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