April 1, 2024 • 19 mins
In the summer of 2016, the entire world was going crazy for a new mobile game. All these years later, it’s easy to forget the wildest part about Pokémon GO: the whole thing began as an April Fools’ joke.
*
Very Special Episodes is a new podcast where we tell one incredible story each week. Episodes usually go up on Wednesdays. We made an exception for April Fools' Day.
Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, Jason English
Written by Dave Roos
Produced, Edited and Sound Designed by Josh Fisher
Additional Editing by Jonathan Washington
Story Editor is Marisa Brown
Mixing and Mastering by Baheed Frazier
Research and Fact-Checking by Austin Thompson
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Executive Producer is Jason English
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original. It was the summer of
twenty sixteen, and the whole world had gone crazy for
Pokemon Go. In city parks and on suburban streets, groups
of geeked out strangers clutched their phones while chasing down
(00:31):
virtual characters. If you don't remember, Pokemon Go was a
legitimate cultural phenomenon. Hundreds of millions of people downloaded the game.
There were news reports of distracted Pokemon Go players walking
off cliffs. Highway signs warned drive now, catch Pokemon later. Sure,
(00:53):
there had been popular mobile games before, Let's not forget
they made Angry Birds into a movie, two of them.
But there was something different about Pokemon Go. All you
had to do was step outside, open the app, and
your phone became a magical window into a hidden world.
(01:14):
Pokemon Go is still going today. Millions of Pokemon trainers
are still catching Pokemon in the wild and battling each
other at poke gems. But there was something truly special
when Pokemon Go first took the world by storm. All
these years later, it's easy to forget the craziest fact
(01:35):
about the crazy popularity of Pokemon Go that the whole
thing began as a joke, and not just any joke,
but in April Fool's Joke. Welcome to very special episodes
and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz, and
(01:56):
this is April Fool's Gold, the story of Pokemon.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Go Happy April Fools everybody. I'm Jason English, welcoming you
to very special episodes. Now we are not what you
would call a timely show. In recent weeks, we spent
time on the set of James Cameron's Titanic the night
(02:21):
someone poisoned the cast and crew. We tried to track
down a moon rock that went missing in the late seventies.
We recounted an old Soviet botany rivalry from the Stalin era.
That's all by design. I'm a firm believer that being
interesting is more important than being timely. But on occasion
we hit on a story idea that does line up
(02:43):
with a specific date. So when producer Josh Fisher and
writer Dave Russ pitched today's topic, we realized the tenth
anniversary was mere weeks away. So this week's episode is
both interesting and timely, a two fer. I'm gonna let
Dana take it from here.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Our story begins on April first, twenty eleven, when a
young man named Tatsuo Nomora showed up for his first
day of work at Google Japan. Tatuo didn't know it,
but April Fool's Day was a really big deal at Google.
For many years, Google used April First to roll out
(03:20):
a litany of fake Google products. There was Google Gulp,
a quote smart drink that enhanced your intelligence, and Google Romance,
powered by Google's trademarked Soulmate search technology. There was even
a feature called ad Birds that promised to put your
(03:41):
ads on birds who would then fly around. It didn't
take long for Tatuo to get in on the fine.
He was working on Google Maps at the time, so
on April Fool's Day twenty twelve, he came up with
his first joke product, an old school Nintendo version of
Google Maps. Here's Tatsuo.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And I came up with this idea to turn the
Google Maps into the old fashioned Nintendo classic Nintendo eight
bit style. And I made a demo prototype for it
and showed it around and people really loved it. And
the following year people asked me what I would do,
and I would come up with ideas, so I sort
(04:26):
of became this April Fools Guy.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
In twenty fourteen, Tatuo moved to California to work for
Google USA. He was still on the Google Maps team,
putting in long hours launching a new version of the
Google Maps mobile app. He didn't really want to get
involved with another prank product because it meant even more
work creating something that's funny for like a day and
(04:53):
then everyone forgets about. But Tatuo's reputation as the April
Fools Guy followed him to America, and the Google Maps
team roped him in. They were looking for a new joke.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
I did that.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Encouraged users to explore the fancy new map they just launched.
