Pokemon Go now available in Hong Kong

Yes, Pikachu, it’s a great day. Photo credit: Pokemon: Indigo League.

Hong Kong’s just kicked off a great week – Pokemon Go released there today.

The region joins Japan as the two places in Asia where players can now officially catch ’em all.

Ever since Pokemon Go’s release to the US, Australia, and New Zealand earlier this month on July 6, people had been wondering why it’s taken so long for the game to show up in Asia – namely, in the country of its origin, Japan. About a week after its world debut, the game came out in 26 more countries. A day later, it was available in Canada. Last Friday, it became available in Japan – just in time for the weekend. Yesterday, France joined the global pocket monster party.

That, of course, didn’t stop many die-hards from playing the game – or exploring extremely similar substitutes that have boded well for the future of augmented reality games. Meanwhile, those who managed to download the game via VPN or other methods have played the game all over the world. An American soldier in Iraq, for example, took time out of his day to post a screenshot of the Squirtle he’d found in the country’s desert.

In order to play the game, people have to physically get up and take their phones out into the real world, which has caused security concerns from countries that have recognized that people don’t necessarily look at where they’re going playing the game. From San Diego to Odense, Denmark, several players have reported finding dead bodies. The game claimed what may have been its first fatality on July 20, when players broke into a home in Chiquimila, Guatemala, trying to catch one of the game’s critters, and one was shot.

Pokemon Go has also caused many a gamer to get up and explore their neighborhoods, possibly resulting in weight loss.

Arguably, countries legitimately downloading the game later may not have missed anything. Early gameplay resulted in numerous reports of frustrating glitches and downed servers. Pokemon Go has since released two updates to help with the problems.

Hong Kong has been making noise about Pokemon as early as May this year. Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon, the latest installments in the series of handheld console games, will be the first games released in traditional and simplified Chinese. Efforts to unify local translations of Pokemon names have resulted in unhappy Cantonese speakers, as the translation has changed the pronunciation of Pokemon’s mascot Pikachu.

In the meantime, things can only look up for Nintendo, which created the game in conjunction with Niantic Labs. Even before any Asia launch, its stock prices have gone through the roof, shooting past Sony last Tuesday.