2018 has been a busy year for folks on the nostalgia train. With the recent release of SEGA Genesis Classics, the crowdfunding campaign for Atari’s new device, and the news that Intellivision is trying to break back into the console market, fans of vintage gaming have a lot to look forward to, or rather, a lot to look back upon. The most recent addition to this contemporary wave of nostalgia comes from today’s announcement that POGs, the popular milk-cap game from the mid-1990’s, will be receiving its own mobile, free-to-play, augmented reality game pending the success of its Indiegogo campaign.
Being developed by Compton Technologies (with a license from the World POG Federation), POGs AR seeks to bring the cultural phenomenon that had everyone throwing cardboard discs twenty years ago to iOS and Android devices. Through the app, players will be able to face-off against one another, trade POGs, and compete in tournaments. As the name suggests, the game will feature its own augmented reality mode where players can scan tangible products in order to generate in-game content. In line with the traditional game of POGs, collecting physical (and now digital) pieces continues to be a key component to this game.
Of course, if you weren’t alive in the lawless decade of the 1990’s, let me break this down for you. POGs is a simple game with two components– the POGs themselves (small cardboard discs) and a piece called the slammer (a much heavier disc). After deciding whether or not they’ll play “for keeps” (as in, the winner of the match takes all of the POGs used during the game), players each place the same number of POGs face down into a stack between them. Taking turns, each player drops the slammer onto the pile and collects whichever POGs were turned face-up from the impact. When there are no more POGs left, the player that flipped over more POGs is declared the winner.
Seeing as free-to-play games with rare collectibles have continued to grow in popularity over the last few years, it feels like POGs was destined to have a resurgence sooner or later. If you would like to learn more about the upcoming POGs AR game you can check out its Indiegogo campaign here. Pending the results of the campaign, POGs AR is scheduled to release in September for iOS and Android.