Someone came up with the idea of collecting things on
Google Maps. Okay, but collecting what?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And some ideas we came up was, you know, Hello Kitty,
like if you go to different places, they have that
city themed Hello Kitty, and we talked about that. We
also talked about dragon Ball. You have you know, seving
dragon Ball, you pan around, you find them. And it
was during that brainstorming I came up with Pokemon. I mean,
what do you collect Pokemon? Right? That's quite natural. It
(05:42):
was also just by chance staying next to Pokemon Center.
It's like a Pokemon store. Every morning I go to
the office, I will pass by that store, So it
was kind of natural to come up with that idea.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Just like that, Tattoo found himself creating a new April
Fools game for Google Maps. They called it the Pokemon Challenge.
Tattoo was a software developer, not a game designer, but
he was also a nineties kid who grew up playing
the original Pokemon video game on his game Boy, so
(06:16):
making this fake Pokemon game was also kind of a
dream job. The object of Pokemon is, of course, to
catch them all, so that's how Tattuo designed the Pokemon Challenge.
He hid one hundred and fifty Pokemon inside Google Maps
in different locations around the globe. The hiding spots weren't
(06:39):
completely random.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Tattoo says, I didn't want it to be hard, but
it had to be interesting. I think that was what
I wanted. And just like the original Pokemon, if you
wanted to catch them all, you know, you got to
make some effort to catch them all. So there were
one hundred and fifty Pokemon in that Pokemon Challenge, and
(07:01):
they were located at places like if you go to
a volcano in Hawaii, find a Chari's art there, and
if you'll go to a power plan you can might
find a Pikachu. We really tried to make it interesting
for people to look around.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
To actually win the game, though, Tatuo wanted that to
be a true challenge. He knew that gamers would immediately
go online and post spoilers with the locations of each
Pokemon as they were found, so he added one final
Pokemon who didn't play by the rules, the legendary Mew.
(07:43):
Only after a player had already caught all one hundred
and fifty Pokemon could they start searching for Mew to
really test their catching skills.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Tatuo hid Mew deep.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
In the Amazon jungle, but knowing that people would reveal
Mu's location online, Tatuo programmed in an ingenious twist.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
So all other Pokemon they had static location. This Mew
is static, but it's a different per person, so you
will find it Mew at a different location than other people.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
When it came time to launch the game, Google's marketing
department produced a flashy video trailer. The joke was that
Google Maps was looking to hire an official Pokemon Master.
To weed out applicants, they created the Pokemon Challenge.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
It's always been important to us to have the most
qualified employees at Google. Now, using the technology created by
the Google Maps team, we've prepared the most rigorous test
known demand to find the world's best Pokemon Master.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The trailer was a Hollywood style production complete with special effects.
It showed intrepid Pokemon masters scaling cliffs and saling the
ocean to catch rare Pokemon. But unlike tatsu game, where
Pokemon were caught with a simple click on Google Maps,
the trailer showed Pokemon masters using their phones to actually
(09:16):
see live Pokemon in the wild and capture them with
poke balls. There was even a shot of a man
in a business suit on a busy sidewalk, clutching his
phone and frantically waving around at an imaginary Pokemon. Important
of things to come For April Fool's Day twenty fourteen,
Tatsuo's Pokemon Challenge was released to the world, and one
(09:41):
of the people who remembers playing the game that day
is Stephen Oz. Stephen was just a teenager back then,
but he thought it was brilliant.
Speaker 6 (09:50):
Once you updated the app, the little guy that you
drop on the pin to see like a three D
v You've seen him dress as Professor Oak and he's
all like saying, hey, we need you to help find
all of these Pokemon spread all over the world. And
I'm like I saw this was like the greatest day
since Google Maps did the pac Man version of Google Maps.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Stephen played the Pokemon challenge on Google Maps for hours and,
with the help of some online tips, found all one
hundred and fifty hidden Pokemon, just as Tatsuo had planned. Though,
capturing the mythical Mew in the Amazon jungle was almost impossible,
but Stephen persevered and eventually caught him all. Winning the
(10:36):
game was fun for Steven, but the real prize came
a few months later. Tatsuo and the Google Maps team
decided to reward all the winners with actual Google Pokemon
Master business cards with their names on them, along with
a signed letter from Tatsuo.
