Pokémon Go in Toronto: How hundreds of gamers are trying to catch 'em all

Pokémon Go isn't even officially out in Canada but that's not stopping hundreds, maybe thousands, of Torontonians from trying to catch 'em all.

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You may have seen some of them walking around downtown with their heads buried in their phones – which is nothing new, really – but these folks aren't texting. Instead, they're using an app that taps into their phone's GPS to spawn Pokémon creatures all around the city.

"You can happen to find the Pokémon on your desk, under your desk, in your car, on your bed – they can appear everywhere," Niklas Wagner, who's been playing the augmented reality game on his phone for the past four days, told CBC's Metro Morning. 

Wagner said that the appeal of Pokémon is worldwide, and he should know considering he just moved to Toronto from Germany a couple of weeks ago. As a result, the game has a two-fold purpose for the young German as he enjoys catching the creatures while exploring a city that's relatively new to him.

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"I had nothing to do yesterday afternoon, so why not just walk for a bit?" Wagner said. "I went four kilometres all along Dundas Street because I needed to get my eggs hatched and I wanted to check out some of the gyms there and Pokéstops."

Wagner is in a Toronto group for Pokémon Go that he says has about 700 members, although he estimates that there's at least double that number playing the game in the city. He met up with about 200 other players at the CN Tower on Monday.

"It's what the kids of the 90s dreamed of," Wagner told host Matt Galloway. "Everyone from 14 to 30 is playing it right now. It's super-addictive, and you just want to catch 'em all."