Here’s a YouTube video that gives you an idea of what I mean: When you find a Pokémon, the game uses augmented reality to make it look like whatever Pokémon you’ve stumbled across is indeed standing right there in front of you. The game uses Google Maps technology to place your avatar on a virtual world that mirrors your real life surroundings.

So finding new Pokémon and checkpoints for the game actually requires you to get off the couch and walk down the block. That is, when you walk around the streets of whatever city or town you live in, your avatar moves inside the game. What makes this game unique is that it uses your phone’s location services and camera so that you can catch Pokémon in real life.

Isn’t that the premise of virtually every other Pokémon game? It’s a new mobile game, free on both iOS and Android, that lets you create an avatar that can catch, train, trade and battle Pokémon characters inside the game. So, while most of America started a quest to 'catch ’em all' - that is, capture all the pretend Pokémon in the game - I set out on a different quest, a quest to figure out what in the name of sweet baby Pikachu this Pokémon Go was and where it came from. ( It has actually been in the works for some time.) But I was perplexed recently to see everyone talking about Pokémon Go, a new mobile game that seemed to come out of nowhere. I played with the cards as a kid - the game is 21 years old. That’s the question I’ve been asking myself after navigating a Pokémon-related social media hailstorm the last few days, complete with witty tweets and jokes, and even great videos, like this one of my boss, Recode Editor in Chief Dan Frommer, catching his first Pokémon at a Mets game. Why is everyone suddenly talking about Pokémon?

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