Speaker 6 (10:55):
That was amazing. That was like being validated for being
a Pokemon fan. I never expected that in my life
of being a Pokemon master and may and I showed
them off to everyone those cards in my prize possession.
It felt fun, It felt like something new and exciting
in the world of Pokemon.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
April Fools twenty fourteen came and went. Tatua returned to
his day job at Google Maps, but his mind kept
coming back to the Pokemon Challenge. Sure, he made the
game as an April Fools joke, a one off gag,
but like Stephen, Tatuo felt the game offered something new
(11:36):
and different from other Pokemon games. Could this joke become
something real?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
I did think about making this a real game. It
took I think three three four months to prepare just
for this a few days joke, so it was a
lot of work. And every year he makes so much
effort and after a few days people forget about it
and it's gone. So naturally, I was always hoping, so
(12:04):
one of these will become something serio.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
That's when Tatuo got the phone call that changed the
course of his career and altered the course of gaming history.
Tatsuo Nomura got a call from a friend, Masa Kawashima.
Masa was working for a small gaming startup called Niantic Labs.
(12:29):
Niantic was actually part of Google at the time. Masa
and Nyantik were making augmented reality games, games that blended
real world and virtual elements. Niantic's big ar game at
the time was Ingress. It was a location based game.
To play it, you opened the app on your phone
(12:49):
and walked around outside. The goal was to capture portals
hidden in real world locations and do battle with other players.
Masa had seen the Hollywood style YouTube trailer for the
Pokemon Challenge. He told Tatuo that the version of the
game being played in the trailer looked exactly like a
(13:10):
Pokemon version of Ingris. Of course, real world locations, capturing Pokemon,
doing battle with other Pokemon trainers. All the pieces started
falling into place.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Call it a Eureka.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Moment, an epiphany, a revelation from the gaming gods. In
that moment, Pokemon Go was born. Within weeks, Tatsuo and
Niantic were in Japan pitching the idea to the Pokemon
Company and Nintendo. Within a few months, Tatsuo was working
full time for Niantic. The next year, Nyantik broke off
(13:50):
from Google as an independent company, betting its future almost
entirely on the success of Pokemon Go, a game that
started as an April fool's joke. We now know how
that future turned out. When Poke Kimono finally launched in
twenty sixteen, it wasn't just the biggest thing in mobile gaming,
(14:13):
it was the biggest thing in the world. In just
one week, the market value of Nintendo, which owned a
stake in the game, jumped by nine billion dollars. With
a b at the twenty sixteen Summer Olympics in Brazil,
a Japanese athlete racked up five thousand dollars in roaming
(14:35):
charges from playing Pokemon Go on his phone. Starbucks issued
a special drink called the Pokemono Frappuccino, featuring raspberry syrup
and freeze dried blackberries. Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, attempting to
piggyback on the game's popularity, held a campaign event at
a Pokemon gym in Ohio, where she famously asked people
(15:00):
to Pokemon go to the polls. In the first year alone,
Pokemon Go was downloaded seve one hundred and fifty million times.
The game had made billions of dollars for Niantic, the
tiny startup that took a big bet.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
On in April.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Fool's joke, John Walker never thought he was going to
be a Pokemon Go fan. A gaming journalist from the UK.
John was already in college when the original Pokemon games
and cartoons came out in the nineties.
Speaker 7 (15:35):
So back in twenty sixteen, I knew nothing, absolutely nothing
about Pokemon, like I could maybe name you Pikachu, and
I had no clue at all about the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
John didn't discover Pokemon Go until twenty twenty, when COVID
lockdowns forced him and his very active five year old
son indoors, and.
Speaker 7 (15:56):
So we were trying to think of reasons to go out,
and he was going for a walk. Wasn't something that
interested him, nor any other five year old, And then
I remembered this Pokemon Go thing, so I showed it
to him and he instantly loved it, and so we
went out and we walked, and it was it was
just magic. We went outside and all these Pokemon that
we didn't really know to care about at the time
(16:17):
were appearing in real life. And to him this was
just unbelievable. And it ended up becoming a thing where
we would don't tell the government, but we would spend
more than an hour out. He would go for three
hour walks. A five year old going on three hour walks.
