You forgot to mention the best part of the Google maps prank: if you caught all 151, which included randomly scanning the Amazon rainforest for 8 hours to find Mew, they actually mailed you a set of official google business cards declaring you “hired” as Google’s official Pokémon Master. I still have mine. I love them.
@@JustBenNotBenjamin I Love that your still so stuck with the actual pokemon go mechanics you dont realize people just had to look at the planet with the map app.
I was living in Japan in 2017 and one of my favourite Pokemon Go memories was befriending this 50ish-year-old guy at the local exercise park which was a hotspot for PokeStops. I didn't speak much Japanese at the time but he invited me to take down a nearby raid with his friends, two other chain-smoking dudes in their 50s. We lost, but then a couple of kids on bikes rolled up, asked if we were doing the raid, whipped out their phones and we took it down together. It was a Pokemon I didn't have yet and they were all so stoked for me, too. It was just such a lovely moment of connection and made me feel that little bit more settled in my tiny corner of Japan.
The irony is as an outdoorsy 20 year old who loved Pokémon, I actually got my first smartphone specifically to play PokeGo and now I have a crippling screen addiction
we actually had a huge revival of our downtown parks because people were out well past sundown in huge numbers through what was previously some pretty sketchy walkthroughs after dark. After 2016 all of a sudden we had huge overhauls of parks infrastructure to keep everything lit up and well kept after dark to keep foot traffic, they became much safer after that, even when the massive crowds dropped off.
I remember this vividly because my brother passed away in spring 2016 when i was 14, & i was really depressed obviously and had to move to a new house and stuff, and when this game came out it was the only way i could get myself to leave the house and go for a walk. I've always loved pokemon so much, my brother showed me pokemon emerald when i was 5 and playing has never left my life. So i was really excited that more people were being exposed to pokemon and i could talk about it to pretty much anyone. Its crazy though that pokemon go is the reason people's bodies were found quicker or at all, i forgot about that happening completely. (edited cus i made a typo) Great video & nostalgia for the only bittersweet time for me that year.
Thank you for sharing that. I started to play because my fiance loved Pokemon and didn't wanna play alone. She passed in October 2016. I quit for a few years, but started playing again for her right before the pandemic hit.
im really sorry for your loss, it sounds like you really cared about your brother. im glad the game had a good impact for you. i didnt share that kind of motivation, but ive also kept playing because its one of the few ways that motivates me to take a random walk and yeah, its an easy and enjoyable icebreaker
A few weeks after it came out summer break just started and litterally every day i just ate breakfast, threw a battery pack, a bottle of water and some food in a backpack and just went out for the entire day. It was the most active i had ever been while struggling with weight issues. I explored so much of my neighborhood i had never seen before, sometimes reaching up to around 50-60km a day. All because of a “dumb” little game. It was so good.
same here. I walked so much that I discovered parts of town I never knew existed. Before Pokemon Go, I would look at a map and think a mile was too far or that going to a gym was overwhelming. Over the last 7 years, Pokemon Go helped me stay in shape even if I'm not the most athletic guy
It was so wild to be out at 2am and still see a ton of people up & walking/running around in the small city I was staying in at the time. There wasn’t a “dead night” that entire summer. I feel like *every single* younger adult I knew 21 all the way to 35 had the app installed, if not used it every day
As someone who still plays this game every single day this video really made me smile and even tear up a little bit. I have my whole life since the game came out of memories that involve this game. Pokémon caught during certain times that I just hold on to cause I remember what was going on when I caught them and the good times around them. I’ve gotten married, bought my first house, made a ton of new friends, gone to a bunch of concerts and lived life to the fullest and this game has always been there for me. I will play it every single day that its available because as silly as it sounds, it really does give me a reason to get up and go out into the world. Thank you for this video guys.
I recently reached level 50 and that's definitely true for me too. I'm 17 years old so Pokemon GO has been a part of almost half my life. I remember specifically one time my mom wondering when she got her glasses, and I instantly knew the date was February 16, 2017, because gen 2 had just released and I got to go to a big city with her and caught my first Phanpy. Stuff like that is why I really love this game, it really becomes embedded into everything and in a good way, not in the way you imagine games taking over people's lives.
glad im not the only one shedding a tear! I miss this moment in time. Maybe it's just a byproduct of getting older but man this felt like the last global phenomenon that brought alot of people together and made alot of people more active
@@CantTellYou I don't think Pokémon go had a predecessor, the company that made it (Niantic) had made made a similar game previously called Ingress maybe that's what your thinking of?
