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You’re never too old to catch Pokémon GO fever and experience the pros and cons of history’s most popular smartphone game.

In the very beginning, Pokémon was aimed squarely at kids. Franchise creator (and anime protagonist namesake) Satoshi Tajiri has even said that collecting bugs, a traditional summer pastime for Japanese children, was one of his major creative influences.

But over the course of roughly 20 years, Pokémon’s fanbase has broadened far beyond its originally intended scope of elementary school students. Granted, some of its grown-up fans got started on the series when they were still kids, but there are also adults, even seniors, who’re recent arrivals to the Pokémon community.

With this year’s release of Pokémon GO, the barrier of entry is lower than ever before, as anyone with a smartphone can enjoy hunting Pocket Monsters, and for free, too. As a matter of fact, one Japanese grandmother’s lifestyle has changed dramatically since she’s become a Pokémon Trainer, both in ways that please and worry her family.

https://twitter.com/saws_skmdrt/status/790155415547813889

As related by Japanese Twitter user @saws_skmdrt:

My friend gave his grandma a smartphone, then told her all about Pokémon GO.
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Grannie got totally into the game.
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She started spreading the good news of Pokémon GO to all her senior citizen friends.
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They all bought smartphones and starting going for walks together to hunt Pokémon.
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Their legs all became stronger, and their medical examinations clearly show that they’re in better health since they started playing.
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They started going on longer and longer walks, and now some of them are out for so long that their families are almost ready to call the police and file a missing person report.

Hey, what can we say? We’d probably be spending just as much time trying to catch ‘em all if we were retired and didn’t have to stop playing to go to work or school. Still, hopefully some of these fresh fans remember to call home if they end up spending more time than they expected to tracking a Dratini or some other rare species. After all, they’ve all got smartphones in hand at the time (though they’ll have to remember to save a bit of battery juice).

Source: Hamster Sokuho
Top image ©RocketNews24

Follow Casey on Twitter, where he thinks his grandpa would have been a great Pokémon Trainer if they’d had smartphones (or Pokémon) in his day.