Resources For New Pokemon Go Players In Canada

Great news for the thousands of Pokemon trainers here in Canada who have side-loaded Pokemon Go on to their device in order to catch’em all – you no longer have to fear the ban hammer as Pokemon Go has been officially launched in Canada. It is no wonder that some estimates pegged Canada as having a 6% side-load rate.

Niantic Labs & Nintendo made the announcement this morning on the official Pokemon Go twitter account, here is the tweet that kicked things off:

#PokemonGO is now available on Android and iOS devices in Canada. pic.twitter.com/GJodIPSqza — Pokémon GO News (@PokemonGoNews) July 17, 2016

Within 15 minutes of Pokemon Go being live in Canada the servers were slammed so hard that our staff were unable to connect to the game to create new characters. It could be a little while before things stabilize as thousands upon thousands of trainers who chose not to side-load the game rush to download the app and start their very own Pokemon adventure.

As of the writing of this article one of our staff members was unable to connect to Pokemon Go:

The community has created some excellent resources for new trainers and I’d like to take the opportunity, while the servers catch up, to tell new trainers about some of them.

If you are wondering what Pokemon are available in your town and where they’ve been spotted then PokeMapper should be your go-to place for real world Pokemon locations. This crowd sourced pokemon map allows users to sign-up and add their pokemon sightings to the map, although viewing the map requires no registration.

There are dozens upon dozens of Pokemon Go google mapping projects out there. I chose this one from Google Maps for recommendation because it is NOT COMPLETE, meaning that new players have a constructive activity to help out the community. Third party developers have also written map apps for mobile phones like Maps For Pokemon on Android will give players the ability to load Pokemon location data while they are out and about.

Visiting the Pokemon Go sub-reddit should be an obvious choice for the latest information about the game but this resource might not be obvious for those who don’t enjoy reading hundreds upon hundreds of threads. On the Pokemon Go sub-reddit you’ll find trainers sharing their accomplishments, talking about the meta (over arching gameplay systems) of Pokemon GO and other game related topics. They also have several sticky threads to help out new trainers.

If you are into social media and live in a major Canadian city why not consider joining one of the many Facebook groups for larger communities in Canada. Here are just a couple:

For more Pokemon Go coverage keep checking out BrokenJoysticks.net, we will be sure to let everyone know when the servers have finally stabilized and are back online. We also have a really handy beginners guide that will you get you started with a bunch of tips & tricks.