The timing of the Pokemon Go server outage could not have been worse.

Around 50 excited gamers had gathered in Piccadilly Gardens for the first ever Manchester meet-up , with the plan to trek around the city to find Pokemon creatures together. But the whole thing was a no-go without a working app.

A hacking site PoodleCorp has since claimed responsibly for stopping users being able to log on and catch Pokemon, around the world.

The game has also become available in 26 more countries in the past few days, which has caused the game's servers to become overloaded and busy.

But despite the servers being down and little chance of coming back online this evening, keen Pokemon trainers persisted in their meet-up, gathering in Piccadilly Gardens at 4pm as planned.

So what happened then?

Well, there was plenty of repeated attempts to log in...

Then the event organiser Sophie Ashcroft decided that everyone should move over to another green space at Urbis and Cathedral Gardens, in the hope the game would be fixed soon.

But the scene was pretty much the same there....

(Image: Vincent Cole)

Then finally, after an hour, hope turned into defeat and Sophie called time on the meet-up, with people still unable to play the game.

However, a second event is in the pipeline, possibly for next weekend, and Sophie explains in the video below how the day SHOULD have panned out - and how you can get involved next time.

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Gotta catch em' all...