Purely motivated by getting to the next PokeStop and the
next pokeg Gym, and the next ticking off the next
(16:37):
task off the list.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
John says that his son Toby became absolutely obsessed with
catching Mew two. They tried for months to beat a
character named Giovanni who had a Mew two, but they
always came up short. John and Toby were ready to
give up after a long day of playing in a
special Pokemon Go Live event.
Speaker 7 (17:00):
I think the event came to an end at six pm,
and I remember we were sat on this chair in
his room, just having one last go because the hot
air balloon that he was in just happened to hover
into the game and we clicked on it and we
tried one more time, and we did it. We won
the mewtwo, like with you know, it was a kind
of sports movie ending seconds to spare and we both cried.
(17:23):
I remember, I just I was so relieved for his happiness,
and he was so overwhelmed with happiness at the time.
That was the most precious thing and it was just
such an awesome moment.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Ten years ago today, Tatsuo Nomora released an April Fool's
joke that has brought joy and obsession and long walks
with five year olds to hundreds of millions of people
the world over. Tatsuo still works for Niantic, where he's
created and launched other popular AR games. One is called
(17:57):
Pickman Bloom, a kind of step counter powered by Imaginary Friends.
Another is Monster Hunter Now, in which you and monsters
now neither has been as world changing as Pokemon Go,
but that's okay. Lightning almost never strikes twice unless you're PEAKACHEW.
(18:19):
So Happy April Fool's Day everyone, and who knows, maybe
some lame gag you pull at work today will still
be a global phenomenon ten years from now.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
me Jason English. This episode was written by Dave Bruce.
Our producer, editor and sound designer is Josh Fisher. Additional
editing by Jonathan Washington, Mixing and mastering by Bahid Fraser.
(18:57):
Our story editor is Marissa Brown. Original music by Elise McCoy,
Research in fact checking by Austin Thompson. Show logo by
Lucy Kinton. I am your executive producer and We'll see
you back here next week. If you like this show,
go give us a nice little rating on Apple or
wherever you're listening. Very Special Episodes is a production of
(19:19):
iHeart Podcasts.
Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original. It was the summer of
twenty sixteen, and the whole world had gone crazy for
Pokemon Go. In city parks and on suburban streets, groups
of geeked out strangers clutched their phones while chasing down
(00:31):
virtual characters. If you don't remember, Pokemon Go was a
legitimate cultural phenomenon. Hundreds of millions of people downloaded the game.
There were news reports of distracted Pokemon Go players walking
off cliffs. Highway signs warned drive now, catch Pokemon later. Sure,
(00:53):
there had been popular mobile games before, Let's not forget
they made Angry Birds into a movie, two of them.
But there was something different about Pokemon Go. All you
had to do was step outside, open the app, and
your phone became a magical window into a hidden world.
(01:14):
Pokemon Go is still going today. Millions of Pokemon trainers
are still catching Pokemon in the wild and battling each
other at poke gems. But there was something truly special
when Pokemon Go first took the world by storm. All
these years later, it's easy to forget the craziest fact
(01:35):
about the crazy popularity of Pokemon Go that the whole
thing began as a joke, and not just any joke,
but in April Fool's Joke. Welcome to very special episodes
and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz, and
(01:56):
this is April Fool's Gold, the story of Pokemon.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Go Happy April Fools everybody. I'm Jason English, welcoming you
to very special episodes. Now we are not what you
would call a timely show. In recent weeks, we spent
time on the set of James Cameron's Titanic the night
(02:21):
someone poisoned the cast and crew. We tried to track
down a moon rock that went missing in the late seventies.
We recounted an old Soviet botany rivalry from the Stalin era.