@@MrZorx i may be much older than you (34 as of writing) but your commnet about pokemon being much of your life really resonates with me, because i was 7 when pokemon first came to the US! you think pokego was big, that first surge in the 90s was INSANE it was EVERYWHERE and i was part of it. suddenly i had an easier time talking to other kids and making friends! all because i could name every pokemon and had a charizard card! and now decades later i can still strike up convos because my daily playing has netted me quite the shiny collection .D. (got a shiny darumaka this week!!) So, idk, it feels nice that kids keep feeling the same community surges i did. time is a circle (positive)
It was definitely nice to experience that community aspect. There has never been anything else like it. As someone who goes on walks every day, it was so nice to see places filled with people, and it serves as an easy excuse to talk with and meet new people. Shame it only lasted a couple of weeks.
the initial boom in players when it first came out may have died down but that’s typical of every game ever released yk? there’s still an active community of pokémon go players around the world! nintendo wouldn’t have made a new $50 gadget earlier this year to go along w the gameplay hunting if they didn’t have millions of players to market it towards
My husband and I got married in the middle of July the summer of Pokémon Go. We spent hours walking together catching Pokémon, and on our honeymoon we spent sat on a beach and defending a gym. 10/10 would marry him again.
I still play Pokémon go, and I’ve used it to bond with friends and my family. It’s been one of the most important things for me growing up. Pokémon Go has grown up with me.
My favorite memory of that time was my neighbour ( who is 52) shouted theres a snorlax by the dumpsters! ( this was at 10pm) and at least a dozen nearby neighbours went outside in slippers shuffling to the dumpster for their imaginary buddy lmao
It's amazing how Pokémon Go was a fad but at the same time cemented itself in Pop Culture. It was huge for the Pokémon Company Nintendo and every other entity that has a stake in Pokémon. It got people into Pokémon that would have otherwise never gotten into the trading cards or Nintendo games and when they played Pokémon go with their friends they started getting more and more into Pokémon as a whole.
I remember when they would go down, some of us would sit in the grass/benches and just chat while we waited for the servers to start back up. I also remember some people who were too into the game, who would throw an actual tantrum in public. Those days taught me the difference between a fan and a fanatic.
Living in New York City during that summer was something different. I don’t think I will ever feel that connected to so many people I don’t know. Not even concerts, festivals, or sporting events can really compare to an entire city participating in something that I truly love
when pokemon go first came out, i was 16 and my little brother was an angsty 14 year old who didn’t want to hang out with me anymore. i’ll never forget that first weekend of pokemon go where him and i spent hours driving to different parks and walking around pokemon hunting together. it felt like we were little kids again.
I was in a band on tour when this game came out and it couldn’t of been better timing. Pokémon hunting between shows in new cities was the most I ever felt connected to new communities I was visiting
Same here! Was on our first tour outside of alaska to do a run on warped. Being a bunch of kids from small town alaska going to major cities and playing pokemon with your bandmates was the best. We were all on mystic and would constantly do gym runs.
Bro I seen u commenting on coaster youtubers with >10K subs... it just shows your a genuine person who actually watches other youtubers, which always puts a smile on my face. So many people with millions just treat this platform as a job and don't watch or comment on other youtubers. So its refreshing seeing greater youtubers also watching great videos.
@@Sonic-gy7kq Seriously usually when you see big channels commenting on others it’s when they’re views are dying down but that’s not the case at all for CZ
My friend is an elementary school teacher, and her school was approached by Niantic before Pokemon Go was released to beta test it, so she's been playing even before the game was launched. They reached out to school teachers to see if they thought it would reach young people and would be a method for them to get outside, but not necessarily get them off their screens (since the effort of getting them off screens would be too much of a stretch at once). This also caused a lot of young kids to start playing the game very soon after it launched because their teachers were playing it! They still send the beta testing teachers merch from big pokemon go events, my friend gave me some of hers from a recent event.
I still play Pokémon Go! There is still quite a large, lively community. It is honestly worth revisiting if you haven’t played in a while. In-game events are always a blast, and meeting up with other players is so much fun. I am always surprised by the turnout during event days. We like to play at a local university, and we always run into others who are playing.
