It’s that time again, April Fools’ Day or as I like to call it: Christmas for the Internet!. This year Google actually created a game with their April Fools’ joke which took place solely on their mobile platforms. It all started with the job announcement of Pokemon Master.

What looked like an elaborate VR game was actually a rather simple but strangely addicting minigame. You start the game by opening your Google Maps app and pressing start:

 

This starts you off at Google headquarters where you begin to see pokemon hidden all over the map.

 

 

You simply click the Pokemon then click the catch button in the bottom right corner. Then the race was on to catch all 150 Pokemon before the deadline on April 2nd. It’s a simple as that!

 

The more you zoom in, the more Pokemon you find; I found 200 ft to be the sweet spot. The map shows all caught Pokemon as little Pokeballs so you know where you have been already.

 

I was able to find at least one in most major cities. I even found one in downtown Portland.

 

Google gave hints about where to find various Pokmon via their Facebook, Twitter, and (of course) Google+ page. To keep track of all the different Pokemon you caught they included a Pokedex.

 

I was only able to capture 94 but as of today (April 4th 2014) you can still access the game. So maybe there is still a chance for me to catch them all!

 

Bonus Content:

Another Google Maps project that came to my attention on April Fools’ day was a little thing called Google Naps. This allows you to find places near you to take a nap. Sadly Portland only has three places but since it’s crowsourced anybody can add a new nap spot.

 

One of the nap spots even requires that you are an employee of CD Baby! Hopefully we can step up and add some more napping spots because 3 are not enough.

 

Link to Google Maps Pokemon announcement: http://googleasiapacific.blogspot.com/2014/03/become-pokemon-master-with-google-maps.html

Link to Google Naps: http://www.googlenaps.info/