That's all by design. I'm a firm believer that being
interesting is more important than being timely. But on occasion
we hit on a story idea that does line up
(02:43):
with a specific date. So when producer Josh Fisher and
writer Dave Russ pitched today's topic, we realized the tenth
anniversary was mere weeks away. So this week's episode is
both interesting and timely, a two fer. I'm gonna let
Dana take it from here.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Our story begins on April first, twenty eleven, when a
young man named Tatsuo Nomora showed up for his first
day of work at Google Japan. Tatuo didn't know it,
but April Fool's Day was a really big deal at Google.
For many years, Google used April First to roll out
(03:20):
a litany of fake Google products. There was Google Gulp,
a quote smart drink that enhanced your intelligence, and Google Romance,
powered by Google's trademarked Soulmate search technology. There was even
a feature called ad Birds that promised to put your
(03:41):
ads on birds who would then fly around. It didn't
take long for Tatuo to get in on the fine.
He was working on Google Maps at the time, so
on April Fool's Day twenty twelve, he came up with
his first joke product, an old school Nintendo version of
Google Maps. Here's Tatsuo.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And I came up with this idea to turn the
Google Maps into the old fashioned Nintendo classic Nintendo eight
bit style. And I made a demo prototype for it
and showed it around and people really loved it. And
the following year people asked me what I would do,
and I would come up with ideas, so I sort
(04:26):
of became this April Fools Guy.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
In twenty fourteen, Tatuo moved to California to work for
Google USA. He was still on the Google Maps team,
putting in long hours launching a new version of the
Google Maps mobile app. He didn't really want to get
involved with another prank product because it meant even more
work creating something that's funny for like a day and
(04:53):
then everyone forgets about. But Tatuo's reputation as the April
Fools Guy followed him to America, and the Google Maps
team roped him in. They were looking for a new joke.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
I did that.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Encouraged users to explore the fancy new map they just launched.
Someone came up with the idea of collecting things on
Google Maps. Okay, but collecting what?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And some ideas we came up was, you know, Hello Kitty,
like if you go to different places, they have that
city themed Hello Kitty, and we talked about that. We
also talked about dragon Ball. You have you know, seving
dragon Ball, you pan around, you find them. And it
was during that brainstorming I came up with Pokemon. I mean,
what do you collect Pokemon? Right? That's quite natural. It
(05:42):
was also just by chance staying next to Pokemon Center.
It's like a Pokemon store. Every morning I go to
the office, I will pass by that store, So it
was kind of natural to come up with that idea.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Just like that, Tattoo found himself creating a new April
Fools game for Google Maps. They called it the Pokemon Challenge.
Tattoo was a software developer, not a game designer, but
he was also a nineties kid who grew up playing
the original Pokemon video game on his game Boy, so
(06:16):
making this fake Pokemon game was also kind of a
dream job. The object of Pokemon is, of course, to
catch them all, so that's how Tattuo designed the Pokemon Challenge.
He hid one hundred and fifty Pokemon inside Google Maps
in different locations around the globe. The hiding spots weren't
(06:39):
completely random.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Tattoo says, I didn't want it to be hard, but
it had to be interesting. I think that was what
I wanted. And just like the original Pokemon, if you
wanted to catch them all, you know, you got to
make some effort to catch them all. So there were
one hundred and fifty Pokemon in that Pokemon Challenge, and
(07:01):
they were located at places like if you go to
a volcano in Hawaii, find a Chari's art there, and
if you'll go to a power plan you can might
find a Pikachu. We really tried to make it interesting
for people to look around.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
To actually win the game, though, Tatuo wanted that to
be a true challenge. He knew that gamers would immediately
go online and post spoilers with the locations of each
Pokemon as they were found, so he added one final
Pokemon who didn't play by the rules, the legendary Mew.
(07:43):
Only after a player had already caught all one hundred
and fifty Pokemon could they start searching for Mew to
really test their catching skills.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Tatuo hid Mew deep.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
In the Amazon jungle, but knowing that people would reveal
Mu's location online, Tatuo programmed in an ingenious twist.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
So all other Pokemon they had static location. This Mew
is static, but it's a different per person, so you
will find it Mew at a different location than other people.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
When it came time to launch the game, Google's marketing
department produced a flashy video trailer. The joke was that
Google Maps was looking to hire an official Pokemon Master.
