Uchimura doesn’t have an addiction PokeCoins (the in-game currency that can be bought for real money) or anything, he simply didn’t realize that his cell phone plan charged so much for overseas usage. Killing time at the Olympic Games in Rio ended up costing the athlete quite the hefty sum.

Or it would have, if his carrier hadn’t let him off the hook. According to Kyodo News (opens in new tab), Uchimura’s provider cut him a break after he explained the situation, and dropped his 500,000 yen bill to 3,000 yen (about $30/£22). I’m guessing that being an Olympian representing the country on the world stage helped, so don’t go thinking you can just jet around the world hunting for Pokemon and think Verizon or AT&T will let bygones be bygones.

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While Pokemon Go may be the first time many players have heard of developer Niantic Labs, it’s a studio that traces its lineage back to Google (whose parent company is now known as “Alphabet”). Niantic was once part of Google, and its founder and CEO, John Hanke, worked on the technology that powers Google Maps. That tech was used in Niantic’s previous game, Ingress. And Ingress, much like a Metapod becoming Butterfree, has evolved – in its own way – to become Pokemon Go.

Much like Pokemon Go, Ingress is a game of geolocation. Players must travel to specific locations to capture portals, which link with other captured sites to form zones controlled by whichever faction holds those points. Hanke and his team chose some of the first portals based on sites with historical or cultural significance, such as The Washington Monument, Big Ben, or longstanding museums.

Other locations were chosen based on geo-tagged photos from Google. For example, you might not have much interest in, or even know about, the world’s largest ball of twine (opens in new tab) (located in Cawker City, Kansas by the way) but the fact that so many tourists take pictures of it and upload those pictures to Google would make it a prime candidate for an Ingress portal.

Many more portals were submitted as suggestions by Ingress players. Hanke recently told Mashable (opens in new tab) that there are approximately 15 million player-submitted portal locations, 5 million of which have been approved.

Ingress player data has revealed the most popular of these portal locations, and Niantic has turned those into gyms. The less popular (but still active and approved) locations have become Pokestops. “The Pokestops are submitted by users, so obviously they’re based on places people go,” Hanke said. “We had essentially two and a half years of people going to all the places where they thought they should be able to play Ingress, so it’s some pretty remote places.”

It can lead to some interesting situations where the landscape has changed over time. I can personally tell you of two stories, each revolving around water towers (look, I live in central Iowa, we don’t have a lot of super cool landmarks, okay?).

One nearby Pokestop is assigned to an old water tower that existed during Ingress’ launch window, but was torn down by the time Pokemon Go was released. So down the street is a Pokestop pointing me to something that no longer exists.

Meanwhile in Des Moines, a gym is assigned to a water tower stationed outside a nearby mall. That makes sense – the mall is a popular area, and the water tower is an easy-to-see landmark – however, the water tower is surrounded by a tall chain-link fence with barbed wire around the top, and a big “NO TRESPASSING” warning on the gate. Because of this, it’s not possible to get close enough to actually interact with the gym.

That is, unless you fool the app by closing it and re-opening it, hoping the GPS signal will think you’re on the other side of the fence – a trick I definitely did not do, and do not suggest any central Iowa players reading this try. Unless you are Team Mystic, in which case: we cool.

So if you’re wondering why Pokemon Go seems to be telling you to go to church, or the local art installation, odds are that it’s actually following in the footsteps of a tourist whose picture is circulating on Google or an Ingress player who suggested it. Maybe they were distracting themselves from a lengthy sermon, maybe it was a good place to meet up with fellow players, or maybe the world has changed since those days, closing off what once was.

I say, make up your own stories for these places. And good luck catching ’em all.

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>> Download: Pokémon GO – Niantic, Inc. (opens in new tab)

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The great-grandaddy of first-person shooters, Wolfenstein 3D, today celebrates its 20th anniversary.

Released in 1992, the game gave rise to a fledgling studio of plucky young upstarts called id software, who later went on to make a little game called Doom. (Perhaps you’ve heard of it?) While that game is perhaps the better known of the two, Wolfenstein 3D is considered the birth of the genre that continues to be the cornerstone of gaming to this day.

To mark the occasion, Bethesda is giving away the entire iOS version of Wolfenstein 3D for the princely sum of naught. Ziltch. Free. Go ahead, download the entire game right now and shoot Nazis on the bus. Don’t have an iDevice? No problem, just head here (opens in new tab) to play the game in your web browser. Everybody wins!

Also, be sure to check out Bethesda’s special video podcast (opens in new tab), which sees John Carmack revisiting the game and explaining the design process. It’s an insightful watch.

Question is, does Wolfenstein 3D still hold up today? Or is merely a dusty digital relic? Let us know in the comments.

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