As the decade comes to a close, the Star looks back at some of the period's most captivating stories and reveals what’s been happening in the meantime.

In the summer of 2016, Mayor John Tory personally contacted the makers of a mobile phone-based game after legions of gamers haphazardly flooded the Toronto’s waterfront for an unprecedented dive into augmented reality.

Like many North American cities, Toronto was caught up in a gaming phenomenon that was unlike any to come before it, and unrivalled by anything seen since: Pokemon Go.

The explosively popular app was based on a video game franchise that originated in the 1990s. It spawned tournaments and even a small industry of people offering to drive players around Toronto in search of Pokemon hot spots.

The game lets players “catch” virtual monsters by walking around in the real world and searching for them with their phones. Locations in the game correspond to places in real life; for example, the Toronto Star building was home to Pokestops and a Pokemon gym.

The global phenomenon sent a tsunami of players into frenzied hunts for the cartoon characters, sparked public curiosity. It also prompted safety concerns from police and Tory, who was concerned about gamers swarming through Harbourfront, which was ground zero for Pokemon Go in Toronto.

Tory personally reached out to John Hanke, CEO of San Francisco-based Niantic, Inc., after hundreds of people camped out for hours at the park by the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, hunting for virtual pocket monsters on their phones.

“I wrote him a note and said, ‘I’m really happy with your success with Pokemon Go, I’m really glad all the people are enjoying playing it,’” Tory said at the time. “‘However, my job is to balance that against the fact that there is a degree of disruption.’”

The park and surrounding area was host to nine Pokestops — in-game locations where players congregated in real life. After a call from the mayor, Niantic promptly reduced it to four.

In the months after its release, the flow of gamers eventually dwindled. Although the mobile app had reportedly been downloaded more than one billion times, city landmarks were no longer invaded by crowds of people pinned to their mobile devices, homed in on capturing prized characters.

Courtney Provan, hadn’t left her Toronto apartment for a week when she was alerted by a Facebook post in July 2016 about a special meetup of Pokemon Go enthusiasts slated for the Toronto Star’s offices at 1 Yonge St.

Provan mustered the confidence to leave her apartment and take up the Star’s invitation to join a bunch of strangers as the subjects of a story explaining the fantasy world of cartoon creatures.

“Pokemon Go has had a huge positive impact on my mental health,” she said in a recent interview. “When that Toronto Star meetup happened, I was going through a really bad time with depression and that was the first time I had showered and actually gone out in a week.”

The game has since evolved to add a hosts of new characters (currently more than 500) and features including group raids and player versus player combat, which has spawned a circuit of tournaments, she said.

Niantic also launched a festival series, which recently saw 45,000 people flock to Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve at Parc Jean-Drapeau, over three days. The Montreal showcase was the first Pokemon Go event in Canada.

The Montreal event saw people from all over the world walking 166,000 km and catching more than 7 million Pokemon. Players also captured exclusive Pokemon, which were only available at the event.

“I’ve considered doing that (Go Fest) as a fun reason to go on a vacation,” Provan said.

The July 2016 event at the Star came on the eve of the mobile app’s highly anticipated summer release, and Provan now credits the pull of the ultra-popular game for breaking her spell of isolation.

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“It became part of my therapy to go outside for at least 30 minutes a day and I did that by playing Pokemon Go,” she said.

Now living in Muskoka, Provan, 36, says her playing time has declined significantly.

“It’s no longer new, so it’s not such a big thing,” she said.

Provan said that since the height of its popularity, the game’s rabid following has now shifted to more organized gatherings called community days.

The game has also sparked romance for some. “I’ve met a few people who have met their partners through the Pokemon Go community,” she said.

The festival series and opening the game to allow for player versus player battles, is all part of Niantic’s efforts to grow the Pokemon franchise, said Matt Slemon, Niantic’s lead product manager.

“While it is a game, it also has a lot of aspects of encouraging fitness, encouraging being social and encouraging local awareness,” Slemon said.

Pokemon Go combat has also spawned a growing tournament scene in Toronto and major U.S. cities.

“We’ve been working with other organizations to promote Pokemon Go’s official competitive scene,” Slemon added.

Although the Pokemon craze has lost much of its steam, technology and innovation expert Amber MacArthur said the game is among those with the most cultural impact of all time.

“It was the first example of a consumer app that used augmented reality,” said MacArthur, who spent many days hunting the cartoon characters with her son. “It was so popular during that time because we hadn’t seen anything like that, at a consumer level, using that type of technology.”

Player numbers plummeting is typical in the current technology ecosystem, where something new is available weekly and consumers latch on to the latest craze, she said.

“We’re seeing that right now with TikTok,” MacArthur said, referring to the social media platform used for sharing videos.

Pokemon Go also required players to do more physical activity than the average game.

“This was a great example of a game that got people out of their home,” MacArthur said. “That element of it made it a lot more social than some of games that we’ve seen.”

Jason Miller is a breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Reach him on email: jasonmiller@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @millermotionpic

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