This is the most important thing happening today. It’s live. Now.
Image: Supplied
Myself and just about everyone else in my immediate vicinity just downloaded the full version of Pokemon GO from iTunes and the Google Play store. There aren’t a great deal of changes from the beta — you create a character and then choose to catch one of the three original starting Pokemon: Bulbasaur, Charmander or Squirtle.
I’ve already made two accounts, one for Bulbasaur and one for Charmander. (I had a Charmander in the beta and I always picked Squirtle in the original Pokemon games, so I’m switching it up a bit.)
The app now has a battery saver option, something it didn’t have in the closed beta phase.
Images: Supplied
Most importantly: you can play your own music now! Spotify doesn’t seem to work while Pokemon GO is running, but I could get music through my LG G4’s default music player.
Here’s the download for Android users. Those on iPhones can play via this link. Have at it, people.
Comments
118 responses to “Pokemon GO Is Live In Australia Right Now”
will check this out.
just have to hide it though, as im a 31 year old mature male……with a wife, kid and working in a blokey industry, but other than that, ill try it.
^^^This……exactly this, except I’m 36 mate so don’t get down on yourself
not that I’m embarrassed about it, but I can just do without the constant ridicule that comes along with it….the boys already have enough dirt on me anyways.
update, just wolfed down lunch, and im gonna go for a drive. im gonna be a car bound poke-master, i can feel it in my aching aging bones.
I’m a 30 year old cop with a wife and kid… and you best believe I’ll be driving around with this going off in my pocket. Hell, we drive all over the shop, it’ll be fantastic to keep up with!
If you ever happen to pull me over, can we settle the fine with a Pokemon Go battle? 😛
i second what powerbymed said
I’m a 30 year old cop minus the family. Just need to somehow catch the pokemon on night shift without my partner catching on.
not gonna happen. doing it in the car requires you to be on the ball. meaning, him driving and you telling him to stop and or slow down for checkpoints, pokemon you can tap on while theyre on the map, but ideally need to pull over so you can battle properly without the GPS stuffing things up as you move away from the said pokemon. this was hit and miss. worked sometimes, others didnt.
Turns out there are a lot of people roaming the streets late at night checking into pokestops and gyms even as late as 1.30am. I managed to take over two gyms and it was a great way to engage with the community. People seemed to enjoy talking to Police without thinking they were in trouble or being questioned.
UPDATE: OK, so im back. spent a little too long out at lunch, being paid, to be a car bound pokemaster.
first thoughts, it raped my battery (but i have a dodgy battery, so expected)
i had to get out of my car and go for a wander through some park lands at one point. had a machoke spawn right on a gym icon and was frustrating, but i got the bastard into a fight eventually. had some small issues with pokemon not spawning when i was right next to the rustling leaves on my map, but not sure if it was gps issue or teething issue.
have also realised to be able to evolve pokemon ill have to catch at least 20 of the same spearow for example before i get enough spearow candy to evolve it. (mind you im only lvl 3 a this point, so i dont know what lies ahead once i can access gyms at level 5)
battery died, got back to my car, charge cable in, kept driving through a mental hospital grounds, and my phone buzzed whenever a pokemon came up. i was then able to press on the screen (after pulling over @artful-dodger) and i would enter the battle in which i did no battling using my caught pokemon, but just had to hurl pokeballs at the offending little prick until i hit him full on with the ball, in which he was then captured. on my drive back to work, i caught 4 pokemon from the safety of my car..
ill give this some more hours definitely and see where it leads once im a higher level trainer.
not sure if i have to drop real money into it to make it better, ill avoid that and time will tell.
can also confirm that crawling along in your car while near public places, makes you look like a creepy pedo or stalker for sure.
got 13 pokemon in 1.5 hours. have powered any up or evolved nay yet.
its definitely a bit of fun. give it a crack seeing its free anyways.
also, encountered about 7 or 8 gyms in a 2km radius. parklands of Adelaide are your friend if you are in SA
Also from Adelaide, I hear the public toilets in Veale Gardens are a wild Diglet bonanza after dark.
Hail Adelaideans!
I live up north…. where… lets just say Pokemon go is pretty dangerous no matter what time of day you go for a stroll
have you invested in stab proof vest and a fake nokia casing for your expensive phone. and dont forget to wear daggy clothes, it throws off the scent of smart phone owners.
