most

Satoshi Tajiri

 successful video game-based media in the world ( behind Nintendo’s Mario). The original Pokémon was a role-playing game created by Satoshi Tajiri  in 1995. His concept of the game stemmed from the hobby of insect collecting, one of his favorite pastimes. Players use cards, attempting to defeat their opponent by “knocking out” opponents cards while the captured is added to the winner’s collection. The game is widely popular, however not without some concerns.

- - - - -

In the USA, there seems to be little social concern, however, while the games have been released at the same time in Norway, they are not in Norwegian, but in English. The only Norwegian language game is their practice of trading cards online.At it’s original viewing in Norway, the series was accused of marketing Pokémon merchandise due to commercials and marketing towards children being illegal in Norway. It took some time before unedited versions were allowed  in Norway while most episodes of the series were simply the American versions with an added Norse dub track.

- - - - -

In Norway the anime is available on Netflix. In the year of 2000 the soundtrack album Pokémon 2.B.A. Master was translated into Norwegian under the title Pokémon Du må fange dem alle!.

- - - - -

In the latest news, American players are noticing  changes to the game that omits features that aid players' awareness of what distance they may be from  their objective.Some players are not enthusiastic about the current versions.

- - - - -

Critics of the games have noted that back in December 1997, more than 635 Japanese children were admitted to hospitals with epileptic seizures caused by watching an episode of Pokémon "Denno Senshi Porygon", or "Electric Soldier Porygon". In this particular episode, there were bright explosions with rapidly alternating color patterns. Researched, it was determined that the strobe-light effects caused some individuals to have epileptic seizures, even if the person had no previous history of epilepsy.

- - - - -

 Two youths unaware of their surroundings when they were playing Pokémon  GO on their cell phones made an illegal border crossing  from Canada into the United States in a remote part of Montana. Border officials said the two youngsters were found  with their attention riveted on their phones while they were trying to hunt down cartoon characters on a journey that took them over the border."Both juveniles were so captivated by their Pokémon GO games that they lost track of where they were," said Michael Rappold, a spokesman for the agency”.

- - - - -

In 1999, two nine-year-old boys from  New York sued Nintendo because they claimed the Pokémon Trading Card Game caused their problematic gambling.

But, the game’s popularity continues to grow.

.As of May 2016, the Pokémon media franchise has grossed revenues of  $46.2 billion USD. The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006 and the twentieth anniversary was celebrated with a commercial at the 2016 Super Bowl using the theme: "I can do that".

So far, I haven’t heard any great complaint about my old geo-cache,

 So, on with the games!