Would you believe that Niantic Lab's Pokemon GO started out as an April Fool's joke by Google in 2014? The Pokemon game that caught the world's attention is finally opening up its origins.

Surprisingly, the info compiled by a Reddit user came from a panel titled "Origins of Pokemon Go." Where recently, a Niantic Labs designer shared how the game began to unravel.

David Hollin shared the info in the Animation on Display convention in Santa Clara, USA. Here are some interesting facts:

• The hit AR game started as an April Fool's joke by Google in 2014

• Niantic's main goal in creating the game was to get people to walk around outside more

• The secondary goal was to get people to notice nearby landmarks in each location

• The Pokemon Company CEO was a huge fan of Ingress, Niantic's previous game

• Niantic CEO John Hanke thought it would be a fun actual game, so he tried to contact the Pokemon Company

• When it the game was a go to signal, Pokemon Co. wanted the game to be simple and unique for its players

• Before AR, Niantic fiddled with the idea of using images from Google Earth. The plan was to superimpose Pokemon characters in the images

• David Hollin toyed with incorporating AR mode and his phone camera in his backyard. He later showed it to his coworkers

• The response was 50 times what Niantic has expected

• Regional Pokemon is actually a thing. Tatsuo Nomura really wanted players to feel the scope of the world of Pokemon

• When the game launched, Niantic had only two server engineers onsite. They had to work 24/7 in shifts to handle the server issues

Apparently, the list is long, to see the complete details, you can check out My Nintendo News. Stay tuned for more new and updates.