It's such a pleasant surprise because there's usually that moment of disbelief followed by sheer joy (or embarrassment because they're like "I haven't played that in years" and then they walk away)
I had major surgery the weekend Pokémon go came out and felt so sad about missing out because I couldn’t leave the hospital. After I got out I couldn’t walk very much for several weeks. But I still made happy memories because friends came over to drive me around my town so that I could play too ❤️❤️
Summer 2016 was mystical.. despite that I was stuck in a small mostly Mennonite town with barely anything to do, I remember playing Pokémon Go on my iPod 5 at the library (only place we could find with wifi that had a gym or a stop lol) but it was still so fun?? I still play PG, started again during the pandemic, if it had the features then that it does now, I rly think it would’ve held on for longer than just a fad
i was in summer school when it came out, and i’ll never forget our teacher stopping the class and making us all go to the pokestop together. truly a great moment.
Me and my now husband met in 2016. I will forever treasure the memories of that summer. Running around town at all hours, catching pokemon, and falling in love
Pokemon Go came out during one my of summer breaks from college when I was just sitting at home with nothing to do, and it got my sister and I to finally walk to the park near our house for the first time and we met a really cute and fluffy black cat along the way that I still think about 6 years later 🤗
nothing will ever come close to the early days of that. it felt so so so good to just be social with people who were exicted about the same thing. i just remember being at the beach and hearing "THERES A SNORLAX" then everyone around us following that rando to the snorlax. felt so special.
I remember going to a gym at a church to capture it in a really really small town in the middle of nowhere and as I'm sitting in thr parking lot another car drove up, another pokemon appeared in the gym and the guy rolled down his window, looked at me and said "FUCK YA, TEAM VALOR!" and drove away. I absolutely loved those random interactions so much.
Your community college story hit me so hard. This game came out the summer after graduating high school, and I was the only one of my friends not moving away for college. My friends and I spent the whole first couple weekends driving around playing Pokemon Go. It took us to places in our home town we had never even been to before, and prompted so many hilarious moments between our selves and groups of strangers. I lost contact with that group after the first year of college, but I continued playing pokemon during all of my community college classes lol. I met a bunch of people on campus because of the game who made a discord server to organize raid parties and trades etc. I still play regularly to this day, and a few of the players from my community college do to, and because of the postcard mechanic I can see where in the country everyone moved to!
I was a camp counselor during this summer so I had to deal with campers and other counselors spending all their time catching Pokémon. At the time I had an older phone so I couldn’t play it myself so I was a bit jealous. Just a few years ago I finally got the app and convinced my brother to do Pokémon go with me. While I didn’t get the community that everyone had that first week, I like remembering the times where my brother and I would just walk together in our local park catching Pokémon. I work at a library in that park (and it happens to be a gym) and I still see people come in all the time playing the game.
I’ll never forget everyone being outside randomly in the same place. We’d all be meeting at a bus stop freaking out looking at our phones as some guy is just waiting there confused
There was a major downtown park near where I lived when this came out, and I remember picking my friends up and going there daily that summer, and tackle gyms near our houses on our way back. It was a magical time.
I worked at a summer camp that year and I remember there was one gym on the camp grounds that the staff would race to and fight over before work. It was my first job and it really helped me connect and get to know my coworkers
That summer was amazing. I remember a Snorlax showing up and a hundred people sprinting to the area. The energy was off the charts. WHY COULDN'T THERE HAVE BEEN PVP?!?!?!? So close, Niantic... so close to perfection.
@@leotheliongames that said I think it is a good thing more complex gameplay came out a little too late. Imagine pvp came out from the beginning, just a few days and there would be someone got shot by a bitter loser, and the game would receive fatal backlash. At least now those who continued to play are those who are in truly for the love of the game, and appreciate the game so much not to ruin it with individual-caused incidents.
my first community day i was at a park for a user made event with a raffle, and it paused as we all ran to a corner specifically because a snorlax had spawned. that was the closest i got to those crowded rushes you saw on the news
I remember the wonderful time in July 2016. The timing was perfect for my little brother and I, I was 16 years old and he was 14. At the release, the Easter vacations began and our parents took us on a vacation to a vacation island in Germany, Rügen. We played the game for 3 weeks with dozens of people our own age and made lots of friends.
Man, I haven’t played Pokémon go since like 2018, but jeez, those initial few months of the game were awesome. If you saw someone outside with their phone out, it was a safe bet, they’re trying to catch Pokémon. I wish I could time-travel back to summer 2016, just to relive that.
This was one of the few times where even people who didn't know what Pokemon was, who never played a video game before, gave it a try and we were able to make that connection. I felt seen, they understood why games meant so much to me. I'll never forget how excited we were, all the new places we decided to go just to see if there were Pokestops there, it genuinely got me into healthier habits and reignited my interest in exploring the world.
