Mobile game draws tourists to landmarks

By DINA ARÉVALO
Port Isabel-South Padre Press
editor@portisabelsouthpadre.com

Squinting in the bright afternoon sunshine, a woman holds a cell phone up, as if to take a photo of the bay from the vantage point at Pirate’s Landing. But closer inspection reveals the woman swiping at the screen instead of taking snapshots.

“This is my husband’s phone,” she says somewhat sheepishly. “He’s inside getting a table.”

The woman, Dr. Melissa Chavez, of Austin, is just one of several people lingering near the popular tourist hotspots not to see the largest fly fishing rod and reel, or to take a selfie with a pirate, but to play a new mobile game called Pokémon Go.

The game, the latest version of a two-decade-old video game franchise, has exploded in popularity in the week since its release. So many people across the country are playing that the game’s servers are frequently overloaded and crash, but that hasn’t stopped tourists like Chavez and her family from venturing out, phones in hand, in search of rare Pokémon characters.

The aim of the game is to find and catch over 150 characters known as Pokémon. Previously regulated to game consoles, the new mobile version of the game takes advantage of Google Maps and the camera and GPS capabilities of smart phones to create an interactive gaming experience that occurs in the real world.

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