To weed out applicants, they created the Pokemon Challenge.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
It's always been important to us to have the most
qualified employees at Google. Now, using the technology created by
the Google Maps team, we've prepared the most rigorous test
known demand to find the world's best Pokemon Master.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The trailer was a Hollywood style production complete with special effects.
It showed intrepid Pokemon masters scaling cliffs and saling the
ocean to catch rare Pokemon. But unlike tatsu game, where
Pokemon were caught with a simple click on Google Maps,
the trailer showed Pokemon masters using their phones to actually
(09:16):
see live Pokemon in the wild and capture them with
poke balls. There was even a shot of a man
in a business suit on a busy sidewalk, clutching his
phone and frantically waving around at an imaginary Pokemon. Important
of things to come For April Fool's Day twenty fourteen,
Tatsuo's Pokemon Challenge was released to the world, and one
(09:41):
of the people who remembers playing the game that day
is Stephen Oz. Stephen was just a teenager back then,
but he thought it was brilliant.
Speaker 6 (09:50):
Once you updated the app, the little guy that you
drop on the pin to see like a three D
v You've seen him dress as Professor Oak and he's
all like saying, hey, we need you to help find
all of these Pokemon spread all over the world. And
I'm like I saw this was like the greatest day
since Google Maps did the pac Man version of Google Maps.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Stephen played the Pokemon challenge on Google Maps for hours and,
with the help of some online tips, found all one
hundred and fifty hidden Pokemon, just as Tatsuo had planned. Though,
capturing the mythical Mew in the Amazon jungle was almost impossible,
but Stephen persevered and eventually caught him all. Winning the
(10:36):
game was fun for Steven, but the real prize came
a few months later. Tatsuo and the Google Maps team
decided to reward all the winners with actual Google Pokemon
Master business cards with their names on them, along with
a signed letter from Tatsuo.
Speaker 6 (10:55):
That was amazing. That was like being validated for being
a Pokemon fan. I never expected that in my life
of being a Pokemon master and may and I showed
them off to everyone those cards in my prize possession.
It felt fun, It felt like something new and exciting
in the world of Pokemon.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
April Fools twenty fourteen came and went. Tatua returned to
his day job at Google Maps, but his mind kept
coming back to the Pokemon Challenge. Sure, he made the
game as an April Fools joke, a one off gag,
but like Stephen, Tatuo felt the game offered something new
(11:36):
and different from other Pokemon games. Could this joke become
something real?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
I did think about making this a real game. It
took I think three three four months to prepare just
for this a few days joke, so it was a
lot of work. And every year he makes so much
effort and after a few days people forget about it
and it's gone. So naturally, I was always hoping, so
(12:04):
one of these will become something serio.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
That's when Tatuo got the phone call that changed the
course of his career and altered the course of gaming history.
Tatsuo Nomura got a call from a friend, Masa Kawashima.
Masa was working for a small gaming startup called Niantic Labs.
(12:29):
Niantic was actually part of Google at the time. Masa
and Nyantik were making augmented reality games, games that blended
real world and virtual elements. Niantic's big ar game at
the time was Ingress. It was a location based game.
To play it, you opened the app on your phone
(12:49):
and walked around outside. The goal was to capture portals
hidden in real world locations and do battle with other players.
