Chinese Pokémon fans are desperate to get their hands on Pokémon Go and are trying anything possible to play it — even if that means playing a knockoff version of the game.
A Chinese knock-off game, “City Spirit Go,” that very much resembles Pokémon Go, has been a hit in the Chinese iOS App Store. Though it doesn’t use an augmented reality, the free game is location-based, meaning it requires users to move around to find its cloned Pokémon creatures. The main character of City Spirit Go is a yellow Pikachu-like creature with purple eyes.
While the game is free, in-app purchases can cost users up to $97 for the diamond package. According to Tech in Asia, City Spirit Go was launched a few weeks after Nintendo began beta testing in Japan by developer Xiaoyu Sun.
The Chinese copy, locally developed by Shenzhen Tanyu, is the most downloaded app in the Apple iOS store and is also popular on the Android platform although it is not yet known whether it is topping the charts there as Google Play is blocked in the country.
Created by programmer Sun Xiaoyu, City Spirit Go also challenges users to seek and catch the fantastical creatures and fight them, although instead of using a mobile phone camera to integrate the videogame in images taken from reality, as in Pokémon GO, it uses a virtual map, EFE news reported.
According to reports, the success of the copy and a strong demand from users forced local gaming sites to multiply the capacity of their servers by 10 times.
City Spirit Go was launched four months ago, few weeks after Japanese video game company Nintendo released a provisional version of Pokémon GO only in Japan, which was later launched officially on Wednesday with limited availability in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Germany.
0 comments:
Post a Comment