As Pokémon Go celebrates its 10th anniversary, its devoted players explain how the game has created a vibrant intergenerational community spanning the globe

Most Pokémon obsessives count rare, absurdly expensive playing cards or pristine, fully boxed game cartridges that have survived decades in the attic among their most prized possessions. But for Mairead Ralph, her Pokémon-related crown jewel is a bit different. “Technically, it’s my husband!” she says.

The pair first locked eyes amid decks of Pokémon playing cards and Pokéballs at a fan event 16 years ago and the rest is history. Ralph was among hundreds of Pokémon fans who flocked to Shoreditch, east London, on Saturday afternoon for a pop-up celebrating the 10th anniversary of Pokémon Go, the massively successful augmented reality smartphone game that has seen millions of players physically venture to all corners of the earth to catch ’em all in person. In that spirit, the surrounding area was full of Pokéheads wandering the streets, their heads in their phones, seeking to catch exclusive Pokémon that had been released.

These days, I ‘collect’ birdsong and wild flowers, but it all started when my sons and I first set out to find Pikachu and pals

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Believe it or not, Pokémon Go is 10 years old this month. The wildly successful smartphone game, which allows you to track down lovable creatures in the real world using GPS and augmented-reality technologies, has reportedly been downloaded 800m times across 150 countries and regions. A trillion Pokémon have been caught so far – and I have been responsible for a modest percentage of that figure.

When the game was first released, my sons and I spent many happy hours wandering the streets and parks of Frome searching for Jigglypuffs and Charizards, and the game’s social element, which lets you take on gym battles with other players in your vicinity, offered my autistic son a route to communicate with other children in a way he’d never been able to before.

Pokémon Go celebrated its 10th anniversary with a Times Square takeover in New York featuring a special event to defeat the Pokémon species Mewtwo. Nearly 2,000 people played the game together simultaneously in what organisers called one of the largest in-person Pokémon battles in history