LOLz mine took me to a cemetery…. So there I was with gravestones of people who died in 1850… “Look guys not here to remember you I’m after that Meowth over there….”
Bet they weren’t expecting that in the 1800’s.
Awesome run down mate, I’d love to be playing but I can’t seem to get a GPS lock no matter what I attempt. I really wanted to see if my station came up as a landmark 🙁
ah, thats a bit of a bugger. is your OS up to date on your phone?
Realistically it’s just that I’m stuck inside the watchhouse today, and have no idea I’ll be checking out the rest of the station during lunch to see if we have any hotspots.
ah, yes, the good ol concrete gps blocker that is walls and ceilings. see if you can get near a window at some stage, or on your lunch break.
I’m about to turn 30, with a wife, and unabashedly played the field test and now the new version without any hesitation
32. I work in the auto industry.
I want this badly.
do it…..
Is there a link to a run-down on what it actually is? Pokemon-styled Ingress?
Yeah, pokemon ingress
Hit the Tag at the bottom of the article for Pokemon Go… it will bring up a beta review
I got a Bulbasaur and Pidgey from my seat. Game done!
There was a battery-saver mode in the beta. On my S5 it would turn off the screen when I wasn’t looking at it, or the phone was turned down.
Most noticeable differences so far are slight improvements to GUI, you can now pay real money for pokecoins (equivalent of $30 for 25 incense[1250 coins] and 25 lucky eggs[1250 coins]), there’s a ‘Proffessor Oak’ type character to walk you through the start now, and it seems some new gyms/pokestops have popped up in my area.
You also appear to get a starter pokemon Bulbasaur/Squirtle/Charmander.
Tip: If you can’t find ‘Pokemon Go’ in the app store. Look up ‘Niantic’ and it will show under them.
Did that too. Can’t find it under their works
Just install it via the webpage in the article at the bottom. You will need to login with your google account though.
Odd, it was working earlier for other people.
Anyway, here’s the link
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticlabs.pokemongo
YES! im pretty pumped, i just need to get some pokemon fix until Pokemon Sun/Moon comes out.
i guess my boyfriend will be pushed aside for a bit hahaha! 🙂
Time to quit being a dentist and concentrate on being a Pokemon Master.
im proud of you @shithead
this is the first comment ive seen that was responsible and non-offensive.
you slipping there mate?
No. It’s just been my dream to be the very best, like no one ever was. And to do that I need to quit my dentist life, murder the family and catch a Porygon.
thats better. good to see you are feeling better.
And now we wait for it to come out on Windows Phone.
That is happening, right? Right?
Hahahahahaha. No. No one wants to make apps for all 8 of you guys still using Windows phone
What about a Symbian version? 🙂
But thanks to Windows 10’s forced roll out there’s like a billion of us now. =(
We can wait together. For a long time.
I was only able to get a starter for now, nothing else close to my work.
I don’t know what the big white markers are, hopefully a Pokecenter, because it’s placed where there’s a Pharmacy.
Yeah, the big white things are gyms. You can leave pokemon there if they’re empty to claim them for your team, or battle other team’s pokemon to weaken the gym and take it over for your team.
(You’ll get a team once you reach level 5, go to a gym, and select ‘Team Insight.’)
No no no no no. Team Valor for the win!
I can’t even catch the starter but I also didn’t play in the beta and the app tells you nothing about how to catch a pokemon.
catching so many pokemon from my desk at work.
Played the beta – game got old and boring fast. No interest to try the final product after that as I doubt they revamped the core gameplay mechanics. Ingress is a much better game.
Did you play Ingress in the first 6 months of release? Pretty barebones then too.
I did both. Ingress I found a lot more interesting, largely due to the strategic requirements of fielding, and the strong social element built into the game (more difficult to play with bugger-all XM around though). Pokemon Go sadly has neither. I was hoping that trading would be in the final release, but apparently not yet.
Holy sweet mother of Mary that is awesome. Downloading going to totally be a pokemon desk master.
yassssssssssssss
So you admitted in the article to breaking the rules already? Dual accounts?
I’m not playing with the other account and there’s no way for me to “cancel” it. It says in the guidelines that you can’t play “with multiple accounts (one account per player; please)”.
