15 Insanely Cool Video Game Trivia Facts To Impress Your Friends

12. Pokémon GO Came From An April Fool's Joke, And Nintendo Weren't Remotely Involved

Remember that original trailer for Pokémon GO - the one that looked completely different to what we actually got?

Yeah... that was an April Fool's joke. The story goes the Google Maps team collaborated with Nintendo's Pokémon Company in 2014 to create that year's video, "Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge" - the assumption being that PoGo would be a Maps plug-in, not a fully playable product.

Naturally, people assumed the latter and the video went viral, resulting in The Pokémon Company playing developer Niantic's other Geo-caching game, Ingress, and connecting the dots.

Niantic CEO John Hanke told Rolling Stone that the idea was a "perfect fit", and the team got to work on making Pokémon GO for real in collaboration with The Pokémon Company, NOT Nintendo.

This resulted in a huge spike in shares for Nintendo around the launch of PoGo through association of the brand with its parent company, but investors soon backed out just as quickly when they realised Nintendo actually had nothing to do with the success of the game.