14 things you didn't know about Pokémon Go and how it was made

It's official: Pokémon Go is a phenomenon, to the point where even Hillary Clinton is cracking jokes about it on the campaign trail. 

But while the iPhone and Android game may appear to have been an overnight success, there was a lot that went into making Pokémon Go into the hit that it is today.

Here are 14 facts you might not have known about Pokémon Go and how it came to be.

The Pokémon series got its start in 1995 with the classic "Pokémon Red and Blue" games for the original Nintendo Game Boy, before branching out into a cartoon and media empire. By the end of 2015, the Pokémon video games had sold 279 million copies. In 2015 alone, Pokémon merchandise at retail was a $2.1 billion business.

Sources: Perfectly Nintendo and Kotaku

Pokémon Go isn't actually the first time you could play with Nintendo characters in so-called "augmented reality." The Nintendo 3DS and its successors have a little-used augmented reality feature that lets you aim its camera at special cards, and have 3D characters appear on the screen, kind of like Pokémon Go.

Furthermore, Pokémon isn't actually owned by Nintendo itself — the copyright is technically jointly owned by The Pokémon Company, a joint venture between Nintendo, original game developer Game Freak, and toy-maker Creatures. It was actually The Pokémon Company, not Nintendo, who spearheaded Pokémon Go.