I’m only playing on the one account (which everyone can see in the screenshots above), and have no intention of doing anything else, so I don’t think I’ll be ruffling any feathers.
At any rate, you’ve probably discovered by now that all the starters can be caught in the wild, so there’s no real need to create multiple accounts to get them.
Where in the rules does it say multiple accounts are a no-no? (unlike Ingress)
Directly in the rules. No dual accounting, no spoofing etc. Not unlike Ingress. Exactly like Ingress.
Ah, I was looking at the ToS, which say nothing about multiple accounts or even spoofing (but forbids scraping & hacking). Then I looked at the Trainer Guidelines, which does forbid multiple accounts and falsifying location.
got a bulbasaur and pidgey. this will motivate me to walk outside.
There’s an unclaimed gym at my local library! FIRST!!
How do you claim a gym? do you need to be a certain rank?
yep level 5. I know because i found one and im only lv3 so couldnt do anything with it
Bummer, i am only level 2.
i cant find it in the app store.. 🙁
As mentioned above (thanks to that user) search for Niantic (I couldn’t find it either mate)
🙂
saw this reply today.. I found it.. just googled it.. lol.. anyway.. its pretty simple game.. yet.. fun..
Playing around with it a bit, I hope they add smart watch notifications and trainer battles in the near future, that’d be perfect 🙂
Can anyone tell me if it requires a constant data connection or could I load up an area, run around catching things and then have it sync once I get a network connection? I wanna give it a go, but at the same time I can’t afford that much data for my phone
You need data always. It doesn’t eat up heaps. You would maybe use a few hundred mb a month if you were hardcore.
hmm, alright I should be able to work with that. Cheers.
It’s new so keep an eye on it. I’m giving a ballpark based on what others have said about this game and my experience with Ingress.
If you are going to new areas lots, it will have to download the images for the pokestops. If you play in the same general area you won’t use as much as it should cache them.
that feel when you don’t have a phone….
For some reason it was really low down on the apps list.
Interesting that there is a gym inside the industrial complex I work in. Damn you NRMA why do you get to be a gym?
Also dang you game telling me after I came back from lunch that there are three pokemon literally across the road when during lunch you said there were none.
Scyther in my bedroom!
How do you use it without a Google account?
you dont
Whoops.. misread the original post…
Hey FunkyJ you old TOGger you:-)
I’d like to try it but I only have a tablet with Wi-Fi. I’ll need a phone first but by the time I get one the buzz will probably have died down.
Seems unlikely. Ingress still gets hundreds of people to Anomaly events and it’s a few years old (and doesn’t have the Pokemon brand either).
No, it seems likely, if only because I really don’t wanna fork out money for a phone and it’ll probably take me 84 years to get a decent one. I’m stingy like that.
Military Veteran turned manager level white collar paper pusher with permanent scowl on my face.
Ran full pelt around the City for an hour with a huge grin on my face! got 11 in an hour and hit level 4. Back to the office now to pump the theme song to get me ready for tonight. gonna hit level 5 and those gym leaders are going down!
I am gonna be the very best…like no one ever was.
It’s not named as such, but you literally have to walk to the Maccas at Circular Quay for a gym.
Now I’m dying to know if Smithfield Maccas is the new battlefield for Pokemon.
I’ve got the Crows Nest Hotel at the moment with my Pincer…
But f-me what a battery drainer.
It’s the worst. I had it plugged into the PC with battery saver on while Pokemon GO was running, and it was STILL draining battery.
Get a thicker/shorter/better cable, that helps a lot. PCs deliver only 500ma, not nearly enough, but quality battery packs should keep up OK.
And the battery saver feature only kicks in when the phone is turned over, screen facing downwards – then the graphics are all disabled, but the tracking/network/vibrate alerts still work.
Most of the Ali Baba kebab shops in Canberra are pokestops, using close-ups of the logo as ‘trapped genie mural’ or something.
Here’s me with my iPhone 4 wanting to play…sayis I need iOS 8 or higher to install and I’m running iOS7.
Have to wait till I get home to update and find out if the newer iOS bricks my phone.
No SDK 8 or above created apps will work on iPhone 4.
Time to upgrade or switch to Android.
(I know! And they call this “choice”)
My phone is an iPhone 4 running iOS 8, can confirm that the iOS runs fine with minor slow downs every now-and-then. Should be good.