Having y’all recall the release of the app day by day took me back to my hometown & watching every night get more and more crowded over the weekend ❤ That was magical… and before they patched the ability to steal a defeated gym from another time just by good timing. Hearing their collective GROAN as we scurried away… what a wonderful time 😂
The launch in Japan happened a couple of weeks later than in the US but oh, when it did... I remember being in Yoyogi park outside Harajuku, and it was insane. Tokyo is always crowded, but it was 11pm and it was BUMPIN, there were food trucks everywhere selling out of everything, people jogging across the park to get to one thing or another, endless lures... it was incredible. And so fun.
To see SOOOO many people out and about, walking around in huge packs in downtown Houston, was a crazy unifying moment in time. It was one thing to grow up in the pokemania late 90s but this was a next level bc you saw all the fans outside instead of being at home playing Pokémon on their ds.
I have been playing the game ever since 2016, and it's only gotten better, I love it so much. What I like most about the game is the community, the local and the online community. I could go to a random town of 10K people and still randomly meet people playing the game to do a raid with.
I started playing poke go on 2022! It was so sweet to go to the community day events every month and meet with sooo many other people, 500 guys in the same park simply bc we love psyduck... (i know i do) but that's not why i wanted to comment, i just wanted to say that the last time i went to a community day the first thing we saw as soon as we arrived at the park was, of course, a corpse. Great video!!!
I’m recovering from a foot and ankle injury and part of my therapy is to walk a lot. It’s made me get back into Pokémon Go more than ever. I genuinely think there is a resurgence in players because, in just the last few weeks alone, I’ve seen more people out playing. I’ve even noticed several new poke stops pop up. It’s kinda cool. Feels like a little echo of the 2016 craze.
I graduated high school in 2016 as well, and spending that last summer with all my buddies running around hunting Pokémon before everyone moved away was truly special.
me and my friends have recently gotten back into pokémon go (like in the past month or so) and it has been SO fun to play together! They have added so many new features and events to the game and it’s such a fun activity and excuse to go on a walk once or more a day
Favorite memory was during the first week of the game. Some friends and I were at our local park at the lure hot spot in the middle of the night, along with a decent group of others, when a Charizard spawned nearby. Not nearly as big as the ones in NYC, but we had a legit stampede of about 30-50 people all running to the same spot once someone found it.
I remember Pokémon Go starting, I was in college (which was the perfect place to start playing because I walked to classes everyday). So many conversations about teams and full departments of students walking downtown like gangs taking over gyms. I also fully believe that was also a surge in external battery packs for phones because the app drained your cellphone battery like crazy. You mentioned the crime and the bodies…. But how could you forget that this was the SAME SUMMER as the creepy clown sightings all over the US??
I remember the summer this came out going to visit my best friend at his college and seeing a wedding happening on campus. We were walking around campus during the time of the wedding reception and the bride and groom had left their own wedding reception to go catch Pokémon and people from the wedding were looking for them. Knew right then and there that wouldn’t be a cultural moment like this happening for a long time.
I still see families and friends walk around my town playing the game, especially at certain gyms you sometimes see crowds of parents and kids playing together. I think it's great.
I turned 16 and got my drivers license that Summer, the combination of finally having the freedom to drive wherever I want + the Pokémon Go craze was magical
I'm so sad I missed the initial wave of the game due to my life and job and at the time. That was a weird and magical moment where Pokemon became mainstream again.
Started playing when it dropped in 2016 (like everyone) but stopped shortly after. Logged back in recently to play with kids (theyre finally interested) and it was nostalgic. Still had some 2016 eggs to hatch too.
Summer after my graduation. Me and the boys all worked terrible high school jobs just to get enough money to buy beer and party. Afterward, we'd just wonder our small town and play Pokemon Go til the sun came up without a care in the world. Such a magical moment in history I'll always cherish.
I had my university orientation that summer and it was absolutely amazing. I grew up in a small town, so seeing gyms and Pokestops everywhere blew my mind.
For someone who didn't even play Pokemon Go I have a lot of great memories around it funny enough. Namely, it brought out a lot of my young adult friends to move around outdoors and it was such an experience going to the park and just seeing it packed with people socializing with each other. It was a very warm feeling going out to get ice cream and seeing packs of friends and strangers alike socializing.
The only time I ever got to visit Chicago was the summer of 2016 shortly after Pokemon Go's release. Missed a ton of sights cause I was glued to my phone but playing that game in a big city was a crazy experience. Makes me nostalgic for sure thinking about all the crowds of people that would gather at the cities hotspots or sketchy late night irl gym battles.
It was really nice living in a small town and seeing everyone out in the park playing the game. Lots of older people had gotten the game just for the younger ones and were having a fun time figuring out how to play.