Masa had seen the Hollywood style YouTube trailer for the
Pokemon Challenge. He told Tatuo that the version of the
game being played in the trailer looked exactly like a
(13:10):
Pokemon version of Ingris. Of course, real world locations, capturing Pokemon,
doing battle with other Pokemon trainers. All the pieces started
falling into place.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Call it a Eureka.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Moment, an epiphany, a revelation from the gaming gods. In
that moment, Pokemon Go was born. Within weeks, Tatsuo and
Niantic were in Japan pitching the idea to the Pokemon
Company and Nintendo. Within a few months, Tatsuo was working
full time for Niantic. The next year, Nyantik broke off
(13:50):
from Google as an independent company, betting its future almost
entirely on the success of Pokemon Go, a game that
started as an April fool's joke. We now know how
that future turned out. When Poke Kimono finally launched in
twenty sixteen, it wasn't just the biggest thing in mobile gaming,
(14:13):
it was the biggest thing in the world. In just
one week, the market value of Nintendo, which owned a
stake in the game, jumped by nine billion dollars. With
a b at the twenty sixteen Summer Olympics in Brazil,
a Japanese athlete racked up five thousand dollars in roaming
(14:35):
charges from playing Pokemon Go on his phone. Starbucks issued
a special drink called the Pokemono Frappuccino, featuring raspberry syrup
and freeze dried blackberries. Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, attempting to
piggyback on the game's popularity, held a campaign event at
a Pokemon gym in Ohio, where she famously asked people
(15:00):
to Pokemon go to the polls. In the first year alone,
Pokemon Go was downloaded seve one hundred and fifty million times.
The game had made billions of dollars for Niantic, the
tiny startup that took a big bet.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
On in April.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Fool's joke, John Walker never thought he was going to
be a Pokemon Go fan. A gaming journalist from the UK.
John was already in college when the original Pokemon games
and cartoons came out in the nineties.
Speaker 7 (15:35):
So back in twenty sixteen, I knew nothing, absolutely nothing
about Pokemon, like I could maybe name you Pikachu, and
I had no clue at all about the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
John didn't discover Pokemon Go until twenty twenty, when COVID
lockdowns forced him and his very active five year old
son indoors, and.
Speaker 7 (15:56):
So we were trying to think of reasons to go out,
and he was going for a walk. Wasn't something that
interested him, nor any other five year old, And then
I remembered this Pokemon Go thing, so I showed it
to him and he instantly loved it, and so we
went out and we walked, and it was it was
just magic. We went outside and all these Pokemon that
we didn't really know to care about at the time
(16:17):
were appearing in real life. And to him this was
just unbelievable. And it ended up becoming a thing where
we would don't tell the government, but we would spend
more than an hour out. He would go for three
hour walks. A five year old going on three hour walks.
Purely motivated by getting to the next PokeStop and the
next pokeg Gym, and the next ticking off the next
(16:37):
task off the list.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
John says that his son Toby became absolutely obsessed with
catching Mew two. They tried for months to beat a
character named Giovanni who had a Mew two, but they
always came up short. John and Toby were ready to
give up after a long day of playing in a
special Pokemon Go Live event.
Speaker 7 (17:00):
I think the event came to an end at six pm,
and I remember we were sat on this chair in
his room, just having one last go because the hot
air balloon that he was in just happened to hover
into the game and we clicked on it and we
tried one more time, and we did it. We won
the mewtwo, like with you know, it was a kind
of sports movie ending seconds to spare and we both cried.
(17:23):
I remember, I just I was so relieved for his happiness,
and he was so overwhelmed with happiness at the time.
That was the most precious thing and it was just
such an awesome moment.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Ten years ago today, Tatsuo Nomora released an April Fool's
joke that has brought joy and obsession and long walks
with five year olds to hundreds of millions of people
the world over. Tatsuo still works for Niantic, where he's
created and launched other popular AR games. One is called
(17:57):
Pickman Bloom, a kind of step counter powered by Imaginary Friends.
Another is Monster Hunter Now, in which you and monsters
now neither has been as world changing as Pokemon Go,
but that's okay. Lightning almost never strikes twice unless you're PEAKACHEW.
(18:19):
So Happy April Fool's Day everyone, and who knows, maybe
some lame gag you pull at work today will still
be a global phenomenon ten years from now.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnett and
me Jason English. This episode was written by Dave Bruce.
Our producer, editor and sound designer is Josh Fisher. Additional
editing by Jonathan Washington, Mixing and mastering by Bahid Fraser.
(18:57):
Our story editor is Marissa Brown. Original music by Elise McCoy,
Research in fact checking by Austin Thompson. Show logo by
Lucy Kinton. I am your executive producer and We'll see
you back here next week. If you like this show,
go give us a nice little rating on Apple or
wherever you're listening. Very Special Episodes is a production of
(19:19):
iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Dana Schwartz
Jason English
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