Caught a rattata in the toilet at work. That’ll be right
Caught a Magikarp in my toilet. So there’s that…
I’m guessing most of you guys are in big cities? Just downloaded it and I only have one point of interest in view, unlike the 50 in Alex’s screenshot. Is there a way to find out what the point of interest is without actually going to it?
Most of the points of interest are local landmarks that will give you exp, pokeballs and possibly eggs. You incubate eggs and they’ll hatch after you’ve walked 5km. I work near hyde park so a ~45 minute walk around the park netted me a lot of hotspots, there’s tons in the city, and I have two gyms in close proximity as well.
Just tap the icon in the app and it’ll tell you what the point of interest is
So, firstly the app asks for location permissions without specifying why it’s needed (except “in order to play the game”), and then demands I sign up with google to proceed without giving me a compelling reason to do so.
Clearly Nintendo need to hire some phone UX experts.
it needs location because as you walk with your phone, you character walks through the map (which is an overlay of some google maps at a guess) and on the map is where you encounter hot spots, gyms and pokemon, so it needs to know when you are near those things to allow you to encounter them. you wouldnt be able to just zoom out on the map and click on hotspots one street away from you, you have to be in a certain radius.
Surely you understand what this game is right? Pokemon in the real world? If you are on this site, I’m sure of it. How else can it know where you are without GPS or some other location services?
A whole heap of services use Google accounts because a pretty high majority of people have them and it’s cross platform (unlike an apple account). Just be glad it’s not Facebook.
Niantic made the game, Nintendo is publishing it. Niantic was Google’s games division, hence why they’ve made heavy investment into Google Maps (where the game gets location data from) and Google Accounts.
I caught 2 weedles in the middle of the coral sea, go figure. Why no water pokémon?
What do you think people use as bait?
Ahhhh I see hahahaha I didn’t think about that.
But fishing is illegal at my work ( national and marine park).
Parks seem to be a great source of Pokestops and Gyms. My local park just down the road has eight Pokestops and three Gyms!
This is super lame and not at all important to me.
Hopefully the heavy ingress players near my work don’t get into this game so i can take over the gym with no real issue.
I work at a university and it looks like there are 3 gyms on campus. Depending how popular this is with our students, hopefully I can grab one!
I wonder, what horrors await me in western sydney?
Probably a rare pokemon that only spawns after dark at Mt Druitt station or something…
someone is gonna die trying to catch em all…. 😛
I can see someone crossing a road and a pokemon pops up so they stop in the middle of the road to try and catch it.
After getting the first pokemon and entering in a username it brings up that its had an error and to try again, Anyone else getting that?
I don’t mean to brag, but I am the official Gym Leader of the Roma St Train Station.
Right. Looks like I’m taking a train trip tomorrow then.
my 456cp Pincir awaits your arrival. Muhahaha
Is there any unfair benefits to owning a gym?
I just don’t want to feel obligated to try to take over a gym or risk missing out on stuff
You get coins once a day for having pokemon on gyms. It doesn’t matter if you’re the one who flipped it to your team, or if you’ve just added a pokemon to a gym that already belonged to your team.
But if you don’t want to engage in gym battles, why are you even playing a Pokemon game?
he wants to catch them all
It is a bit different when you need to physically travel to a gym to defend your place. But hasn’t been a problem getting into and holding gyms prior to your info; albeit salty and unnecessary comment at the end.
How do you catch the starters? I’ve tried tapping Squirtle, walking IRL towards Charmander (the character didn’t move), and flicking my iPhone when it was facing Bulbasaur.
So how do I do it?
Tap on the character and it’ll bring you to a battle screen (if it didn’t work the first time, try tapping closer to the pokemon’s feet than its centre). Then use your finger to flick the pokeball at the pokemon to capture it. If you time your flick so the targeting circle is small, you’ll have a higher chance of catching.
Update: while sitting on the boat home from work I got a pikachu, clefairy, rattata, tenacool, weepinbell, staryu, and two weedles not bad for a 45 minute trip
My mrs has been on me about going for regular walks to get fit. Just after seeing this announcement I made her night by agreeing to start going for neighborhood strolls every evening.
Little does she know that I really just intend to catch that creatinous Ekans that has been taunting me a few blocks over…