It’s really hard to explain to people who weren’t into it that first summer just how awesome it was. Regular meetups with your friends to go around random spots in town and take gyms for as long as you could. I was working at an online marketing firm that summer and the entire office took regular breaks to go out and catch what we could, and we even got to make some marketing campaigns trying to get gyms added to businesses. I still play regularly though usually in adventure mode with the game tracking my steps from my pocket.
Words could not describe that summer, I enjoyed it so much. Just the silly little idea if catching pokemon in the real world with my friends is something I never knew I needed.
My partner befriended a Japanese family on the bus despite an almost complete language barrier, because the family noticed he was playing Pokemon Go. That was the only real-life interaction he ever had with this family, but they still send each other gifts in the app regularly. It's very sweet.
Loved the 2 weeks I played this game that summer. Got done with soccer practice and me and a teammate rode our bikes around town playing Pokémon go for a hour or so. Didn’t see that teammate till freshman year of high school in a class and we both remembered that summer. He’s one of my best friends now going into 3rd year of college
Every now and then i see small groups of people with phones connected to power banks in their backpacks walking together, and it always puts a smile on my face :)
I remember when me and my father would go rollerblading together and would stop every so often to pull out his tablet so we could catch Pokémon. I remember this so fondly even if it's a bit fuzzy and I think it's helped the bond I have with my dad, it being so connected and intertwined with gaming all my life. I owe a lot of my good memories with my father to Pokémon Go, as crazy as it sounds.
This summer was one of the best of my life. I went on a trip through Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas then flew to Washington State and Pokemon Go guided me through cities on this wild adventure
That first weekend felt like the most united we’ve ever been as a species. I have vivid memories of how fun it was going to our usually empty downtown square and see it bustling with groups of people my age all excited about the same thing. It was unreal.
The Pokémon go time was great. There was this spot you could sit and had multiple poké stops and we would go there pretty much every night and people would hangout, listen to music and catch Pokemon and we were all complete strangers just having fun: It was great.
One of the best spots in the midwest was Lake Park in Milwaukee. I still remember discovering it on my own with friends. Wandering through the woods up a hill through a drainage ditch in the dark (not knowing the path was 10ft away) to come around the corner to the waterfall and find people sitting on the rocks from top to bottom on their phones. It was so dark all you could see was the lights from their phones like fireflies, and all i heard before getting closer was someone playing the Pokemon theme song on their speaker. Was such a cool experience
You guys are right. My fondest memory of playing Go was during its first year. My friends and I hooked up to one battery bank and walked around a massive park catching Pokémon. Good times.
I'm so glad this channel has taken off. You guys have such a fun dynamic, and it makes me miss living in the same house as my sister (but in a good, cathartic sort of way.) We used to watch Eddy's videos together all the time, and I recommend the Burback vids to her whenever a new one comes out. Keep on keepin on, boys!
Pokemon Go GO fest is this exact feeling still to this day. It's one weekend a year. All weekend is special event pokemon, rotating biomes, new/returning raids and a lot of people out on the streets hanging out playing pokemon. Go to your nearest city and you'll meet thousands of players with the same level of excitement all coming together.
Dude, it was insane. I remember that first month, I would get random friends and people I know call me at like 10pm or midnight to go look for Pokemon at my community college and parks. It was a surreal experience being out late that often when I was used to staying in and either sleeping early or play videogames inside.
I remember chilling with few strangers in my small town and setting two lures at pokecenters that were right next to each other, and within about 10 minutes an entire crowd of people had gathered to catch as many Pokemon as possible. We quite literally summoned a small army, we could have marched on City Hall Those first few months of Pokemon Go were incredible
me and my friend spent the entirety of our trip to iceland catching pokémon. it was so much fun because we were already going around the cities exploring. two of us were on team red and two were team blue. we managed to get our pokémon to an extremely high level and i still had a whalord defending a gym for like 3 months after we left
Did anyone else notice that throughout the video Eddy was blinking “HELP ME TONY LOCKED ME IN MY ROOM AND IS ONLY FEEDING ME DIGORNO PIZZAS HELP HELP HELP” in Morse code? He’s such a funny guy
I lived in a town a bit too small to really get to experience the social component of the game, but during the pandemic they made their annual Pokémon Go Fest a worldwide event, and the most fun I had in 2020 was learning to drive so I could go to the park in the next town over and spend the whole weekend there meeting other players (from a safe distance) and having a great time playing the game. If you haven’t played since 2016 and you miss it now, there’s so much more gameplay than there was a few years back!
